ABSTRACT
The World Jewish Congress, an organization headquartered in the United States and where American Jews have a prominent influence, is a highly Americanized organization. If a boycott of the Swiss banks might indeed have had important effects in the longer term, especially if it had been enforced by a growing number of States and cities, people have to admit that this threat and the resulting bad corporate image did exert a strong pressure on the major Swiss banks and contributed to a large extent to speeding up the global negotiations and driving them to a conclusion. Senator D'Amato's transparent electoral aims shed some doubt as to his explicit motivations for embracing the Jewish cause; from it emerges the portrait of a pure political opportunism. The ambiguous attitude of the American administration representatives and especially Stuart Eizenstat is probably largely instrumental in nature.
