Newsweek reports: “Prominent figures from within President Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ or ‘MAGA’ movement came out against the bipartisan IGO Anti-Boycott Act, House Resolution 867 — saying it would criminalize boycotts and free speech against Israel.
“After the backlash, a pending vote slated for Monday was canceled. ‘It’s beyond outrageous and offensive that House leadership bowed to extreme-right forces and pulled this commonsense, bipartisan bill that makes antisemitic and hate-driven boycotts illegal,’ a spokesperson for Representative Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat, who introduced the legislation told Newsweek Monday morning.”
ABBA SOLOMON, [email protected], www.threads.net/@abba.a.solomon
Solomon is author of two books on Zionism, The Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel and The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.”
He said today: “As both Democratic and Republican representatives have stated,” the legislation is “plainly unconstitutional. It also illustrates the bizarrely protected status that Zionist lobby organizations — both Jewish and Evangelical — have created for the State of Israel in the U.S. government.”
Solomon’s most recent piece is “Abandoning the Role of Conqueror.”
Matthew Petti writes of the proposed legislation: “These draconian penalties are *already* on the books, and this bill would have just expanded them — along the lines of an Israeli govt strategy memo written in 2019.” See his new piece in Reason magazine: “Should Sharing Information About Israeli Businesses Get You 20 Years in Prison?”