Arab League Boycott of Israel - Ad-hoc Boycott Attempts of Jewish Businesses

Ad-hoc Boycott Attempts of Jewish Businesses

Arab boycotts of Jewish interests started as early as 1922, 26 years before the establishment of Israel. The original boycott forswore with any Jewish owned business operating in the British Mandate of Palestine. Palestinian Arabs "who were found to have broken the boycott ... were physically attacked by their brethren and their merchandise damaged" when Palestinian Arabs rioted in Jerusalem in 1929. Another, stricter boycott was imposed on Jewish businesses in following the riots that called on all of the Arabs in the region to abide by its terms. The Arab Executive Committee of the Syrian-Palestinian Congress called for a boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933 and in 1934, the Arab Labor Federation conducted a boycott as well as an organized picketing of Jewish businesses. In 1936, the Palestinian Arab leadership called on another boycott and threatened those who did not respect the boycott with violence, however, this boycott was unsuccessful as Jewish lawyers, physicians, and hospitals were too heavily integrated into Palestinian society.

Aiming to isolate the Jewish community economically, on December 2, 1945, the newly formed Arab League Council declared a formal boycott: "Jewish products and manufactured goods shall be considered undesirable to the Arab countries." All Arab "institutions, organizations, merchants, commission agents and individuals" were called upon "to refuse to deal in, distribute, or consume Zionist products or manufactured goods." The official explanation for the boycott was to support the Palestinian Arabs against Zionism, however, in practice, the Arab states used the boycott to prevent Jewish products from entering Arab countries and stunting the development of the local economies. While the boycott was officially against Jewish products, Arab products from Palestine were also boycotted. Palestinian Arabs' complaints to the Arab Higher Committee and the Arab League as well as Palestinian Jews' complaints to the British about the application of the boycott mostly fell on deaf ears.

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