Anti-BDS Bills in Congress Would Impose Fines on Violators
Image by Getty Images
WASHINGTON — Bipartisan bills targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel would impose fines on participating businesses but not criminal penalties, a co-sponsor of a Senate version said.
Measures introduced in recent weeks in the U.S. Senate by Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Ben. Cardin, D-Md., and in the U.S. House of Representatives by Reps. Pete Roskam, R-Ill., and Juan Vargas, D-Calif., would extend penalties in 1970s-era bills that targeted businesses that cooperated with the Arab League boycott of Israel. Those laws included fines and criminal penalties.
Cardin’s office, responding Wednesday to a request from JTA to clarify whether the criminal penalties would apply to those observing BDS boycotts, said that only certain fines in existing law would be applied to BDS-observant businesses, not the criminal penalties.
The senator’s spokesman noted that the main spur for the legislation was to extend anti-boycott laws to international governmental organizations in the wake of a move earlier this year by the U.N. Human Rights Council to create a list of businesses doing business with Israeli settlements.
The bill would expand the anti-boycott legislation to protect not just Israel but its settlements. It also expands the definition of boycotts to include those that are “politically motivated.”
Even confined to penalties, the legislation would go well beyond current state and federal anti-BDS statutes, which mostly require government agencies – principally pension plans for government workers – to refuse to do business with BDS-compliant companies. Fining businesses simply for boycotting Israel could face First Amendment objections.
Cardin, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said Congress would do what it could to keep the BDS movement from “marginalizing Israel.”
Criticizing Israel was legitimate, Cardin said.
“What you can’t do is participate in a boycott and all these illegal activities, and we have defined them as illegal activities,” he said.
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.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
