As of April 1, 2017, the up-to-date version of this table is found here
In 2014, opponents of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel began promoting legislation in various U.S. states denouncing the BDS movement. In 2015, these efforts shifted/expanded to mirror efforts in the U.S. Congress to hijack concerns about BDS against Israel in order to pass legislation mandating that Israeli settlements be treated, in effect, as part of sovereign Israel.
1. Bills & Resolutions
2. AIPAC Touts
Accomplishments in 114th Congress
3. On the Record
And of note from APN this week:
- Press Release: APN Opposes David Friedman's Nomination as US
Ambassador to Israel
- APN explainer: Israel’s settlement “Legalization Bill”: What it
is and what it means
- APN Letter to the Conference of Presidents Protesting
Hanukkah Party Co-Sponsored by Azerbaijan at Trump Hotel
Americans for Peace Now / (December 16, 2016)
APN opposes the conflation of settlements and Israel present in various states' legislation calling for the
boycott, divest, and sanctions of companies who engage in BDS against Israel. Read More >
Summary of the “Legalization Bill," which retroactively legalizes Israeli civilian construction in the West Bank
built on privately-owned Palestinian land. Read More >
1. Bills & Resolutions & Letters
2. New
Legislation Sailing Through Congress Equates Criticism of Israel with Anti-Semitism
3. Hearings
4. On the Record
[With apologies for the erratic Round-Up publication schedule.]
On May 29, 2015, Abraham Foxman, then the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, authored an op-ed published by the JTA, entitled, "Comprehensive approach to fighting BDS is needed." With respect to the question of legislation seeking to quash BDS and other activism critical of Israel - both at the state and federal levels - Foxman notes (among other things):
Legislation that bars BDS activity by private groups, whether corporations or universities, strikes at the heart of First Amendment-protected free speech, will be challenged in the courts and is likely to be struck down. A decision by a private body to boycott Israel, as despicable as it may be, is protected by our Constitution. Perhaps in Europe, where hate speech laws exist and are acceptable within their own legal frameworks, such bills could be sustained. But not here in America.
Full text of that op-ed is included below, or can be viewed on the JTA website.
Peace Now (November 2016)
Report detailing key findings and significant implications of Israel's Regulation Law. Read More >
(published 10/21/16 at Haaretz - here)
Last Friday, the UN Security Council held a meeting organized under the title “Illegal Israeli Settlements: A
Threat to Peace and the Two-State Solution.” Americans for Peace Now proudly took part in that event, offering
testimony grounded in love for Israel and expressing an unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and its survival
as a democracy and a state rooted in the Jewish values expressed in its Declaration of Independence. Of course,
that testimony also dealt with the settlements, explaining why they are detrimental to the cause of
Israeli-Palestinian peace and therefore to Israel’s national security interests.
Many people, both inside and outside Israel, were happy to see a pro-Israel, pro-two-state organization delivering
a nuanced, fact-based presentation at this event. Others were less enthused, most notably Israel’s ambassador to
the United Nations, Danny Danon, who accused APN of participating in “diplomatic terror” against Israel. Likewise,
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to social media to call APN’s arguments “deluded.” And now, in this
newspaper, the former head of the Union of Reform Judaism, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, criticized APN’s testimony as a
“mistake” – not for the facts it conveyed or its tone, but for the timing and location of its delivery.
In the beginning, “pro-Israel” meant something clear and uncomplicated: supporting Israel’s miraculous establishment as the homeland of the Jewish people, on the heels of the horrors of the Holocaust, and defending Israel’s very right to exist and thrive, in the face of violent rejection of that young country by its neighbors.
After the 1967 War, the definition of “pro-Israel” began evolving. It gradually came to mean – for much of the American Jewish establishment – defending Israel from all criticism and pressure, even if this meant in effect supporting policies designed to cement Israeli control over the lands Israel conquered in 1967, and even if it meant turning a blind eye, especially in recent years, to an escalation in illiberal policies targeting Israeli civil society itself. And it came to mean demanding that American political leaders and elected officials adopt this same approach to “pro-Israel,” or risk finding themselves labeled “anti-Israel” or “anti-Semitic.”
A direct line exists between this “pro-Israel” illiberal orthodoxy and the positioning of too many in the Jewish establishment today.