Breaking! Anti-Israel boycotters don’t like being boycotted!
Pushback against anti-Israel boycotters just got real.
We have been here before.
The vicious anti-Israel boycotters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement don’t like it when the tables are turned on them. That’s why, when faculty pass their anti-Israel boycott resolutions, they include in the resolutions the demand that their right to boycott be protected.
In other words, boycotters claim the right to boycott others, but deny others the right to boycott them.
It’s an “academic freedom for me, but not for thee” attitude.
In Europe, in particular, the BDS rhetoric and tactics are so toxic that BDS has become the mother’s milk of anti-Semitic violence and threats. In many cities, Walking While Jewish is hazardous to one’s health.
But boycotting the boycotters was bound to happen. Israel supporters were not going to be punching bags forever. And forever has arrived.
We have highlighted before proposed federal legislation updating boycott protection for Israel in new trade legislation, including the massive European Union free trade agreement under negotiation. BDS supporters howled that the trade legislation could mean the death of BDS in Europe.
That effort just got a huge boost, as this AIPAC press release reflects:
AIPAC praises the Senate Finance Committee for unanimously including an amendment targeting harmful anti-Israel trade and commercial practices in the “Fast Track” Trade Promotion Authority bill yesterday. AIPAC applauds the amendment’s authors, Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rob Portman (R-OH), and expresses appreciation to Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ranking Democrat Ron Wyden (D-OR), who backed this key initiative.
The amendment addresses efforts by foreign governments to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel. Utilizing well-established congressional tools, the provision directs that one of the principal American objectives in upcoming trade negotiations will be to discourage trading partners from taking actions that would limit U.S.-Israel commerce. The amendment also urges the U.S. Trade Representative to seek to eliminate politically-motivated economic attacks on Israel by America’s free trade partners.
In considering another measure, the customs enforcement bill, the Finance Committee included additional important provisions to further combat BDS activities. The Committee established new requirements for administration reporting and disclosure by foreign companies of their participation in political boycotts of Israel.
Companion legislation to the anti-BDS amendment, H.R. 825, has been introduced in the House by Reps. Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA).
![[BDS protester, San Francisco, July 2014]](https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BDS-female-protester-San-Francisco-July-2014-e1404865705978.png)
[BDS protester, San Francisco, July 2014]
The amendment will come to a floor vote when the Senate votes on the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), the underlying bill. The administration is pushing hard for the TPA, which is expected to come to a vote as early as next week and has bipartisan support.
The amendment only applies to the TTIP negotiations with Europe, and not the companion Trans-Pacific Partnership talks — a response, sponsors say, to a tide of BDS-related initiatives in the European countries with which the US hopes to negotiate a historic agreement.
“Unfortunately, some of our European allies are engaged in (BDS),” one of the amendment’s two original sponsors in the senate, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), told colleagues before the late Wednesday vote. “Banks from from Sweden, Denmark and the largest pension fund in the Netherlands have divested from israel’s financial institutions. Denmark has actually threatened sanctions against Israel unless the Israeli government takes actions with regard to Gaza. There was a threat in the European Union to boycott meat and dairy products from certain areas of Israel depending how those products are labeled.”
There also is separate federal legislation pending that would require contractors with the U.S. government to certify they are not participating in BDS. There are similar efforts ongoing at the state level.
Look at how Ali Abunimah, one of the most prolific and aggressive anti-Israel boycott advocates who travels from campus to campus advocating various forms of BDS, complains about legislation in Illinois similar to the federal legislation, Illinois law would force state to boycott companies accused of boycotting Israel.
The Illinois bill in question is up for a vote today. Regardless of whether it passes, the handwriting is on the wall.
The people of the United States overwhelmingly support Israel. It’s not even close.
Now we, the people, are being heard in opposition to the BDS movement not just on campuses, but also through our elected representatives.
In another important move, the Tennessee and Indiana legislatures officially condemned BDS:
Resolutions condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in the Tennessee and Indiana state legislatures mark what a group of pro-Israel organizations and grassroots activists hope is just the start of a new trend in fighting BDS on American soil.
The Tennessee General Assembly on April 21 became the first state legislature in the U.S. to formally condemn the BDS movement through the passage of Senate Joint Resolution 170. The resolution was initiated by Laurie Cardoza-Moore, founder of the Christian Zionist group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN). Cardoza-Moore worked with local Jewish and Christian organizations to bring the resolution to the state legislature.
“With the current climate of increasing anti-Semitism, anti-Israel, and anti-Zionist campaigns, Tennesseans and all people of conscience should endorse public statements of support for our Jewish brethren living in Tennessee and pro-Israel students attending colleges and universities in our state,” Cardoza-Moore said…..
Similar to the Tennessee resolution, the Indiana measure “expresses opposition to the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel” BDS movement, adding that the global spread of anti-Jewish speech and violence “represents an attack, not only on Jews, but on the fundamental principles of the United States.” The resolution goes on to thank the presidents of Indiana University and Purdue University for “strongly” condemning the boycott of Israeli academic institutions after some faculty members and other staffers at those schools voiced support for the BDS movement.
After years of being a boycott punching bag, supporters of Israel are fighting back.
And don’t think the fight won’t come to academia if BDS continues to rip at the fabric of academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas through its boycotts.
The easy days for BDS are over.
