Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Montana Bill Would Shun Businesses That Boycott Israel

(JTA) — The Montana House advanced a bill that would prohibit the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel.

The bill passed a second reading the House on Saturday by a vote of 59-41. It must still pass a third reading before it leaves the House.

The bill would prevent public agencies, including city and county governments from doing businesses with companies that don’t agree to certify in writing that they are not engaged in a boycott of Israel. It also would order the Montana Board of Investments to stop working with that support a boycott of Israel.

If the bill also passes the Senate, Montana would become to 15th state to pass such a bill. Other states that have passed anti-boycott bills include Ohio, Michigan and California,

The bill was introduced by Republican House Speaker Austin Knudsen. He told the Associated Press that his interest in a bill preventing a boycott of Israel came before the recent attacks on the Jewish community of Whitefish, Montana.

The neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer published a blog post in December calling for followers to “take action” against Jews in Whitefish by writing and calling them with anti-Semitic messages. The post claimed that Jewish residents were “threatening” the local business run by the mother of Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist think tank.

Andrew Anglin, who runs Daily Stormer website, announced the following month that he would hold a neo-Nazi armed march designed to harass the Montana Jewish community of Whitefish. The march was later postponed over a lack of a permit to hold the march. He said he would hold the march at a later date and that it “will be bigger and have more guns and special guests than we originally planned.”

There are about 100 known Jewish households in Whitefish and nearby Kalispell, part of the Flathead Valley.

Whitefish has a population of about 6,000 full-time residents and is home to a ski resort on Big Mountain called Whitefish Mountain Resort.

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.