Open Letter to Rep. Claudia Tenney on Ireland’s Proposed Boycott and Section 999 Review

Dear Congresswoman Tenney,

I write to thank you for your leadership in urging the U.S. Department of the Treasury to review Ireland’s proposed boycott of Israel under Section 999 of the Internal Revenue Code.

As an Irish-born Jew who has lived in Israel for the past decade, I would like to express my strong support for the effort which you are leading and for the letter endorsed by your 15 congressional colleagues. I would like, too, to share my perspective - as a person living in Israel and with family in both Ireland and the US.

I was born and raised in Ireland and moved to Israel approximately ten years ago. I follow Ireland–Israel relations closely, although in recent years it has become a discouraging pursuit.

Like many Israelis, my views about the ongoing war in Gaza are not black and white.

I am deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation evolving in Gaza. But I also recognize Israel’s obligation to eliminate the threat posed by Hamas which, on October 7th, showed itself to be both existential and intolerable in character.

While Ireland has not wasted a minute to condemn every Israeli action since the State's foundation, credible proposals for how Israel should neutralize the threat posed by Hamas and allied jihadists other than through force, paired with an even-handed recognition of Israel’s security needs, have been entirely absent from its discourse.

October 7th demonstrated that urging "both parties" to "come to the negotiating table" does not work when one of those parties is intent on eliminating and butchering the other. The Northern Irish experience cannot be extrapolated to every world conflict.

When it comes to Israel, Ireland has long masterminded the practice of a fictitious form of neutrality and used it as a kind of cloak beneath whose protection it has felt empowered to orchrestrate a systematic and multi-pronged attempt to isolate and harm the interests of the State of Israel.

These efforts are not only legion in number but also in character and geographic breadth. Fom UN podia to EU fora they span, literally, the globe.

On the ground here in Israel they include channelling state resources into funding highly partisan NGOs whose sole purpose is to stigmatise Israel.

As documented by NGO Monitor and others, many of these bodies show a concerning intermingling of resources and overlapping of staff with EU-proscribed terror organisations. Their recent report A Decade of Lobbying: NGO Mobilization for the Irish Occupied Territories Bill paints the passage of the bill in its proper context.

Beyond advocating for BDS, these organisations, including most notably Al Haq, have affirmed a commitment to BDS, attempted to cluster knowledge around organised lawfare against Israel, and campaigned, even, against Israel's prerogative to refuse entry to those who endorse such activities. By funding and supporting these organisations, the Irish government demands that Israel be diplomatically neutered.

At the EU level, this very selective Irish focus on campaigning against Israel has manifested as an attempt to form a group of nations who wish that Israel were effectively "kicked out" of the Union (a move which would not only harm Israeli trade interests but also undermine programs like Horizon and other joint technological and scientific programs in which Israel and EU member states enjoy mutually beneficial cooperation). To date, this has enjoyed limited traction. But it should be remembered that this attempt at political ostracism has been orchrestrated by Ireland.

At the ICJ, this anti-Israel bias has manifested in an attempt to urge the body to reinvent the definition of genocide just in order to find Israel guilty of the charge. And even in the arena of sports, the Irish Government has steadfastly refused to condemn the actions of its national basketball team to refuse to shake hands with Israeli athletes - a move usually favored by parts of the Arab World.

Nations should be judged by their actions and not their words. Therefore, I believe that the potential enactment of the Occupied Territories Bill would be a fitting time to recognise Ireland's protracted anti-Israel campaign for the diplomatic and legal war that it is.

That the Occupied Territories Bill is not being advanced out of a genuine motivation that it would somehow advance peace in the region can be demonstrated, beyond modelling its likely effects, by simply looking at the chronology of its advancement.

The passage of the legislation was previously blocked, at various junctures, by the government who expressed concern that its enactment would put Ireland in contravention of EU trade policy which is a bloc-level concern.

This opposition, it should be noted, was not framed in moral terms - that a selective boycott of Israel was wrong and immoral. But rather out of self-interest - that doing so would harm the interests of Ireland (the same debate has now been resurrected and the dynamics repeat themselves). Your letter which notes that allies of the US should not be subject to this kind of wanton villification shone a moral clarity that is entirely absent in Irish discussions around Israel.

But if even those selfish concerns were indeed well-founded, one must ask why it was that the advancement of this bill was miraculously resurrected early this year. And why, also, that event transpired almost immediately in the wake of Israel's decision to close its embassy in Dublin?

Like the review process which Ireland committed itself to in order to "evaluate" whether it should join South Africa's shameful lawsuit at the ICJ, Ireland has invented more kangaroo court processes to "deliberate" upon whether it can legally enact legislation whose effect is manifestly to target businesses based not upon their national identity but their religion (it does this, albeit not explicitly). These are however just ruses.

The very mechanism by which the proposed Bill would operate is a carefully chosen mechanism that attempts to arrive at something like an "only Jews" list without explicitly stating as much. The legislation, as reproposed this year, turned to postal codes (and an EU document originally drafted for customs purposes) to ensure that it only applies to Jewish populations living in the territory to which it would apply. The lengths and ingenuity which Ireland exhibits in finding novel ways to harm Israel are, in their foreign relations, without parallel.

The list of countries which are subject to section 999 enforcement for their state-led endorsement of boycotts against Israel includes Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. Ireland thoroughly deserves its place on this same list.

By recognising Ireland's state-endorsed animus against Israel for what it is - a selective bigoted campaign - the US would be not only affirming its commitment to opposing disciminatory boycotts targeting allies, but also doing the historical record a great service.

The US would also signal that boycotting Israel, whether it is endorsed by a Middle Eastern dictatorship or by a European nation hiding under fig leaf "neutrality," carries the same penalty from the perspective of the US. We would be grateful for such enactments.

I appreciate your continued advocacy on this issue and your willingness to confront efforts that marginalize Israel rather than bring the parties closer to peace. Thank you for your leadership.

With respect,

Daniel Rosehill