Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Texas Lawmaker Backpedals From Anti-BDS Hurricane Aid Snafu

(JTA) — A Texas state representative blamed “confusion” for a Houston suburb’s decisio to demand its residents certify to receive hurricane relief.

Republican State Rep. Phil King authored state legislation against BDS, or boycotts of Israel, earlier this year. The legislation went into effect last month.

“This bill in no way applies to the type of situation that happened in Dickinson,” King, who has been a state legislator since 1999, told the Israeli daily Haaretz in an interview on Saturday night.

The website for the town of Dickinson is accepting applications for individuals and businesses who need assistance following Hurricane Harvey, which devastated the area in August. According to the application, those who sign must verify that the applicant “(1) does not boycott Israel; and (2) will not boycott Israel during the term of this Agreement.”

King told Haaretz that the situation in Dickinson does not apply to the law, because “they had private contributions from citizens to a relief fund in the city, and the city has set up a grant program to give those funds to help in disaster clean-up and restoration. Those are not taxpayer dollars, so the law by no means applies to these relief efforts.”

King told the newspaper that the state “needs to take steps to clarify things, so that something like this doesn’t happen again.”

 

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.