EXCLUSIVE: Republican AGs Tell UK and Netherlands To Drop Sanctions on Israeli Companies or Risk US Divestment

‘Your nations have also aligned themselves with the policy objectives of terrorist organizations,’ say 13 AGs led by Iowa’s Brenna Bird

Thirteen Republican state attorneys general warned the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Netherlands of potential U.S. divestment should the two nations go through with implementing sanctions against parts of Israel in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. In a new letter shared exclusively with the Washington Free Beacon, the attorneys general, led by Iowa’s Brenna Bird, say the sanctions “impose potentially severe economic harm on individuals and businesses in other nations—including those within our States” and are in line with the goals of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The letter was sent Monday to the British and Dutch ambassadors to the United States by Iowa’s Bird, Alabama’s Steve Marshall, Louisiana’s Liz Murrill, Arkansas’s Tim Griffin, Mississippi’s Lynn Fitch, Missouri’s Catherine Hanaway, Florida’s James Uthmeier, Montana’s Austin Knudsen, Georgia’s Chris Karr, Ohio’s Andy Wilson, Oklahoma’s Gentner Drummond, and South Carolina’s Alan Wilson. The attorneys general urged the two nations “to rescind or halt implementation of the recently enacted trade sanctions against Israel or any component of Israel” or potentially face consequences from the United States Trade Representative and from individual states that have passed laws targeting antisemitic boycott campaigns against Israel.

“The economic harm that you are threatening on our States and our citizens may warrant remedies under U.S. trade law,” the attorneys general write. United States law allows the United States Trade Representative to pursue “appropriate and feasible action within the power of the President” to ensure the cessation of “unjustifiable” burdens on American commerce imposed by foreign nations. “We reserve our right to pursue such remedies if you persist in your anti-Israel campaign,” the attorneys general said.

Because of many U.S. laws preventing certain states from doing business with entities boycotting or divesting from Israel, the sanctions could deprive British and Dutch citizens of “goods, services, and technology that are essential to their everyday lives and their economic wellbeing,” the attorneys general added.

Several billionaires left the United Kingdom as its Labour government issued new sanctions targeting “illegal settlements and settlement expansion,” as British foreign secretary Ed Miliband described them. The planned Dutch sanctions are also, in theory, aimed at “extremist settlers and organisations which support them.” The West Bank is home to a budding Israeli wine industry operated not by “extremist settlers” but by international businessmen. One owner of a kosher wine store in London told the Jerusalem Post that the sanctions would knock out “more than half of our inventory.”

In response to Great Britain’s sanctions, Israel closed the U.K. consulate in Jerusalem and expelled several diplomats from its borders in September. Soon after, the Jewish state announced it would revoke the diplomatic status of Dutch envoys to the Palestinian Authority over a previous bevy of sanctions from Prime Minister Rob Jetten’s government.

“Beyond the economic harms that your anti-Israel sanctions have created, your nations have also aligned themselves with the policy objectives of terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah,” the attorneys general write. “The sanctions directly advance the policies that these terrorist organizations have sought to achieve through brutal violence against civilians, women, and children. Moreover, your sanctions could be seen to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the policy aims of these terrorist organizations, suggesting that prominent European nations share them.”