Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Congresswoman Nixes Pro-BDS Briefing on Capitol Hill

WASHINGTON — A congresswoman whose office was set to sponsor the first conference in a congressional building backing the boycott Israel movement withdrew her support, cancelling the event.

The office of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, on Tuesday told The Weekly Standard, a conservative news website, that the event, organized by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, would not take place.

The event, titled “What is BDS? A Capitol Hill Briefing,” was set to take place Friday. BDS is an acronym for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Ads for the briefing, which featured activists in the BDS movement, said it would be the “first of its kind” on Capitol Hill. It was to take place in the Rayburn Building.

Rooms in Capitol Hill office buildings must be booked through a member of Congress. Mike McQuerry, Jackson Lee’s spokesman, told The Weekly Standard that a staffer who was no longer working in the office had approved the booking in March, but that Jackson Lee was unaware of the booking.

As soon as her office was made aware of the booking, the office removed its name, effectively cancelling the event, he said.

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.