The original antiboycott laws were an unfortunate response to an otherwise intractable issue. Until recently, most countries in the Arab world had both a primary boycott on Israel and a secondary boycott on any company that does business with Israel. So there was a real and pressing concern that some companies might feel they have to boycott Israel, not because they themselves have an issue with the country but because they can't afford to sacrifice the rest of the Middle East market for it. Antiboycott laws were a solution, and a solution that seems to have worked pretty well - the Arab League never explicitly revoked their boycott, but it's virtually unenforced and nobody has to choose between doing business with Israel and doing business with the Arab world.

The new wave of antiboycott laws this article is referring to are much less justified, I think, but you'll note that they're on the same topic in response to still-ongoing efforts by the BDS movement to promote a secondary boycott. So it's not as unreasonable as it would first seem.