Similar laws exclude those who discriminate against blacks for political (or any other) reasons from government contracts. This person is entitled to discriminate as he chooses, but not to get government contracts.
There is a world of difference between actively discriminating against American citizens with a certain skin tone, and being told that you cannot "protest [!] the nation of Israel or its products".
Boycotting Israeli companies (read Jewish as I'm sure he has no problem sending money to Israeli companies ran by Palestinians ie. Muslims) is automatically associating every Israeli Jew with government policies.
Boycotting Israel is a dog-whistle for boycotting Israeli Jews.
last i knew palentinians had no real political power in israeli and their treatment by the israeli government is precisely why you would boycott israeli goods and services.
Oof. I’m very sympathetic to the complexities around the BDS movement, but this is a pretty challenging take to get behind.
Discrimination against blacks is illegal in the context of denying individuals things like employment, access to housing and medical care, shopping, etc. You have to show that the individual or business has specifically taken action in some way to deny one or more individuals their rights.
In fact, the same rules apply to discrimination based on religion, or national origin or background. So anyone who has discriminated against someone who is Jewish or from Israel is subject to similar liability.
But nowhere in any of these laws does it say that a business has to promise to never protest or disagree with the country that one of those groups come from. I have to hire people from France if they’re qualified, but I’m also allowed to protest the French government’s policies on basically anything.
If the law from this article was applied to, say, Saudi Arabia or Mexico, would we be comfortable supporting it?
> I have to hire people from France if they’re qualified,
Keep this in mind.
> but I’m also allowed to protest the French government’s policies on basically anything.
So are you allowed to protest the French government by boycotting French companies? Ie. not doing business with French people? The first half of your sentence is directly at odds with the second. How do you actually boycott France if not by applying the boycott to it's people?
The Israeli boycott isn't simply saying you don't agree with their government, it's actively boycotting companies run by Israeli Jews and not hiring Israeli Jews.
> The Israeli boycott isn't simply saying you don't agree with their government, it's actively boycotting companies run by Israeli Jews and not hiring Israeli Jews.
That's simply not true. The Texas law does not say anything about boycotts against Jews. And BDS is modeled after the successful Apartheid boycotts, which were boycotts of South Africa, not boycotts of companies run by White South Africans.
Read the BDS website. In the FAQ section they say "nearly all" Israeli companies are complicit with crimes against Palestinians. They essentially cast such a wide net that the actual result is discrimination against all Israeli Jewish-run companies.
“ And BDS is modeled after the successful Apartheid boycotts” except that there is no Apartheid is the state of Israel. There is an ongoing conflict and occupation in the Palestinian territories but there is no Apartheid in Israel itself where about a quarter of population is Arab. BDS intentionally squashes two problems into one to draw analogies
Is this article supposed to prove my point or yours? I read it and saw no examples of supposed apartheid in the state of Israel. The article intentionally mashes Israel and occupied territories together.
Does an Israeli Arab, or worse, a Palestinian Arab, have the same rights as an Israeli Jew? Does the Israeli constitution say it's a country for Jews? Are the people in Gaza living in what amounts to an open air prison? Are Palestinian getting expelled from their land for resettlement by Jews?
No, yes, yes and yes. It's hard to argue that's seriously different than apartheid ( except that black South Africans weren't generally confined to an open air prison, and expelled from their land for resettlement by whites).
1 - Can you give a specific example of a right that Arab Israeli citizens are missing but in your opinion are entitled to?
2 - Israel is a Jewish state just like Italy is a Christian state, and Iraq is a Muslim state. So what, given all citizens have equal rights?
wrt apartheid claims, Israel is at war with both Gaza and West Bank. West Bank is partially occupied because there is no will on either side to come up with a permanent peace agreement. Gaza is in perpetual armed conflict with Israel as per Hamas(ruling party of Gaza) founding chapter, there is no peace between the two, only temporarily cease fires. Is blockade a valuable war tactic?
I'm sorry, but Italy is not a Christian state. The majority of the population is Christian, but it's not like Israel or Iran where the religion is enshrined in the basic law of the country, and the government and state's legitimacy are based in that religion. Specifically, in countries like this, non-believers don't have the same rights as believers, either explicitly or implicitly (like marriage rights for mixed couples in Israel, or that Arabs get expelled for their lands to be resettled). If I'm not mistaken, the only country considered developed which has such a close and explicit relationship between the state and a religion is Israel. All the rest are developing Muslim countries.
> wrt apartheid claims, Israel is at war with both Gaza and West Bank.
Not really, for Israel to be at war with them they'd have to recognise their independence, which they don't :) And there can't be a permanent peace agreement while Israel claims things Palestinians can't give them ( like the entirety of Jerusalem). A blockade is a valuable war tactic, dubious morally ( civilians suffer indiscriminately), but as mentioned before Israel is not at war with Gaza, and an open air prison with atrocious conditions, more resembling a concentration camp than a counter under blockade as previously known.
Arab Israeli citizens are second class citizens in many regards, and Palestinians are even below that.
And I'm sorry, are you insisting that there's no difference between an explicitly religious country like Israel or Iran, and a country that happens to have a majority of the population from a single religion?
You are still deliberately conflating race and state.
We both know that calling a boycott of "nearly every American" company an "attack on the white race" would be a racist wolf whistle, and not a particularly subtle one.
So - let's say that a business owner in Texas thinks BDS is at best misguided, and at worst anti-semitic, and does not want to align themselves with them. However, they also believe that the Israeli government is creating a humanitarian crisis and wants to protest, however symbolically, so they decide they're not going to do business with any Israeli company who directly does business with the Israeli government. In this case, they're not part of BDS, they are boycotting based on their sincere beliefs, and this law constrains their speech regardless.
It's clear that BDS is the precipitating cause of this law, and so it's reasonable to look at BDS as the way that this was put into place, but the law itself doesn't have anything to do with BDS, and so it's not relevant to talk about BDS in the context of its effects on people today.
Yes, you are allowed to protest the French government by boycotting French companies. The courts in this country have recognized boycotts as a protected form of political speech. You still aren’t allowed to discriminate against individuals, but the courts have recognized that collective action to encourage political change is a form of protest and free speech.
I find BDS problematic, but saying you can’t boycott a group of businesses for political reasons is anathema to the spirit of free speech and protest. For the same reason,’it is perfectly fine to boycott Saudi Arabian businesses for their national political policies, even though in practice that means not doing business with Saudi Muslims.
Yeah but this is a foriegn government. That government should not dictate how we run our government at all. There should be no bias in domestic policy based on a foriegn actors dictates. What if this were Taiwan. The story would be very different .
> What if this were Taiwan. The story would be very different .
Please, people are way more sympathetic towards Taiwan than to Israel or Jews in general. The US government basically ensure's Taiwan's safety and independence, if it were up to half the people in the US, Israel would cease to exist (and there's no need to say what would happen to the Jews who currently live there, no matter what you believe about their right to be there).
"Most Americans believe helping to protect Israel should be an important goal of American policy toward the Middle East. On this, Democrats (59%), Republicans (64%), and Independents (79%) agree. However, the latest Economist/YouGov poll underscores the differences in opinions about Israel between Republicans and Democrats."
That's a pretty far cry from what you're asserting.
