Germany passes motion against the BDS movement because anti-Semitism

RT

Germany's parliament has passed a motion defining the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic. It calls on Berlin to cut funding to groups supporting BDS.

The Bundestag voted to adopt the non-binding motion backed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party on Friday, making it the first European parliament to do so.
The FDP motion supported by the CDU, CSU, SPD and Greens says the "arguments and methods of the BDS movement are anti-Semitic," as it calls for the boycott of Israeli artists and because the BDS 'don't buy' labels put on Israeli goods "recall the most terrible phase of German history," referring to the Nazi slogan 'Don't buy from Jews'.
The motion urges the German government not to fund or support groups "that question Israel's right to exist," although that isn't what the BDS movement sets out to do.

BDS is an international effort to use non-violence to pressure the state of Israel to end its occupation of Palestinian territories and give full equality to its Arab-Palestinian citizens. It also calls for the right of return for Palestinian refugees by encouraging a cultural, economic and political boycott. The movement is inspired by the international boycott of apartheid South Africa and was started by Palestinian groups in 2005.

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'Landmark' Victory for First Amendment as Court Strikes Down Texas Anti-BDS Law

Common Dreams

In a decision hailed as a “landmark” victory for the First Amendment, a federal judge on Thursday struck down a Texas law requiring government contractors to sign a pledge vowing not to participate in the pro-Palestinian boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.

“This is a complete victory of the First Amendment against Texas’s attempts to suppress speech in support of Palestine,” said Gadeir Abbas, senior litigation attorney with Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), one of the organizations that sued Texas over the anti-BDS law.  


CAIR filed its suit on behalf of Bahia Amawi, a Texas speech pathologist who lost her job at an elementary school after refusing to sign a pro-Israel pledge required by the state’s law.

“It’s a huge win not just for me, but for everybody here in Texas,” Amawi said in an interview with the Washington Post. “I was in tears.”

In his 56-page opinion (pdf), Judge Robert Pitman of the Western District of Texas ruled the state’s law violated the First Amendment by threatening to “suppress unpopular ideas” and “manipulate the public debate through coercion.”

 

As The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald wrote last December after Amawi lost her job, the language of the pledge she was “told she must sign reads like Orwellian—or McCarthyite—self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading.”

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Thought Police: US, Israel Increasingly Banning & Deporting Ideological Enemies

Alexander Rubenstein
Mint Press News

Israel and the US are simultaneously stepping up repression in the form of travel restrictions against critics of Israel’s human rights violations

 

TEL AVIV/WASHINGTON — Israel and the U.S. are simultaneously stepping up repression in the form of travel restrictions against critics of the apartheid state.

A Palestinian activist has been barred from entering the U.S. while an advocate with a leading human rights NGO – Human Rights Watch (HRW) – faced a ruling on Tuesday in Israeli courts which upheld the government’s deportation order against him.

Last week, the U.S. banned a founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, one Omar Barghouti, from entering its soil. Though the government’s official explanation was “immigration reasons,” there is plentiful evidence to suspect the ban was meant as a reprisal for his non-violent advocacy.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or popularly, BDS, is a campaign to economically pressure apartheid Israel into compliance with international law through boycotts of the government and Israeli companies.

Ariel Gold, national co-director of the anti-war women’s group Codepink, was deported last year from Israel after landing at Ben Gurion Airport. She told MintPress News:

I was denied entry and deported from Israel–even despite my being Jewish–solely for my political positions and peaceful BDS work for Palestinian rights. Last week the Trump administration partnered with Israel in the destruction of free speech when they denied BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti entry to the U.S”
Now Israel is deporting Omar Shakir, a human rights researcher from one of the world most credible human rights organizations–Human Rights Watch–for his and HRW’s peaceful advocacy to call on Israel should abide by international law and end its human rights abuses. This is shameful!”

