The latest anti-BDS bill seeks to prohibit Americans from participating in UN- and EU-issued calls to boycott Israel, and fails to hold Israel accountable for human rights violations.
While America struggles with crises in health care, hunger, and homelessness, Congress has found the time to entertain over four dozen bills and resolutions that cater to a wealthy, heavily-armed state: Israel.
In Arkansas, a newspaper publisher is in financial straits after refusing to sign an anti-BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) pledge for Israel. He believes that political dissent is protected speech, and that the Arkansas law violates his constitutional rights and his journalistic ethics.
A children’s speech pathologist refuses to sign a will-not-boycott-Israel oath: she loses her job, an unknown number of children lose her advocacy. She notes how outlandish it is that she is not required to uphold the interests of the United States, or Texas, or children, but a foreign country.
As The Intercept has repeatedly documented, the most frequent victims of official campus censorship are not conservative polemicists but pro-Palestinian activists, and the greatest and most severe threat posed to free speech throughout the west is aimed at Israel critics.