> A part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, found at 8 U.S.C. section 1324b, prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals based on their citizenship or immigration status, or their national origin, during the hiring, firing, recruiting, Form I-9, or E-Verify processes.
> Employers cannot discriminate against individuals when hiring, firing, or recruiting based on the individual’s place of birth, country of origin, ancestry, native language, accent, or because they are perceived as looking or sounding “foreign.”
> Employers cannot discriminate against individuals when hiring, firing, or recruiting because the individuals are or are not U.S. citizens, or because of their immigration status or type of employment authorization. U.S. citizens, noncitizen nationals, asylees, refugees, and recent permanent residents are protected from this type of discrimination.
There are exceptions if you're, say, working on ICBMs.
A lot of the people who get “cancelled” can reverse their behavior. You’re changing the definition of the new meaning of cancel culture by saying he can just stop doing what he’s doing. The point should be no one should be cancelled just for doing things that others might not like while not being violent or advocating for it.
"cancel culture" is about boycotting people for things they did in the past. Nobody can go back and change their past. Even if those people apologize and work to do better, they still get "cancelled" under cancel culture.
My problem isn't with holding people responsible for their actions, but with never letting up on them. If people can't change and relieve the sanctions against them, they have no incentive to change. They might as well just keep doing whatever they were doing.
Your comment shows no one agrees with what cancelling means. Usually it is all over exaggerated and is meant to fit into the person’s take for which side they are on. The number of people cancelled by “cancel culture” is so minute.
Can you list at least a handful of people who apologized but still got cancelled? I assume that means remaining cancelled too. It’s silly to call someone cancelled if they just have less work for a year but don’t go homeless or on welfare, or into debt, etc. in my opinion.
I mean by that three parties. His company let name it A. Some Israeli Company let name it B and Govt let name it C. So let's just say there are real humans behind A, B and C.
Now A is cancelling B (that is my understanding). In response C cancels A.
- Who is the he who is allowed to cancel? What is this person cancelling?
As I understand this person (A) is refusing service to Israeli companies. Actively participating at BDS. By that he is cancelling B.
- Who is the some one else who is not allowed to cancel?
I think now it should be clear. See above. It's C.
So my assumption was that he actively participated at BDS and refused services to other companies. If that is false I take my argumentation back. But if not I don't see his reason to complain.
Most people? Can you name a handful of people this has happened to? I can name dozens of people who are supposedly cancelled [forever], when it isn’t really the case.
This Quinton Flynn example from a quick search does appear to show a legit example of being screwed over by reactionary bullshit. Or what people call “cancel culture”. I don’t believe the way you’re portraying his situation and the evils of “cancelling” are anywhere close to as bad as they actually are.
I feel for Flynn. His situation absolutely sucks. If in 2-3 years he still can’t get any work, yeah he got cancelled as the modern definition means. If he’s able to get work still soon. Then it isn’t cancelling. It’s getting screwed over with crappy reactionary people and unlucky bad rep even if it isn’t warranted. Something that has existed before this mobile and universal internet world.
I can think of one example of what I consider real cancelling off the top of my head. There’s almost no sympathy or care for the person though.
Chapelle, JK Rowling, Ellen, the Vogue editor in chief, conservative actors like Chris Pratt or Kirstie Alley.
That’s 6. Looking up lists of cancelled people would turn up many more.
Even more so. The egregiousness of how reactionary, angry, and so sure of injustice occurring for many of these non-cancel cancelling makes it seem even more absurd.
Dave Chapelle being one of the most recent and hilarious examples. He’s still selling out every ticket. Netflix and other networks still want to pay him tens of millions.
Actual cancelled famous people seem to be the rare exceptions.
You seem to to be in favour of this "anti Israel boycot" rule so I think you might be able to answer my question:
As someone not from the US, I have always wondered why does the USA have a "fixation" with Israel. Like, defending Israel, defending their culture and their religion, and going overboard to protect them from people that think anything "bad" about them.
It's very peculiar the way US culture "defends" Israelis, compared to any other country or culture in the world (why not Britons? why not Portuguese? why not Mexicans? or Nigerians or what not? ).
Religion. Some religious sects of Christianity have some teachings about the importance of the "holy lands" and their control by the "chosen people", the jews, or some other nonsense.
Or said in another way, something that has no place in a modern developed country. Religion should be an entirely private matter and shouldn't have anything to do with policymaking.
They forget that they pioneered cancel culture during the Reagan years with calling into radio shows to get people kicked off the air and with bullshit like the Satanic Panic.
It makes sure that the doomsday evangelist propaganda of the local government won't be challenged. If you are a christian fundamentalist who wants to protect Jerusalem from the Antichrist or you think that islamic fundamentalists will prevent you from visiting the city, you wont allow the godless lefties any chance of endangering the secret land. At least, this is what I've found as justification.
And trying to destroy Israel (cos it's just like South Africa!1) is completely rational? Plenty of lunatics on both sides of the fence here. I don't like the woke religion more than the evangelical religion.
Oh, the question is how this law benefits the citizens of Texas. Not sure how the walk religion is involved unless you think that defending the citizens of Texas from the walk tendencies they might exhibit is for their own good...
for the record though, I don't care much about neither the US's culture wars nor for the attempts of Israel to travel two thousand years in the past. Both look like extremely dumb ideas but taking sides means only increasing the idiocy at hand.
Israel is a Jewish state - it was determined long ago the Jews should get a nation state along side a Palestinian nation state. Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans.
Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination. It will also in all likelihood create chaos, because I just don't see how you can take two ethnic communities of about the same size, that hate each other for a century, and make them live in one democratic country.
It would be about as realistic as turning Russia and Germany into one big democratic country. I actually think that Russia and Germany stand a much better chance.
> Israel is a Jewish state - it was determined long ago the Jews should get a nation state along side a Palestinian nation state.
It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist.
Fpr that matter, it was determined long ago that I should be king of the world.
It's just a question of whose determinations you happen to decide to accept...
> Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans.
Wait, Jews are "a people" and Boers aren't? How did that happen?
The Boers are "a people" by any reasonably principled definition, and nonetheless South African apartheid was unacceptable. Representing "a people" does not give you a license to treat other people like shit.
... and you say "a people" like that's a good thing. In fact, the concept of "peoples" (nations, whatever you want to call them) is dangerous and destructive, and the (unfortunately natural and built in) human tendency to form attachments to arbitrary abstract groups is one of the top contenders for what's going to destroy the whole goddamned species.
> Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination.
Only individual human beings have rights, not "peoples". Especially self determination.
The idea of group "self determination" is self-evidently moronic. To have self determination, you have to have a reasonably unified will and probably a reasonably unified mind. "Peoples" have neither.
> It will also in all likelihood create chaos,
Probably true. There is no good answer at this point. Things were already bad, and the foolish decision to create Israel really locked in the doom.
> It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist.
It would have spared millions of innocent deaths if Jews had a country during WW2. So maybe it's not always that stupid. And in fact, taking a whiff at the current state of things for Jews in the diaspora, I still think Jews should have a place of their own. I am not forecasting another holocaust, hell no, but it sure becomes harder to be openly Jewish in the West.
All of those innocent deaths were "justified" by the "need" to defend the "Aryan people".