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Comments
I’m not Jewish, but I am considering wearing a kippah in solidarity. And a 1911.
Do that in Chicago and I’ll walk with you.
The US punishing trading partners for engaging in BDS is something I completely support, I think the US should do that. Requiring contractors with the U.S. government to certify they are not participating in BDS is an entirely different matter. I think this violates the First Amendment. Federal contractors, assuming they’re still US citizens, retain their First Amendment rights, and without a compelling government interest at stake, the US government cannot take that away. They have a right to decide with whom they associate and what broad political positions they take, and Israel is not a US citizen whose rights under the 14th Amendment would grant the government the power to punish individual discrimination of it.
Put another way, the US punishing foreign countries for discriminating against other foreign countries it likes, perfectly ok. The US punishing US Citizens for discriminating against a broad class of other US Citizens, OK, but need a good reason. The US punishing US Citizens for discriminating against foreign countries the US likes, almost never OK.
We should be careful not to fall into their censorious trap. The US cannot condition generally available competitive opportunities on supporting US political positions unless that political position is directly and inextricably linked to the competitive opportunity (like being a foreign service officer or the like.)
I generally agree with this.
I think there’s some danger here of using the government cudgel where it need not be used.
As against foreign companies, swell.
People have the right to decide with whom they will or won’t do business; and the USA has the same right to decide with whom it will or won’t do business. It has the right to decline to do business with anyone who refuses to do business with Israelis.
Take a gander at BDS getting goosed.
Those who occupy indefensible ideological ground will be punched back twice as hard. It just takes a while.
More Americans of every stripe are pro-Israel than Liberal/Democrat Jews.
I don’t claim to know why or what it means but I say it doesn’t speak well of Liberals, Democrats or Liberal/Democrat Jews.
A significant proportion of the pro-Israel American Jews has decamped to Israel. The Jews left in America are a subset of the diaspora that includes nearly all of the anti-Israel Jews.
Leftists in general, be they progressives or “liberal Jews” usually have made leftism their religion in fact. Their actions, be it their BDS support, pro abortion stand or support for other leftist causes takes precedence in their concerns. They do not regard the Bible or the Torah as supreme in moral teaching.
You used an illustrative photo that includes the caption: “… goods from Israeli settlements built on occupied territories in violation of international law.”
This caption which is wrong in the following:
1. ‘Occupied territories’
How can these territories be occupied? They UN resolution of 29 November 1947, which called for an establishment of an Arab state and a Jewish state in the part of the British mandate of Palestine (West of the Jordan river) was rejected by all the states in the Arab league, as well as by the Palestinian Arabs. Thus, that UNGA resolution is null and void. When the war between the Palestinian Arabs and the five Arab armies – and Israel ended in 1949, these areas were illegally occupied by the Hashemite Kingdom of Trans Jordan, which later annexed them, an act that was recognized by but two States in the whole world. So, when Israel conquered these areas in a preemptive was in 1967, these areas at worst may be called disputed – not occupied.
2. ‘in violation of international law’
The only prevailing International Law regarding the lands that were given to Great Britain as a Mandate by the League of Nations, are the resolutions of the San Remo conference of the 1920s, which assigned these for “a National Home for the Jewish People”. So, there’s no violation of International Law.
I see that the illustrative photo you used is from Ali Abunimah (https://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Electronic-Intifada-Illinois-boycott-of-boycott.png) so the lies in the photo caption are now quite understandable.
Antisemitism is foundational to the Left. It is a guiding light to Progressivism. It is the raison d’être of the Rachael “Pancake” Corries of the world. It’s never going away. The best we can do in the sane part of the free world is to make sure that the damage that antisemites do is minimized. This is a start.
Guy Falkes, ugh. Guy Falkes again, ugh again.
Guy Falkes mask, if you must, then you already know yourself as crackpot. That’s why you’re concealing your real self behind something so childishly trite, one that you know that I know and everyone seeing yourself knows says, yeah, behind all that we all know, I’m a nutter. Just, ugh.
I urge other voters to email and Tweet their representatives what I just did: “@JuliaBrownley26: This Ventura County voter urges your vocal support of bi-partisan H.R. 825 (@RepJuanVargas @PeterRoskam) anti-BDS bill.”
As most know by now, BDS has made Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, a washed out creepy musician, to be their “spokesman” and head of “bullying other bands and musicians not to play in Israel”.
But has anyone even bothered to check his background? He was educated by the Waldorf Schools founded by Rudolph Steiner in German before ww2. Steiner created the philosophy called Anthoposophy which is virulently anti-Semitic (not your garden variety type) but the type that “Jews are not quite human”.
They have developed a type of farming called “Biodynamic Farming” which they claim to be vegan-friendly, but it is anything but. It includes all kinds of hocus pocus such as burying deer bladders in the soil along with cow skulls full of manure during a full moon, yada yada. You get the picture.
Also, if one finds a pest in the crop such a mouse. It is to be burned and its ashes spread all over the vicinity (it will keep other “like-pests” away. Sound familar?
This guy, and these people are more than stupid misguided boycotters, they are heavily influenced by anthroposophy, which Hitler used to help develop his Nazi Youth Movement.
Don’t take these madmen and women with a grain of salt. They have bigger things in mind, and they need to be bankrupted as soon as possible.
They are insane, dangerous, and full of misguided hate and venom. You should know your enemy, not just boycott them.