U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel
This is horrifying.
I’m no fan of BDS, but this proposed law is just plain monstrous.
I didn’t like the heavily anti-Israeli slant of the article and the familiar tropes of the malign influence of Jewish lobbyists on American policy.
But the law is indeed horrible and shouldn’t be passed.
Though, to my reading, it’s less of a sinister plan to round up the campus demonstrators from the likes of SJP, and more of a screw-up by people thinking more in symbolic terms than in terms of the actual text. Basically a result of the fact that Congress loves to operate by performing cut-and-paste operations line-by-line on old laws. In this case, the Export-Import Act of 1945, and the Export Administration Act of 1979.
The new bill itself doesn’t specify penalties, which means it defaults to the general penalties given in the old statute, which are absurd at $1 million and/or 20 years in prison, or a $250,000 civil fine.
Apparently, it was already on the books for decades that it was illegal to support boycotts sponsored by foreign countries against the US or countries friendly to the US. This was basically a response to the Arab League boycott in the 70s.
What this bill does is extend that to boycotts sponsored by international organizations, i.e. the UN Human Rights Council’s boycott of Israel.
But although the point of it seems to have been merely symbolic posturing and not a plot to round up everybody who disagrees with AIPAC, it certainly illustrates the danger of over-criminalization, or the “three felonies a day” phenomenon (even though that number is pretty much made up).
Even if Congress says “Oops, we didn’t mean to make it illegal to privately support BDS, and obviously we’re not going to arrest some college kid for it,” the fact that they could do so at any time undermines the rule of law.
When everyone’s guilty of something, anyone is a potential target.
In any case, not only should this law not be passed as written, the existing law should be amended to remove First Amendment violating bans on support for boycotts.
Can someone explain the “no joining foreign boycotts” aspect of this?
If I want to start my own all-American boycott of Israel, and it happens to be for the same reason Iran is doing their boycott, can I do that?
Short answer: yes, you can do that, under the terms of this particular law.
The law-already-on-the-books – which is, let’s be clear, absurdly terrible with regard to the First Amendment, and would be struck down by any remotely decent court – has one specific purpose. It is meant to prevent American businesses from contracting with foreign governments under terms that incorporate a boycott of a US ally (mostly meaning Israel). If the Saudi government hands you a form saying “I agree to participate in the Saudi boycott of Israel,” you’re not allowed to sign that form, and so you’re not allowed to pursue any money-making opportunities that are gated behind that form. As far as I know, this is the only context to which the law has ever been applied.
(If you go to contract with the Saudi government, and say “for my own reasons of political principle I am boycotting Israel under terms that are identical to the those of the Saudi government’s boycott,” and the Saudis accept it – well, I don’t know what would happen, and neither do any of the various experienced lawyers with whom I discussed this. I hope that the courts would uphold your First Amendment rights here. But who knows.)
This new law is seeking to extend this principle to the UN and comparable institutions.
It is a terrible, terrible precedent. But on its own it won’t prevent you from doing anything at all domestically.