The whole Nazi project was precisely to create an ethnostate. The enthnicity they had in mind didn't have much of a historical existence, true, and neither did the genetic group they imagined to make it up. But what defines an ethnicity? They had a founding myth, and they definitely managed to generate some real "Aryan" self-identification in people's minds. What does any ethnicity, including Jews, have besides founding myths and shared self-identification? It seems to me that the Nazis either had as valid a "people" to work with as any other, or at least were well on the way to creating one.
And yet somehow I really can't work up any sympathy at all for the Nazi's "purification" project, or for the "Aryan people".
Speaking of "states for peoples", a whole lot of those innocent deaths were aided by other states' unwillingness to admit Jews who were trying to get away from the Nazis. It seems they also wanted to keep their countries pure for their own "peoples". Maybe if they'd been less concerned about having states "for their peoples", they'd have been more willing to take in the actual individual human beings who were about to be slaughtered.
For that matter, even after the war, creating Israel let the winners feel a bit better about themselves while still not, you know, letting too many Jews in. I don't know if not having to "take" Jews was a major motivation, but I've heard that some of their leaders at least thought about that.
Oh, and by the way, while the Nazis definitely had a special hardon for Jews, they killed a shit-ton of non-Jews, too. If making sure people have their own country is the method we're using to save people when a genocidal psychotic system takes over the place they're living, then it seems like maybe we have to create some more countries.
Should the Roma get a country? They're definitely a "people", and they were targeted on the basis of it. Should there be a gay country? OK, not a "people", but still a targeted group that's at very serious risk in a bunch of countries today, if that's the criterion you're using.
Or, better yet, why not just take the view that Nazis, or equivalent, don't get to run any countries? And why not put a big fence around that possibility by saying that countries shouldn't be built on ethnicity at all? Would it be so awful to have a system of administrative districts without "national identity"?
Maybe there's no way to get there. I fully understand that that's now how people work.
But I don't like the idea that the way to protect against ethnic violence is to feed and further legitimize the "this for our people only" tendency, to do things that generate stronger ethnic divisions, or to make your personal safety contingent on you being able to find a state that happens to consider you one of "its people".
No, you're unable to take my point unless I spell it out for you.
Israel is in some important ways analogous to what the Nazis were trying to create. It is amazingly clueless for you to offer the Nazis as an example of why Israel should be around, when in fact they are an example of exactly why Israel should not be around.
The creation of Israel fed into and sustains exactly the phenomenon that you claim it's there to protect against. Having states for "peoples" is part of the problem. People identifying with either real or imaginary "heritages" or "cultures" or "races" or "tribes" or whatever is a bad thing. Building governments around it is a worse thing. That includes Israel. And you compound that when you suggest that the way to protect somebody from violence is to have a state that's in the business of protecting that individual's "people".
And, no, for the slower-minded readers, I am not claiming that anything Israel has actually done is the same as what the Nazis did.
> It is amazingly clueless for you to offer the Nazis as an example of why Israel should be around, when in fact they are an example of exactly why Israel should not be around.
You sound borderline anti semitic saying stuff like that. You have no idea how obtuse that is.
Israel is not an ethnostate. The racial definition of jews is actually mostly induced by their detractors and the history of prosecution. For some there is a religious component, but that isn't too relevant here.
Finally and most importantly Jews aren't responsible for your personal shortcomings.
"Therefore it would be necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs,...Zionist colonization, even the most restricted, must either be terminated or carried out in defiance of the will of the native population. This colonization can, therefore, continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through. This is, in toto, our policy towards the Arabs. To formulate it any other way would only be hypocrisy."
--Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, (We and the Arabs) (1923)
Point being?
There are problematic quotes from some Zionist leaders. There are actual Nazi quotes from Palestinian leaders. The Palestinian Mufti was a known Nazi supporter and had close relations with the Nazi leadership (including visits to concentration camps etc). Even the current PA leader Abbas, who is considered a moderate, wrote a PHD which basically denies or mitigates the holocaust.
While some aspects of Zionism were indeed troubling in today's standards, when push came to shove the Zionist leadership accepted partition to two states (in 1947).
How does quoting Jabotinsky from a century ago help us in solving this conflict? Unless your only point is that current Israel should be dismanteld.
'The Arabs will have to go but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war."
--Ben-Gurion's Diary,12July1937,and in New Judea, August-September 1937, p.220.
"I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it."
--David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938
''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back....
All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine."
--Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
The politics of the Zionists (and Arabs) were pretty fluid before the Holocaust.
Chaim Arlosoroff, a future Zionist leader, carried on a love affair with a German Catholic who eventually married the Nazi party’s chief propagandist.
The Zionist movement, both its left and right-wing factions, collaborated with the Nazis in attempts either to save German Jewry or insinuate themselves into the good graces of Hitler in the event of German victory in the War.
BDS wants to dismantle/discontinue or whatever word you see fit Israel in it's current form by advocating for "the right of return". That means bringing in around 5-6 million refugees (overwhelmingly 2nd and 3rd generation descendants of the original refugees, since it was 73 years ago not many of the original people are alive) to create a Palestinian majority country.
By any meaningful sense it won't be Israel anymore just as the U.S won't be the U.S if 300 million Chinese people move there.
So I feel like destroy is a harsh but sensible word to use.
''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
It isn't a productive political dissent though as many Palestinian products go through Israel to the international market. Still, it should be allowed.
Maybe So that companies can't be forced by fringe groups to boycott, under pain of being boycotted themselves. If that is a very likely scenario, maybe this law serves the public interest. (obviously one has to take the leap of faith that Israel isn't pure evil in order to consider such an argument)
I hope he wins his case because this ban is absolutley ridiculous. But I noticed that this is a sensitive topic, it will probably be flagged off here on HN
I agree. It would be very disappointing for this article to be flagged as off-topic. I think it is extremely relevant and I am glad we are discussing it openly.
I'm speaking about me personally. I am a member of the HN community and I find the article interesting. I believe that is the standard for the site. Simply what we as a community find interesting, so I shared my opinion. You are entitled to yours, but that doesn't mean the article should be removed. You are free to skip it.
This man is free to protest and boycott (freedom of speech) whomever he likes, that does not entitle him to government contracts (not freedom from consequence). You don't have a constitutional right to government contracts.
I don't like the ban but the argument is silly.
EDIT: I'm being rate limited on replies for some reason, I'd like to respond to some comments on here but I cannot. Mayhaps I will try again in a few hours.
The clause sounds more like an anti-discrimination clause ie. he isn't allowed to discriminate against a nation while receiving government contracts. No one's stopping him from simply not buying Israeli goods and not saying anything.
Depends what that entails... Refusing to do business with Chinese-American companies or hire people of Chinese descent likely wouldn't be allowed.
Look at the BDS website. They basically equate all Israeli companies with the government. In addition, Israel guarantees the right of return (ie. citizenship) to all Jews. So while BDS claims they're not anti-Semetic, they apply their definitions broadly enough that it's not hard to see what the end result is...
Whatever it entails, there is no explicit law saying "If you want to partner with an entity of the State of Texas, you or your company are not allowed to protest against China or Chinese companies".
I guess Xi Jinping should buy off Republican lawmakers to get such a law instituted.
Please, when Covid broke out there was a ton of media and societal pressure as well as legal actions to NOT discriminate against Asian-Americans and their businesses, despite the CCP being quite hostile towards the west.
