The second Austrian bank in two months has closed an account held by an anti-Israel boycott group, Benjamin Weinthal reported for The Jerusalem Post Tuesday.

An account at the Austrian banking giant BAWAG belonging to the Austrian-Arab Cultural Center (OKAZ) has been closed, Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based investment firm that is the majority owner of BAWAG, confirmed to Weinthal. OKAZ held an event earlier this year featuring terrorist Leila Khaled, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who was involved in two plane hijackings in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

This is the second such occurrence to have happened in Austria in recent months. Erste Group Bank closed the account of the organization BDS Austria in May.

Weinthal, who is also a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, explained in an op-ed Wednesday in the New York Daily News that Bawag’s action may be related to the executive order signed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday barring state agencies from doing business with organizations that boycott Israel.

“The ramifications [of the executive order] will ripple far beyond these borders,” Weinthal wrote. Since Cereberus has a business relationship with New York State’s pension fund, Weinthal deemed the closing of the OKAZ account “a probable result” of Cuomo’s executive order.

Similar laws and executive orders can have effects well beyond the jurisdictions in which they are passed, Weinthal wrote:

As evidenced by Cerberus’ closure of the OKAZ account, financial pressure like that being wielded by Cuomo can turn the tide against BDS. Amid rising complaints, French banking giant BNP Paribas pulled the plug on the BDS Campaign account in Germany in February.

French bank Credit Mutuel severed its account with BDS France in May. In addition to the fear of possible New York sanctions, a new, tough anti-BDS law in France surely had a great deal to do with it.

[Photo: Peter Haas / WikiCommons ]