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UK under pressure from US to adopt aggressive anti-BDS posture in post-Brexit negotiations

Middle East Monitor

 

The UK is under pressure to adopt a more aggressive posture towards the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in exchange for better trade deals with the US in post-Brexit negotiations between the two countries.

Details of the post-Brexit trade negotiations-which suggest Britain is unlikely to get softer treatment than other US allies-were released last week in an 18-page document by the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR), led by Robert Lighthizer. Listed amongst the “negotiating objectives” of the Trump administration is a demand for the UK to take a more hostile stance towards BDS.

With respect to commercial partnership between the two countries, USTR said it wanted to “discourage actions that directly or indirectly prejudice or otherwise discourage commercial activity solely between the United States and Israel.” BDS was identified as a major threat by the US trade representative who called to “discourage politically motivated actions to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel.”

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Ireland’s Senate approves bill to boycott Israel goods

Middle East Monitor

 

The Irish Senate has voted to approve a bill that would see the country boycott goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, paving the way for the country to become the first EU nation to enforce a boycott.

The bill passed yesterday with 25 lawmakers voting in its favour, with 20 against it and 14 others abstaining. The legislation would bar “the import and sales of goods, services and natural resources originating in illegal settlements in occupied territories”, but still needs to pass in both houses of parliament before becoming law.

At Israel’s urging, the Irish government requested in January that the vote be postponed, and sought to soften the language of the bill, but was unable to come to a compromise. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned Irish Ambassador Alison Kelly in response, arguing that a bill to boycott settlement produce could easily expand into support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Yesterday’s bill passed primarily due to votes from opposition and independent legislators. It had originally been proposed by independent Senator Frances Black who spoke before the vote and brought Palestinian farmers to be present in the Seanad for the occasion. 

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Latin America Embraces BDS as Chilean City Becomes First to Join Boycott of Israel

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

ALDIVIA, CHILE – Last Tuesday, in the wake of recent victories for the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement elsewhere in Latin America, Valdivia, a relatively small city in southern Chile, became the first city in all of Latin America to officially join the boycott against Israel for its apartheid policies, military occupation of the West Bank and illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip. The vote to adopt the boycott at the city level was taken unanimously by the local government after the initiative was personally introduced by the city’s mayor, Omar Sabat, who is of Palestinian descent.
 
The measure adopted by the city specifically declares the municipality as an “Apartheid Free Zone” and prohibits the city from working with any business that benefits or is linked to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and/or Israel’s apartheid policy that targets Palestinians. According to the text of the declaration, the ban on working with such businesses will remain in effect until Israel ends its occupation of Palestine and dismantles the border wall; until Palestinians are granted fundamental human rights by the Israeli state and are treated as equals under Israeli law; and until the right of return of Palestinian refugees is granted, as stipulated by UN Resolution 194.

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South Carolina’s New Hate Speech Law Outlaws Criticism of the Israeli Occupation

Whitney Webb
Mint Press News

The state of South Carolina will become the first state in the nation to legislate a definition of anti-Semitism that considers certain criticisms of the Israeli government to be hate speech. The language, which was inserted into the state’s recently passed $8 billion budget, offers a much more vague definition of anti-Semitism that some suggest specifically targets the presence of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions, or BDS, movement on state college campuses. The law requires that all state institutions, including state universities, apply the revised definition when deciding whether an act violates anti-discrimination policies.
 
Once it is reconciled with an appropriations bill previously passed by the state House, the measure will become law and take effect this July. However, the law will last only until the next budget is passed, meaning that the new legal definition of anti-Semitism must be renewed on a yearly basis unless new legislation making the language permanent is passed in the future.

The new definition uses the State Department’s current definition of anti-Semitism as its template — defining speech that “demonizes” or applies “double standards” to Israel “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation” as anti-Semitic

However, the State Department’s definition was never intended to be used as an enforcement tool, and concern has subsequently been raised that South Carolina colleges may now move to criminalize conventional and factual criticism of Israel under the new, vague definition of anti-Semitism.

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