> Can U.S. persons do business with entities in North Korea?
> No. Unless authorized pursuant to a general or specific license from OFAC and/or BIS, Executive Order (E.O.) 13722 prohibits new investment in North Korea by a U.S. person and the exportation or reexportation, from the United States, or by a U.S. person, of any goods, services, or technology to North Korea. E.O. 13810 (“Imposing Additional Sanctions with Respect to North Korea”) does not modify any of those prohibitions.
It's quite clear a) that national origin is a protected class and b) that a) does not mean it's illegal to target a nation-state.
So you pick the only truly communist state in the world. Literally the only country in the entire world that doesn't have private enterprise and thus you can say boycotting companies is boycotting the state. It also wasn't in your comment that I replied to...
But you absolutely can do business with some companies in Iran and Russia, the two examples you put in your previous comment.
You really are conflating a lot of different things so you can argue that you're right... I'd try to explain everything you're mixing and matching to build your house of argument cards, and why they don't belong together, but I think you'd just gather more cards.
This man is the one who is discriminating, he has freedom to do so but he does not have freedom from the consequences. He can't do business with the government, just as I (in theory) could legally refuse to do business with him on the same basis.
You personally have that right. The state of Texas must provide contracts with no bias and only considering the quality of work the contractor would provide.
The state is not allowed to discriminate based on arbitrary attributes of that contractor.
HN has always had a mix of people. There’s a distinct portion of people on here who trend toward center right and libertarian ideals. There’s a smaller but still solid segment who are more leftists who also generally oppose big authority in certain ways (some Govt stuff, big tech), but otherwise don’t have much overlap with the former group. I’m of the latter group, but it’s plain HN and even Slashdot in the old days, always had these sort of divides.
You’ll never find a place that won’t have these sort of divides unless you specifically go to a site for only your political views.
> you don't have a constitutional right to government contracts
You do have a First Amendment right to not having your freedom of speech abridged by the government. Since 1925, that restriction has been incorporated, i.e. it applies to states like Texas. Government contracts, like laws, are restricted by the Constitution.
Nobody is abridging his First Amendment right. He is free to go and boycott Israel and talk about all of their atrocities as much as he pleases. Doing business with the government is not covered by the First Amendment - he is not being threatened for boycotting Isreal, he just can't sell to them - just like I would be free to not do business with him for the same reason.
> Doing business with the government is not covered by the First Amendment
The term you're looking for is the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine" [1]. It's not black and white. But it will be difficult for Texas to argue that U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel is germane to soil volatility in the Gulf of Mexico.
Yeah exactly - it would be very difficult for the state to prove that there's a compelling interest to this clause in the contract besides having a chilling effect on a particular opinion.
The doctrine is not absolute and there are many cases where it is applied seemingly inconsistently. Rust V. Sullivan probably being one of the most notable, where the court upheld a physician's First Amendment right for referring abortions could be constrained on condition of federal funding for their practice.
If a person is aware that he/she is waiving their rights, and is not some accidental waiver, the government is not being deceptive or coercive, the person is free to reject the offer from the government without sanction, and the person waiving their right has the capacity to understand that they are doing - then there is no (generally) constitutional violation.
In the context of employment or government contracts, the government does not guarantee employment to every person. The fact that a potential employee (for example) may be impoverished and desperate for a paying job does not make the government’s conditions for the job coercive, unless the government
specifically created the person’s unemployment.
> Doing business with the government is not covered by the First Amendment...
Yes, it is. The government refusing to do business with you solely because of First Amendment-protected speech would be a clear interference with that right.
To your point it sounds like the law prohibits for the state of Texas to work with companies that choose to boycott Israel. The person's rights are not prohibited but if they choose to take part in those activities then the state of Texas will not work with them.
This is not unprecedented among states in the U.S. Many states have banned government work and travel to other states and countries due to policy issues.
i have a question. if the lawmakers made a law "no doing business with a company unless they boycott israel". will that also work? would that be constitutional?
Federal contracts require you to bend over backwards for disabled people (now that I phrase it like that, it does sound bad, but replace disabled with Israelis and it's the same thing): https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ofccp/faqs/section-503
Freedom is precisely freedom from consequences. Consider the prototypical privilege of driving an automobile. You are not free to drive (without a license) precisely because there are consequence if you get caught doing so. If you exclude consequences from your reckoning of freedom, everyone is free to drive and you can say everyone has a freedom to drive (but they don't have the freedom to be free of consequences of driving). Being left alone is precisely what freedom implies otherwise you are just talking about ability.
I'm just curious, would you have any problem with a similar law that said people were free to protest or speak out about any political party they wanted to but that they could not get a government contract unless they agree to support the Democratic party?
It's not legal for domestic political parties to blatantly fund themselves in that way. It IS legal for the department of state to enforce laws around international commerce.
"You're free to do X but that doesn't mean the government can't take adverse action in response" is true of literally all crimes. You're free to go blow up a courthouse, but will be arrested and probably executed. That isn't what freedom means. The Bill of Rights guarantees the government can't legally sanction you for protected speech. Any sanctions at all. It doesn't only keep them from severing your vocal chords to prevent speech entirely. They also can't imprison you, fine you, intimidate you, or prevent you from competing in otherwise open contract bids.
Israel does spend a lot of money on American goods though. In fact it spends a lot of American money on American goods[0] in the form of "foreign aid" which is earmarked for US military hardware. It would be a shame to upset that relationship. /s
If the crux of the argument is it "would be a shame for America to miss out on giving money to Israel to give back to America" you can kind of short-circuit that and just have America give the money to America, maybe in some sort of big infrastructure bill with a fancy name like Build Back Bigly, or something like that, idk.
> America to miss out on giving money to Israel to give back to America
America[n tax payers] to miss out on giving money [as charitable aid] to [the apartheid regime controlling] Israel to [spend it at] America[n weapons manufacturers].
And in that case it becomes clear why directly from taxpayers to weapons manufacturers is not going to fly: it's too obvious and does not put the weapons where they can be (ab)used!
Giving foreign aid instead of spending the money directly allows circumventing WTO rules about subsidizing your products. The book The Dictator's Handbook discusses this in detail.
Canada spends even more on American goods. America is Canada's biggest trade partner. The same cannot be said of Israel.
Where's the anti disparagement clause for Canadians?
This was a reaction to the "Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions" movement around Israel; I'm not aware of any similar boycott of Canada. So I get what you're saying, but it's a different situation. If there was an organized movement to boycott Canadian goods, I bet you would see reactions like this popping up to proclaim support for Canada.
When opposing a state on such topics you can refer to the Constitution, freedom of opinion and speech.
I am afraid of large powerful private companies - now and even more in future. They can fire you, reject providing services that are essential to function in a modern society - if your position on some topics is different from theirs. Now you cannot refer to the freedom of opinion - it is a private entity and they are free to decide whether they want to cancel or fire you.
I would argue for certain career paths, not having access to Twitter essentially makes one non-competitive.
Also my friend went to a university where the official communication for course-work happened through Facebook. I'm not sure how someone without access to Facebook would be able to participate in that program.
> Which career paths? I imagine "not getting banned from Twitter" is an important skill to have for any job that requires twitter.
Well this is moving the goal-posts isn't it? The comment I responded to said that the effect of being denied access to a certain social media platform is overstated. I would argue for media professionals it's basically a requirement.
