The influential pro-Israel group AIPAC is asking supporters to back recently-drafted legislation that seeks to punish a peaceful movement in solidarity with Palestinians.
The organization, which is in Washington this week for an annual policy conference, is dispatching members to lobby lawmakers to pass the bill. One Washington-based group decrying Israel’s occupation of Palestine has said the proposal is unconstitutional.
“This dangerous bill seeks to impose fines on corporations that boycott business dealings with illegal Israeli settlements,” said Josh Ruebner, the policy director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights.
The organization also said Tuesday that the legislation would levy fines on companies that “divest assets from corporations profiting from settlements.” Text of the bill has not yet been posted on the Library of Congress website.
“It also seeks to deny Export-Import Bank loans to corporations that similarly boycott or divest from such business dealings,” Ruebner added. He said the bill violates Americans’ “First Amendment right to promote boycott, divestment and sanctions.”
The initiative, known as the BDS movement, was launched in 2005 by a wide swath of Palestinian civil society. It calls on people and institutions to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel, until the occupation of Palestine ends.
That appeal includes calls for Israel to grant equal rights to its Arab and Palestinian citizens, and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
AIPAC stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Its annual policy conference in Washington typically attracts many lawmakers, with the group claiming that “more than two-thirds of Congress” are present for the affair.
Since 2015, Congress has passed two trade bills that include anti-BDS language. One forces the US government to report on BDS activities, the other called on the US Trade Representative to advance anti-BDS initiatives in negotiations with European counterparts.
They received some opposition from the Obama Administration, due to their treatment of Israeli settlements. Language in both bills treated equally “Israeli-controlled territories” and Israel, in contradiction with longstanding US policy.
Original sponsors of one of those bills are backing the senate version of the legislation seeking to levy fines on BDS supporters.
Sens. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) introduced their proposal last Thursday. It currently has five cosponsors, including three Democrats: Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
The House version of the legislation was also introduced last Thursday, by Reps. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) and Juan Vargas (D-Calif.). It currently has 14 cosponsors, including eight Democrats.
Though US support for Israel, in recent years, has been strongly bipartisan, that has become drastically less true since 2014. After the Israeli military conducted a bombing campaign in Gaza that killed more than 1,500 Palestinian civilians, support for Israel fell dramatically among left-leaning Democrats.
Liberal and moderate Democrats combined are now roughly split in their sympathies for Israelis and Palestinians, according to a January poll. Sympathies for Israel had been ten points higher among all Democrats, just months before the survey.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy