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A Letter to eBay: Possible Unlawful Boycott of Israel and Alleged Discriminatory Price Gouging
StandWithUs, National Jewish Advocacy Center, and Zachor Legal Institute wrote to eBay, noting that eBay consumers have brought to our attention significant concerns regarding eBay’s business practices, including allegations that eBay may be discriminating against consumers trying to ship goods from the United States to Israel in violation of anti-boycott laws and international treaties. We requested that eBay provide clarification, investigate the allegations set forth in the letter, and initiate relevant remedial action.
April 15, 2024
Jamie Iannone,
CEO of eBay
Via Email: jamie@ebay.com
Re: Possible Unlawful Boycott of Israel and Alleged Discriminatory Price Gouging
Dear Mr. Iannone,
We write to you from StandWithUs, an international, non-profit organization with the mission of supporting Israel and combating antisemitism; National Jewish Advocacy Center, a nonprofit organization committed to our mission to advocate for the Jewish nation and the Jewish State; and Zachor Legal Institute, a non-profit civil rights organization combating antisemitism.
eBay consumers have brought to our attention significant concerns regarding eBay’s business practices, including allegations that eBay may be discriminating against consumers trying to ship goods from the United States to Israel in violation of anti-boycott laws and international treaties. We request that you provide clarification, investigate the allegations set forth below, and initiate relevant remedial action.
First, eBay customers have notified us of multiple discrepancies in eBay’s activities regarding trade to Israel as compared to other foreign countries since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Palestinian terrorists and armed citizens led by Hamas slaughtered more than a thousand civilians in Israel and took over 200 hostages into Gaza. Starting on October 7 until a recent date, eBay blocked Israel as a shipping destination. Accordingly, sales could not be processed when the final address selected was Israel. The following homepage notification was displayed:
Expect interruptions to Israel service. Listings temporarily no longer show shipping availability. Due to the current events, many major shipping carriers around the world are experiencing interruptions in service to Israel. As a result, many eBay listings will no longer show shipping availability temporarily to buyers with shipping addresses in Israel.
Further, when a merchant offering an item with worldwide availability was based in the United States, where eBay’s in-house, default service option “eBay International Shipping” is used, consumers requesting Israel as the final destination received the message:
Unfortunately, shipping to your location is not available at this time.
This did not appear to be the case when the merchant was based outside of the United States, for example in Germany, Canada, Australia, or the United Kingdom, where the same or similar item for purchase was able to successfully deliver to Israel via a different non-eBay administered service. And from our understanding, major international shipment companies and rival e- commerce sites, like USPS, Amazon, and Ali Express, have never blocked service to Israel and have only faced minimal delays, if any.
In short, it appears that eBay’s US-based operations — and not in other countries — have been refusing to ship items to Israel, while simultaneously engaging in trade with other countries, possibly participating in a boycott in violation of US law. Our understanding is that within the last few weeks, eBay has since lifted this complete ban, however a standardized message that there may be delays in shipping still appears for those with Israel set as the destination.
Furthermore, consumers requesting Israel as a shipping destination are facing sky-high shipping and handling costs (“costs”) from the same “eBay International Shipping” service that no other country appears to be subject to. From our analysis, these costs — irrespective of and not proportional to the cost of the product itself — seem to be consistently in the $60-70 range, which is two to three times greater than when selecting any other applicable country destination. When shipping service options “Standard International Shipping” or “USPS” are available, the costs for delivering the same items are significantly less than eBay’s own shipping service. When shipping originates from a non-US location, the costs do not seem to vary significantly based on destination.
As you may be aware, anti-Israel boycotts not only violate numerous Federal anti-boycott laws, but also legislation in over 30 US states, many of which house your offices, employees, and interstate business operations. The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security defines the term “boycott” as referring “to economic coercion associated with such tactics as refusing to engage in business transactions or conditioning business transactions on agreements that a party will not do business with another party or country.”
The past six months of eBay’s refusal to service consumers in Israel from the US. at all or on terms equal to other countries likely constituted such a boycott, regardless of if one has been publicly declared. And now, whether eBay is intentionally acting in furtherance of the same perceived boycott tactic or is merely using price gouging as a means to “legally” dissuade customers from engaging with Israel, this discriminatory conduct is potentially in violation of the same set of laws. This extant practice requires immediate clarification.
We therefore request that you investigate this alleged non-compliance and engage in a thorough and transparent review of your policies to ensure adherence to Federal and state anti-boycott legislation and regulations. Thank you for your prompt attention to this timely and critical matter. We look forward to a response to this letter by April 30, 2024.
Sincerely,
Roz Rothstein Marc Greendorfer Mark Goldfeder
CEO and Co-Founder President CEO and Director
StandWithUs Zachor Legal Institute National Jewish Advocacy Center
The post A Letter to eBay: Possible Unlawful Boycott of Israel and Alleged Discriminatory Price Gouging first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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