> That's absurd and a failure on the university's part. What country was this in.
Witholding access to course materials, unless a student enters a contract/relationship with a third-party (Facebook or otherwise), is coersion. I would certainly kick up a fuss: start politely with those running the course (who probably didn't give it much thought); go up the chain as necessary.
At each step, make sure the focus remains on the coersion: the University is retroactively adding terms (e.g. whatever is in Facebook's policies) to the contracts agreed during enrollment. It is threatening to impose penalties (e.g. lost marks) on those who don't accept such unilateral changes.
Do not allow the issue to get derailed into tangential concerns, especially money (e.g. price of the service, or provision of equipment/connections, etc.). Those things could be solved by signing a cheque; but would not address the real problem. If concrete reasons is really needed, there are a bunch to choose from that aren't easily solved (and are not under the University's control): for Facebook/Meta there are a whole bunch, from real name requirements, privacy concerns, non-consentual psychology experiments, etc. Personally I would just say I find the company, their products and their business practices unethical.
(I had a similar experience when my Physics course tried to make me use Microsoft Excel)
Personally, I think getting banned from various technology communities can be a badge of honour. Obviously not just crude flaming, but going counter to the narrative.
If I find myself agreeing with the average Redditor or Twitter user (god-forbid a blue check!) it’s usually a sign that something is missing from my thought process and I should shake things up a little.
Are you sure you're not being contrarian for its own sake? There are times to go against the grain, but surely the consensus must be correct a lot of the time right? Can it really be the case that most people are wrong most of the time?
Two of these are similar to a mailing address.
If I move I need to a dozen different websites and services with my mailing address. Since it's not often I don't remember to track where this needs to happen.
If I was forced to change my email address, I might not be able to recover some accounts. Some don't support changing username (which is my email). I don't want to count the number of websites I'd need to update.
Our daughter started going to a kindergarten across road. Guess how all the communication happens? In a private Facebook group. My wife has an account,while I deleted mine like almost 10 years ago. It's not very hard to extrapolate from such a simple example to the point where restricted access to such services can make life very difficult to individuals.
This is exactly why public schools have accessibility requirements for any of their communications. Take it to the school board, and if they do not help, take it to a lawyer.
The only way corporations will take control of our society is if we let them. I am continually amazed by how much people let corporations and attorneys bully them. There is this pervasive attitude that they control everything and it is dangerous to fight back. If that attitude continues to prevail, then yes - that is when we will have serious problems.
>This is exactly why public schools have accessibility requirements for any of their communications.
I am not sure you have an accessibility case regarding a facebook group. It is accessible for individuals with disabilities, via the use of electronic aides such as screen readers. Accessibility does not mean, "I get whatever I want whenever I want." It means, "I can access this without my disability impeding that."
I was thinking of people without any connection at all - homeless families who have no mobile phones or internet connection. Those communications aren't about disability, just simple lack of access.
But that is missing the forest for the trees - the specifics of this anecdote are one small point. Standing up for yourself is the bigger point. I could be 100% wrong about the accessibility in schools, but that doesn't change my larger wish - that we would all stand up and push back when we see problems... not just dismissively say, "well, we'd never win that fight, so don't even try."
Right. Accessibility is about more than just accommodating people with disabilities. If communication from the government (public school) is inaccessible to people without a Facebook account, that should be a problem. I would hope that it could be corrected through the school board, or failing that, the justice system. You should not be required to use a particular Internet service, or even have Internet, or even have electricity, in order to interact with a government-funded school that is supposedly open to all.
I still don't understand. What is the solution? Just for context, I despise facebook and genuinely believe they are nothing, literally nothing but a drain on society. But. . .
I don't see a more accessible option. Facebook is as close to ubiquitous and universal as you can get, really. If someone cannot, not won't as the original poster said, but simply cannot access facebook, what other option is there? That means they have no smartphone, or internet access, at all. Therefore, there are no electronic options that exist. Physical paper mailers home? If they cannot afford a smartphone, what are the chances they have a permanent residence? Or, what for the parents who have no permanent residence. So that's not a solution. Next option - in person group meetings? Work, kids, health, transportation, any number of things exist that could be a barrier there. So what's the solution? That's not a flippant question, that's a real question. I don't see it.
Again, accessibility should be about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to access the goods and services in an equivalent way. Not about ensuring everyone gets to access the goods and services in the specific way they want to.
This all started with OP originally talking about not wanting a facebook. Not to sound too hateful, but part of living in society is understanding that certain personal concessions will have to be made. Like it or lump it, decisions have consequences.
Maybe I've gone too far off the path, but I think it's all related.
As you point out, there is always someone you won't be able to reach, but why not at least move to media that are at least marginally more accessible than Facebook?
E-mail for instance: You need an E-mail account to sign up for Facebook, so that means E-mail's userbase is at least a superset of Facebook's. Since you need Internet for E-mail, then the user-base for a normal, Internet web site should be a superset of E-mail users. Keep looking for supersets until the effort spent reaching the next one doesn't make sense anymore.
The other poster is right, I can't see any way this is an accessibility issue.
You could try pushing back with a First Amendment complaint. Say you have a sincere and deeply held belief that using Facebook is wrong, and that forcing you to use it violates your First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court has held that beliefs do not need to be strictly religious in order to be protected. It's the same route anti-vaxxers take.
I still wouldn't hold my breath. You might win, but your children will already be in college by the time it's all sorted.
A lot of people who sell crafts and bespoke items will probably rely on access to various marketplaces and payment processors; and arguably the social media platforms could be considered essential for marketing. Drivers and people working delivery gigs would rely on their own platforms like Uber or Deliveroo, etc.
For personal use, I would be inclined to agree with you; many of the platforms are more of a nuisance than anything else.
The problem with private for-profit companies is that they fundamentally cannot play a role of moral or political beacons, by the purpose and mechanisms that ensure their existence and success.
We have a lot of examples in history when the institutions that are designed to be moral guides bend their principles to the ruling ideology: Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, Orthodox Church in Soviet & Putin Russia.
I think large companies tend to eagerly adopt any moral principles that bring them more customer, attracts more employees, helps to get government contracts, and avoid lawsuits.
It gets worse. The vaccine mandates really put a spotlight on this. The politicians know a law mandating a vaccine is a non-starter so they delegate to private industry and encourage corporate policy like either get a shot or be fired, your “choice”. Very clever in an evil sort of way.
> The politicians know a law mandating a vaccine is a non-starter
A vaccine mandate is a non-starter only in the current poisonous US political environment. There is historical precedent for vaccine mandates in the US: polio. What else are reasonably careful policy makers to do if a very vocal minority has the ability to block any progress?
Not sure what are you referring by "Orthodox Church in Soviet (Russia)". The state's stance towards it was a mish-mash of violent and liberal times. But church and, more importantly, practicing religion was oppressed at almost all times. I'm from another, smaller, communist country and the attitude towards religion changed hyper-locally. My mom and dad are from different parts of the country, yet almost neighbouring, but my mom's family could practice religion freely, while my dad's were being jailed for it.
While your premise sounds sound, not all of your examples do. As an example, you might be positively surprised about the role of some of the catholic clergy in Nazi Germany and outside of it. Which was something completely different from the catholic hierarchy at the papal level, but I digress...
