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When It Comes to U.S. Trade Policy, Some Territories Are More Disputed Than Others

The retail giant Amazon recently agreed to pay a fine to the Treasury Department for doing business in Russian-occupied Crimea in violation of American sanctions. While the decision—and the regulations behind it—is undoubtedly just, to Brenda Shaffer and Jonathan Schanzer it highlights the inconsistencies of U.S. law when it comes to doing business in occupied territories:

In addition to Crimea, Russia illegally occupies four other territories: Donbas in Ukraine, Transnistria in Moldova, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. Remarkably, there is no explicit U.S. prohibition on trade with these regions, even though their status under U.S. and international law is identical to Crimea’s.

U.S. trade policy on other disputed territories is a similar mishmash. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued explicit guidelines requiring that goods produced in the West Bank be explicitly marked as such. The labels cannot contain the words “Israel,” “Made in Israel,” “Occupied Territories-Israel,” or words of similar meaning. In 2016, CBP issued additional guidance reaffirming this rule: “Goods that are erroneously marked as products of Israel will be subject to an enforcement action carried out by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.”

But the laser focus on Israel was curious given that goods produced in Armenian settlements in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan enter the United States unhindered. Despite U.S. recognition of Nagorno-Karabakh, [which it seized from its neighbor following the breakup of the USSR], and the surrounding regions as the legal territory of Azerbaijan, CBP has not clarified that goods from these territories should be labeled as such. It would appear, then, that some disputed territories are more disputable than others. But the U.S. government has never bothered to explain why.

Moreover, while the legal status of the West Bank is at worst highly ambiguous, the status of the other abovementioned territories is clear-cut. Such inconsistencies not only ignore the serious threats to international law, human rights, and U.S. interests on the part of Russian and Armenia, but give comfort to the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel (BDS).

Read more at FDD

More about: Azerbaijan, BDS, Crimea, Russia, U.S. Foreign policy, War in Ukraine, West Bank

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic