Members of Congress Displeased by Report of Saudi Arabia's Increased Boycotting Activity

As a follow-up to the recent Jerusalem Post story regarding the increase in boycott requests from Saudi Arabia, a follow-up story in that newspaper described the Congressional reaction to the report.

The story, entitled "'Post' report sparks congressional anger" notes that "leading Democratic and Republican congressmen expressed outrage following a report . . . that Saudi Arabia has been violating its promise to Washington to stop enforcing the Arab League boycott of Israel."

The article notes that several influential members of Congress intend to express their concerns on this issue with the Obama Administration.

Data contained in the Bureau of Industry and Security's (BIS) 2008 Annual Report (pdf) (see below) indicates that Saudi Arabia actually ranked fifth in the total number of boycott requests reported to BIS in Fiscal Year 2008. The total number of boycott-related requests received from Saudi Arabia (74) was far below the number of requests received from the United Arab Emirates (542), Libya (157) and trailed request received from Qatar (94) and Lebanon (77). Nearly half of the boycott-related requests received from Saudi Arabia related to request specifying that Israeli goods were prohibited.