It's increasingly hard to tell one from the other.
The mechanism here appears to be (the article itself is light on facts) a contract, same as would be with a private entity. The entity on the other end of the contract could be private, public or mixed. The rule/clause may originate in a contract between this entity and a 3rd party, or the entity's interpretation/implementation of a regulatory framework.
In regulated industries, the last version is ubiquitous. A bank, casino or whatnot will have a "compliance" function. There will be "regulatory/compliance" requirements, rules and clauses. It's never clear whether these are government rules, private policies, etc.
This is basic freedom of speech. The government does not get to dictate what your opinions are allowed to be. Not even if you sell things to the government. Texas needs to repeal this law asap.
Does nobody remember the backlash against France for not participating in the wars in the Middle East? Companies publicly boycotted French products and went to the extent of replacing the word "French" with "Freedom" in words like "French fries" or "French toast".
Boycotting Jewish companies (for being owned by Jewish people) is antisemitic, but the goal of BDS is boycotting Israeli companies over accusations against the Israeli government the same way e.g. the US sanctions Iranian companies over accusations against the Iranian government.
There is nothing wrong with boycotting Israel or any other country for a reason of your choosing. The problem with BDS is its complete dishonesty, it passes ongoing armed conflict for something else.
The "BDS movement" is not an organization and does not have a sharp boundary, but insofar as it has something vaguely like a boundary, the vast majority of the people inside of it are not engaged in armed conflict against Israel, are not supporting armed conflict against Israel, and never have been.
Even if the majority of them were, the defining issue for BDS itself is not doing business with Israeli entities. Not doing business is not armed conflict. For you to have a point, they would have to somehow using the boycott itself to aid in shooting up the place. That doesn't even pass the laugh test.
So? Everyday people want to "BDS" China for their human rights abuses, Russia for their territorial and cyber aggression. There are countries in the world doing shitty things in the eyes of some, and those people and orgs sometimes call for political and economic pressure to be applied.
Why should the government be able to punish individuals who voice such opinions, excepting diplomatic or national security roles?
This is an unpopular opinion, but taking a firm anti-Israel stance requires (1) a deeply naive view of international relations where the line between good and evil is easily located or where it's easy to quantify how much evil each side is doing... xor (2) closeted anti-semitism.
Note that anti-semitism is very unlike racism against people of color in that it holds the enemy to be already ensconced in higher positions of power; sometimes (as you'll see in the Unz/Sailer kind of literature) it even holds Jews to have superior intellects.
(Sometimes a firm pro-Israel stance is grounded on a very weird conception of Christianity as closer to Jewishness than it really is. The New Testament is written in Greek, and whatever its ultimate truth is, it is expressed in the language of Greek philosophy.)
I don't think you have to quantify evil on both sides. It seems pretty reasonable to me that Israel is constantly encroaching on land it legally does not own and is evicting people who have proof of ownership of their houses. It continues to build settlements by force in areas it has not legally been granted, and all of this is leading to a larger and larger Palestinian refugee / diaspora community while Israel continues to push for Jews from other countries to move there and displace legal inhabitants.
This is considered genocide in many other places (think of the Chinese practice of forcibly moving Han Chinese into an area they wish to control, the difference being the unwanted ethnicity isnt turned into stateless refugees).
That's a strange extreme. I mean, there are good odds that you're from the country that perpetrated Abu Ghraib, and for what -- a make-work war on the other end of the planet.
The whole Israeli question is really too complicated for a HN comment. All I'm claiming is that the BDS movement claims a kind of moral certitude that's not only not sufficiently grounded, it doesn't try to be sufficiently grounded. And while I'm sure many support "global progressive movements" out of the goodness of their hearts, the fact that there is such a movement betrays something darker. Remember that I said "xor" -- the firm anti-Israel position is naïve xor malicious.
Then: you don't have to be "firmly anti-Israel" to see many of their crimes.
I agree, that's why I mocked your assertion that any dislike of Israel is due to ignorance, arrogance, or racial hatred. Thank you for immediately engaging in a whataboutist slander to defend your position, it's a great indication of your ability to have a discussion about this topic fairly.
The USA and Israel are both guilty of horrible atrocities that fairly allow reasonable people to hate them. They are not "naive or malicious" they just have a different point of view than you do.
It is an entirely ridiculous assertion from a zealot.
I said "a firm anti-Israel stance". Let me try to put this in a polite way: you've already made your mind about this, you're not... open-minded.
Many both-sidesisms are bogus, but this one isn't. There's enough horror to account for on, uh, both sides. (Isn't it amazing how we're conditioned to mock the phrase "both sides" now?)
Ok, let me try to put this in a more actionable way.
There's plenty of horror to go around here. Both parties have committed atrocious crimes, and they plan on continuing to do so indefinitely. (Israel pays lip service to a two-state solutions, while the policy on Arab leaders everywhere is "destroy Israel". But eh, words.)
By (financially!) punishing only one side in this mess, you're rewarding the other side. Are you that certain this is the righteous path?
This is an all-or-nothing defense. You're saying it's outside of righteousness to impact a single perceived injustice because you cannot correct every evil on Earth.
That's nihilism that prevents anyone from being "righteous" as long as a single grain of evil exists. It's not a very practical way to engage a moral compass.
There are antisemitic criticisms of Israel and there are anti-colonialist arguments against Israel. I wouldn't disagree that a lot of people fall in the trap of using the former (if they don't do so deliberately) but the latter certainly exist and don't require any naivety about international relations.
Claiming the Israeli government is actively and deliberately harming a group of people and defying international agreements to pursue distasteful goals is not a naïve view of international elations and doesn't require believing there is a meaningful category of "good" and "evil" actors.
The problem with the argument for the foundation of Israel (if we ignore the specific historical and religious claims for the area it is located in, because that's a whole can of worms) is that the nature of Israel is entirely different from the nature of any other post-colonialist state.
Usually how this works is that we have a population living in an area over a long period of time, then a (usually white European) population conquers the region and establishes its own settler government while its own population expands and the pre-existing population is treated as second class citizens or fully disenfranchised. Liberatory struggle is easily justified in a situation like this because in order to restore the rights and political power of the original population the new population must be removed (either physically, or at least from political power, but in effect this will often involve repossession of illegitimately claimed territory, capital and wealth). The consequence can appear as an ethnostate or Apartheid regime with the original colonizers temporarily becoming an apparent "underclass" until the original population has established a new power structure that can accommodate them without reverting to the previous system (e.g. because the previous ruling class still holds all capital despite having formally ceded its political power).
The problem with Israel is that this isn't how we got here. There was a small minority of Jewish people in pre-Israel Palestine and there were Arabs (and other groups) in pre-Israel Palestine, but there wasn't one group acting as a "colonizer". The groups were all already endemic and well-established. What happened instead is that some people holding claims to land sold their land to a group intending to found the state of Israel in that territory and with the help of international political and financial supporters a new nation state was established and non-Jewish people already living in the land were evicted by the people now claiming ownership over their land -- this process is in fact still ongoing. Additionally Israel being envisioned as a "Jewish nation" enacted policies granting non-Jewish residents fewer rights while actively promoting immigration and easy access to citizenship for Jewish people living in other countries. But as even some Jewish people have pointed out the Israeli government tends to favor "white Jews" over Jewish POC and e.g. heavily promoted Hebrew for political reasons despite Yiddish initially being far more widely understood and established.
