The U.S. Congress is considering a bill to make it a felony to boycott Israel with maximum civil fines of $250,000 or twice the amount of money at issue and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison. The bill specifically prohibits joining boycotts led by foreign powers and does not restrict American citizens who choose to boycott Israel on their own. The ACLU says the bill would punish citizens for their political beliefs and is therefore unconstitutional. (Al.com, July 22, 2017, by The Tylt)
The bill enjoys bipartisan support with 42 senators and 234 representatives listed as co-sponsors. Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grim, The Intercept, July 19, 2017, wasted no word in condemning the bill and criticizing its backers, “…it is hard to put into words the irony of watching many of the most celebrated and beloved congressional leaders of the anti-authoritarian Resistance — Gillibrand, Schiff, Swalwell, and Lieu — sponsor one of the most oppressive and authoritarian bills to appear in Congress in many years. How can one credibly inveigh against ‘authoritarianism’ while sponsoring a bill that dictates to American citizens what political views they are and are not allowed to espouse under threat of criminal prosecution?”
The bill is intended to combat a boycott to counter Israel’s occupation of what many contend are Palestinian territories. The boycott movement is popular on college campuses and supported in part by anti-Semitic individuals. But Noah Daponte-Smith, National Review, July 2017, finds no legitimate political justification for the bill. “This proposed legislation is indeed unconstitutional and unconscionable, an abridgment of the right to free speech, which is quasi-sacred in American life and enshrined in the founding document of our government. The senators who currently support it should be, quite frankly, ashamed of themselves; they have lost sight of one of the founding principles of American government, allowing it to be overshadowed by the spectral world of the Israeli–Palestinian dispute.”