$1 million Fine & 20 Years In Prison For Exercising Your 1st Amendment Rights
Proposed Legislation Would Criminalize
Boycotting Israel – $1 million Fine & 20
Years In Prison
Palestinians walk past a sign painted on a wall in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. (Thomas Coex/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
David Cole is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Faiz Shakir is national political director of the ACLU.
The right to boycott has a long history in the United States, from the American Revolution to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Montgomery bus boycott to the campaign for divestment from businesses serving apartheid South Africa. Nowadays we celebrate those efforts. But precisely because boycotts are such a powerful form of expression, governments have long sought to interfere with them — from King George III to the police in Alabama, and now to the U.S. Congress.
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, legislation introduced in the Senate by Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) and in the House by Peter J. Roskam (R-Ill.), would make it a crime to support or even furnish information about a boycott directed at Israel or its businesses called by the United Nations, the European Union or any other “international governmental organization.” Violations would be punishable by civil and criminal penalties of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union, where we both work, takes no position for or against campaigns to boycott Israel or any other foreign country. But since our organization’s founding in 1920, the ACLU has defended the right to collective action. This bill threatens that right.
The Israel Anti-Boycott Act is designed to stifle efforts to protest Israel’s settlement policies by boycotting businesses in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The bill’s particular target is the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a global campaign that seeks to apply economic and political pressure on Israel to comply with international law.
Whether one approves or disapproves of the BDS movement itself, people should have a right to make up their own minds about it. Americans engage in boycotts every day when they decide not to buy from companies whose practices they oppose. Students have boycotted companies that sold clothing manufactured in sweatshops abroad. Environmentalists have boycotted Nestlé for its deforestation practices. By using their power in the marketplace, consumers can act collectively to express their political points of view. There is nothing illegal about such collective action; indeed, it is constitutionally protected.
In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the Supreme Court in 1982 upheld the right of NAACP activists to hold a mass economic boycott of segregated businesses in Mississippi. The court stated that the boycotters’ exercise of their rights to “speech, assembly, and petition . . . to change a social order that had consistently treated them as second-class citizens” rested “on the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values.”
This is not to say that all boycotters are automatically free speech heroes; indeed, BDS advocates have themselves at times shut down Israeli academics or speakers to the detriment of academic freedom. Thus, it’s understandable that free speech advocates might not immediately identify BDS supporters as victims of censorship. But when government takes sides on a particular boycott and criminalizes those who engage in a boycott, it crosses a constitutional line.
Cardin and other supporters argue that the Israel Anti-Boycott Act targets only commercial activity. In fact, the bill threatens severe penalties against any business or individual who does not purchase goods from Israeli companies operating in the occupied Palestinian territories and who makes it clear — say by posting on Twitter or Facebook — that their reason for doing so is to support a U.N.- or E.U.-called boycott. That kind of penalty does not target commercial trade; it targets free speech and political beliefs. Indeed, the bill would prohibit even the act of giving information to a U.N. body about boycott activity directed at Israel.
The bill’s chilling effect would be dramatic — and that is no doubt its very purpose. But individuals, not the government, should have the right to decide whether to support boycotts against practices they oppose. Neither individuals nor businesses should have to fear million-dollar penalties, years in prison and felony convictions for expressing their opinions through collective action. As an organization, we take no sides on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But regardless of the politics, we have and always will take a strong stand when government threatens our freedoms of speech and association. The First Amendment demands no less.
Read more here:
Doron Hindin: The United Nations’ campaign against business in Israel makes no sense
Joshua S. Block: Maryland should reject investment discrimination
Gov. Andrew Cuomo: If you boycott Israel, New York state will boycott you
Steven Levitsky and Glen Wyl: We are lifelong Zionists. Here’s why we’ve chosen to boycott Israel.