So the argument for the legitimacy of the modern state of Israel (if you ignore the religious/historical argument or an argument of might makes right) hinges on how legitimate the original "sale" of Palestinian land to the Jewish settlers was, which is a question with no clear answer. And that's just the question of legitimacy, not even getting into any of Israel's behavior since that point.
Now, even if you think the original land claims justify the expansion of Israeli settlements into autonomous Palestine and the eviction of Palestinian residents in those areas, and even if you see no problem with the quasi-Apartheid second class citizenship of Palestinian Arabs in Israel, and if you don't think any of the claims of Israel being deliberately racist against non-white Jews are valid, there's st...
The legitimacy of the state of Israel doesn't have to be discussed and it doesn't hinge on anything.
That does not mean that Israel can claim land on the west bank, it is a question completely detached from that. Otherwise Israel would of course claim as much as it can.
In a lot of the recent illegal settlement disputes Israeli Jews claimed to own the rights to the land they were evicting Palestinian Arabs from and demolishing buildings on. It's true that the legality under international law (which is only worth as much as it is enforced, which generally hinges on whose sides the biggest world powers are on) and compliance with pre-existing policies is a topic for debate, but land ownership is a major factor in this complex question.
One could call Israel an Apartheid state for its citizenship system and focus on (esp. white) Jewish immigrants over resident Palestinian Arabs and one could call the displacement of Palestinian Arab an ethnic cleansing, but my point is that both of these topics are more complex than just being emergent properties of antisemitic conspiracy theories or a naïve view of international politics.
For example, it is factually correct that Israel has been continuously expanding its settlements and land claims into supposedly autonomous Palestinian territories: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/13786
If I call Israel an Apartheit state I would need to extend that classifier to a lot of other countries. There are problems in Israel but they are dwarfed by those common in the region. Which is not an excuse, of course, but it provides perspective how conflicts materialize in the middle east.
Of course Israel does serve a special function to provide shelter from prosecution and this specifically but not exclusively for Jews. I could call the prosecution of Jews in Arab and other countries and ethnic cleansing too, but this does not provide anything constructive to any dialogue.
I think a lot of people want to see Israel purged from the region. It is an irrational hatred against Jews that fails to hide behind pretexts.
Jews from Europe that happen to be white or not are very rarely those that settle in the Westbank and I don't disagree that these settlements are illegal. But that doesn't invalidate Israels right to exist. Accepting this as a fact would leave the opposition to these policies with more options.
> There are problems in Israel but they are dwarfed by those common in the region.
Sure, and you'll find that most people who genuinely criticize Israel on these grounds (rather than looking for an excuse to justify their antisemitism) would argue that we shouldn't fund those countries' defense budgets either.
> Of course Israel does serve a special function to provide shelter from prosecution and this specifically but not exclusively for Jews.
This isn't a politically neutral statement of facts, though. I think you'll find many people who criticize Israel for other reasons than being antisemitic to also support refugee rights and be pro-immigration.
The US state of Utah was essentially formed by Mormons as shelter against prosecution but as far as I know Utah doesn't give Mormons legal privileges, not to get into comparisons regarding the Native peoples that once lived on that land.
It should be obvious that it's a contentious argument that a) Jews need "their own" country to protect them from prosecution, b) Israel was a good solution for doing that and c) this purpose trumps all humanitarian concerns for Palestinian Arabs.
> I could call the prosecution of Jews in Arab and other countries and ethnic cleansing too, but this does not provide anything constructive to any dialogue.
I think it's absolutely legitimate to point out ethnic cleansings in other countries in the region when they happen. And you'll find plenty of news media having done exactly that, even if they mostly only care to point them out when the victims are "relatable" (e.g. Christian minorities in majority Muslim countries). The difference is that using words like "ethnic cleansing" or "Apartheid" or even expressing criticism of Israeli military bombings of civilian targets (or "terrorist targets in civilian areas" that just happen to be full of civilians because the terrorists use them as meat shields, if you think the distinction is important) is an easy way to be guaranteed not to work for any Western news media company ever again.
> I think a lot of people want to see Israel purged from the region. It is an irrational hatred against Jews that fails to hide behind pretexts.
Sure. I already acknowledged that a lot of antisemites use language critical of Israel to justify their antisemitism. It's also true that a lot of antisemites use language supportive of Israel to justify their own ethnonationalism, though. You'll find plenty of white supremacists use Israel (or Japan, although for different reasons) as an example when arguing for white ethnostates or a "Europe of sovereign fatherlands". They of course usually don't say the quiet part out loud (i.e. that they want all Jewish people to be moved into Israel) and "Jewish" isn't really an ethnicity, but you'll find some on the Israeli far-right all but agreeing with them on those points as well.
> But that doesn't invalidate Israels right to exist.
I think "right to exist" is a red herring. No country in history has existed continuously and permanently and within its same borders and with the same form of government. Look at a map of the US in 1776 and tell me this is the exact same country as today (not to mention how much of the constitution has effectively been rewritten since). Most national mythologies (especially in Europe) were made from whole cloth in the 19th century with the rise of nationalism. My own country, Germany, has fundamentally been reinvented at least five times since then (if you can even argue that the post-1990 federal republic is in any meaningful way "the same" as the German Empire).
I don't think any country has a "right to exist" but I think it's absurd to talk about countries having rights to do anything in the first place: even recognition as a country entirely depends on a country's ability to use violence (either through military power or eco...
Equal treatment under the law is a key tenet of freedom. If you are bidding on a government contract, your bid should be equally considered along with everyone else’s on its merits, irrespective of whatever your personal beliefs on unrelated matters might be.
Company policy and personal beliefs are very different things. The former has many legal restrictions while the latter is immutable. I don't understand why you are conflating the two. This law is entirely relevant to companies not individuals.
So I understand that this exact clause is in contracts which must be signed by paid speakers at public universities. I.e. you cannot boycott Israel and give a lecture at a university. Would you consider that an infringement on speech?
Companies are made up of people. There is nothing that only affects companies and not people. A company is just a legal abstraction that represents a group of people.
Which US MSM news channel voices out against Israel?
They have apartheid in the lawbooks, but I think no US MSM channel goes as far to dare to say this... They dare say it about Arab countries (maltreatment of migrant workers). They've said it about South-Africa.
Republicans and certain evangelical sects of Christians here, along with the American Jewish lobby, intentionally and constantly associate any criticism of the Israeli government with hatred of the Jewish people.
This is clearly not everyone in the US, but it's enough that if you're a business or public figure who makes noise about it, you'll be branded anti-Semetic by a particular "news-as-hatred" cable network and certain members of Congress.
It is not possible to mention Israel in any manner other than positive. All I said was Israel is a protected topic, and look at the controversy of that and the down votes, proving my point.
This is not new. Try supporting communism in any time since the 30s. Try being openly gay in any era before the 1980s. Fundamentally, any society has bounds on the "true" freedom of speech, and America, despite its best intentions, is no different.
If it’s a boycott ban then it’s not really freedom of speech and is more about freedom of association. (Which is still pretty well protected by US jurisprudence.)