You Won’t Believe Why They Could
Withhold Relief Funds from Harvey Victims
Published on Oct 19, 2017
Have we stepped off into the Twilight Zone or what? This is nuts. Unbelievable. Support us on Patreon, read our goals here: https://www.patreon.com/truthstreammedia Truthstream Can Be Found Here: Website: http://TruthstreamMedia.com Minds: @InformedDissent (Join here! https://tinyurl.com/y8voad27 … we’re going to dump Facebook soon.) FB: http://Facebook.com/TruthstreamMedia Twitter: @TruthstreamNews DONATE: http://bit.ly/2aTBeeF Amazon Affiliate Link (help support TSM with every Amazon purchase, no cost to you!): http://amzn.to/2aTARRx Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/bbxcWX
Need Hurricane Aid? In One Texas City, If
You Boycott Israel, You May Be Out Of
Luck
People discard possessions last month that were damaged by flooding brought on by Hurricane Harvey in Dickinson, Texas.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters damaged many homes in the Texas city of Dickinson, and residents are applying for assistance and working to repair their properties.
But Dickinson’s application for repair grants is raising eyebrows. Alongside standard items such as project descriptions and grant amounts, the city application reads:
“By executing this Agreement below, the Applicant verifies that the Applicant: (1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this agreement.”
In doing so, the application appears to make eligibility for hurricane relief funds contingent on political beliefs regarding Israel, which the American Civil Liberties Union describes as unconstitutional.
“The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to boycott, and the government cannot condition hurricane relief or any other public benefit on a commitment to refrain from protected political expression,” ACLU of Texas Legal Director Andre Segura said in a statement.
A city official told NPR that Dickinson is simply following a recently passed state law: “The city has nothing to do with it.”
They are referring to House Bill 89, which came into force on September 1. But Rep. Phil King, who authored the legislation, told NPR he was baffled about why it was being applied here.
“We’re eating this morning, having my oatmeal, and I see the article in the paper. And it’s like, ‘Oh no, what could they possibly be thinking?’” King said.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bill into law in May, saying that it was aimed at targeting companies that are involved in boycotting, divesting or sanctioning Israel, also known as BDS.
“As Israel’s number one trading partner in the United States, Texas is proud to reaffirm its support for the people of Israel and we will continue to build on our historic partnership,” Abbott stated. “Anti-Israel policies are anti-Texas policies, and we will not tolerate such actions against an important ally.”
The law is limited in scope to companies, however – and the city has not explained why it would apply to all applicants for grants, which are open to people rebuilding both homes and businesses.
And, King adds, the law is aimed at preventing taxpayer money from going to companies boycotting Israel. But Dickinson’s hurricane relief grant fund is made up of donations. “Those are not taxpayer dollars so they have nothing to do with the anti-BDS legislation,” he says.
“It’s not uncommon when you’ve got brand-new legislation, particularly substantive legislation, for it to be misinterpreted or for there to be some confusion,” King says. “And I think that’s all that’s going on here. I think it’s just a simple misunderstanding by the city.”
Dickinson’s grant application was put up on the city website on Monday and remains posted as of Friday afternoon.
Supporters of the BDS movement say it aims to put economic pressure on Israel in support of Palestinian independence, NPR’s Daniel Estrin has reported, while Israel says “the boycott movement seeks to destroy Israel as a Jewish state altogether.”
The ACLU has pointed out examples of other cities in Texas requiring potential contractors to state in writing that they are not involved in boycotting Israel.
For example, government contract applications from the cities of Galveston, Austin and San Antonio require a signed statement that the potential contractor is not boycotting.
The ACLU has also filed a federal lawsuit over a similar Kansas law, “on behalf of a high school math teacher who is being required by the state to certify that she won’t boycott Israel if she wants to take part in a teacher training program.”
Welcome to the Beast System that will make
you bow to “their” NWO !! It’s happening, real
time, right now in front of you, being
engineered by a well orginized, tightly knit
tribal group that makes up only about 2% of
our population.
Your failure to push back against this
group’s actions constitutes “implied
consent” and agreement with whatever
they decide to foist upon our nation. This is an
outrage that we are allowing another nation to
dictate policy and pass laws in our country
that violate our Constitutional Rights, solely
for their benefit.
This 2% of our population dictating their will
upon the 98% …….. if you can’t see the
problem here there is no hope for our nation.
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Anyone can contribute.
Anyone can become informed about their world.
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And the Jew’s complain and swear they don’t run America while they run America…..