You refer to Citizens United and the right to spend money on things like advertisements and PACs and movies about current political candidates? Yes. But that was very speech-oriented spending. I'm not aware of jurisprudence extending the concept of "speech" to general spending decisions in the context of boycotts — but again, it's probably not necessary; freedom of association is a real freedom.
This is outrageous. Texas and other republican states boast about small government and unparalleled free speech, and they go ahead and prevent people from boycotting another state.
They have no business doing that and this is absolutely ridiculous.
It's just bizarre. What's Texas' compelling interest in punishing the boycott of foreign state?
If I were a Texan, and I found out that my state government is potentially over-paying contractors based on a completely irrelevant criteria to the work, I would not be pleased.
For the most part the folks who continue to call themselves Texans don’t seem to actually care about things such as logic or freedom, only about reinforcing whatever it is they have been told to reinforce on that day. I feel bad I wasted so much of my life in such a place, but happy that I didn’t contribute my money to them because of their own inane policies.
It's a strategic ally in the region. US strong support of Israel was the foundation of the Abraham accords that got several major players together and provide stability. The government also does this with domestic companies. There are contractor criteria that requires companies to meet political goals. I guess the question is, does a company have a right to a government contract? I would say the elected government of a state has the right to define the criteria for it's contractors. It doesn't stop those companies from operating, but they don't get public funds. If they don't like it, they can leave for a state that's ok with their boycott. Or the people can change the legislators out.
> I would say the elected government of a state has the right to define the criteria for it's contractors.
You can "say" this all you want, but in fact states do not have this right: their criteria can't violate individual Constitutional rights.
If their criteria said "whites only" or "you can't support gay martiage" the issue would be the same: there is nothing special at all about which specific freedom the criteria violates.
This doesn't make any sense to me. The government is working for the citizen, the citizen is not working for the government. It should not be the individual citizen's responsibility to respect the strategic interests of the state in a liberal society however strong they may be.
I mean if it's relevant fine: like if the project is to provide security to Israeli diplomats by all means make this a hiring consideration, but for a contractor in Texas?
The awarding of contracts is not a right of an individual. All a government has to do is ensure they have got the best deal in a legal way. Ergo, no individual rights have been infringed.
Texas isn't really a republican stronghold state and hasn't been since pretty much ever (anything before the "southern strategy" is political prehistory at this point IMO). Texas has always had more of a "moralizing authoritarian" bent to its government (comparable to say, the caronlinas, which usually get saddled with that reputation) at least for the past century. There are other states that are far better at being small government (and they aren't generally considered republican strongholds either) The reason Texas has a small government reputation is because most people analyzing it can look out their overton window and see CA and NY.
States really need to get out of pursuing their own foreign policy. Regardless of what you think about the foreign policy issue in question, the only level of government that should act on it is the federal government.
Ironically, on almost every other issue, it should be decided at the state level, and it's the federal government that is unconstitutionally meddling,
I'm kind of confused. It's not the first article that I have encountered on this, but they all seem very light on specifics.
What/where is the "particular legal clause? This article veers from there into a personal biography. Is it part of his contract, a local bylaw? What's the legality or legal history of such actions?
Slightly different, but the federal government uses highway funding to entice/force states to introduce certain laws (e.g. the 21 year minimum drinking age):
There are many variants of these "don't boycott Israel" laws, which try to find ways around the unconstitutionality of such laws. It sounds like the variant in the article is a state level law that requires the state to not contract with parties boycotting Israel. So in the end this is part of his contract with the government, but the city has no choice but to include such a clause.
For example a similar law in a different state was found unconstitutional by a Circuit Court:
> The US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas heard the case involving Act 710, a statute that forbids state parties from establishing contractual agreements with companies that boycott Israel.
> The Court ultimately concludes that supporting boycotts of Israel is protected under the Constitution and that Act 710 violates First Amendment rights.
I guess criticising journalism is hack at this point, but these little examples still flabbergast me.
It's a long article, but it's mostly an article about the person. Almost no information about the actual issue at hand. Where is the journalistic curiosity. How does the clause work? How many contracts is it in? Are there other boilerplate clauses that work like this? What about other states? What about other lawsuits. I assume a lone Houston businessman isn't the only affected party taking legal action.
It's terrible that reading articles on a topic doesn't actually inform you about it.
There has been a lot of legal analysis about this topic too. Most believe that these anti-boycott laws are unconstitutional and will (eventually) be struck down by the Supreme Court. But it may take years or decades before a final decision is made.
This alleged contract clause seems a lot like the sorts of nebulous "we reserve the right to back out without penalty if you do something not befitting our brand image" clauses you get when providing services for prestigious institutions but with a more government style legalese applied to it. Basically Houston doesn't want to potentially deal with the blow-back of a contractor is taking a particular stance on a particular political issue. It would be unsurprising if cities like Boston have similar clauses barring contractors from expressing strong anti-lgbtq or anti public employee union political sentiments. At the end of the day none of this really matters. The city will a ways terminate a relationship with a contractor if they cause political problems. The contract clause just makes the inevitable lawsuit slightly more uphill. Houston probably doesn't really care for the state's law on this issue so odds are they will likely never try and enforce these specific terms anyway.
You can put anything in a contract. If you're really creative you might get a chuckle out of the judge.
The realpolitik move here is for Hassouna to include the clause so the bureaucrat evaluating his submission can check the box without sticking their neck out and then do what he damn well pleases. The state isn't gonna take him to court for the same reason the states you cheer-lead for only ever use their gun laws to secure better plea deals and never actually prosecute them in court.
What part of "the Court held that "content based laws...are presumptive unconstitutional" was unclear?
That's what caused Texas to turn around and revise the law saying it needs to be in contract boilerplate. And every city rolls their eyes and says "ok, whatever mom" and implements it. What do you think the odds that Houston a) wants to enforce the terms b) will actually decide to try and enforce the terms are.
Well those goal posts just got 10yard farther away. Regardless, as a civil engineer reading the political winds is already part of his job. If the city is gushing over bike lanes you better be sure that your proposal mentions how you've spec'd things out to include potential for easily adding a bike lane even if what you proposed is not special in that regard. This is no more chilling than the maze of routine mixed messages politics and game theory he already has to deal with.
Chilling is the whole point of this law. He's presumably not an idiot and he figured that out as soon as he knew about the change. If he thought suing the state would actually jeopardize his income (suing the state creates a massive conflict of interest his government clients could easily use to justify cutting ties) he almost certainly wouldn't be doing it. In reality he knows how the people he does business with lean and knows they won't care or will think well of his lawsuit.
That was just an example of knowing how to figure out the politics and play the game. It takes some creative literacy standards to consider that "equating" them.
Can you give an example of a contractor's political stance becoming a problem for a city government? It's hard to imagine the guy installing tiles in the city hall's bathroom's views being known at all let alone becoming relevant.
I think that's a pretty blatant mischaracterization of this situation. My understanding is that these laws are put in place very specifically to combat the BDS movement, which works very hard to distance itself from even a whiff of antisemitism to avoid exactly the optics you're describing.
The laws do not mention BDS at all, and they apply to any boycott.
You can argue that the current popular boycott is against Israel, but the US has had multiple waves of boycotts.
This law allows the US to move as one. ...to act as one. Which affords very significant leverage to our government in order to enact change - whether that's against China, Israel, Russia, South Africa, etc...
It's a standard funding rule so it seems, usual way to sneak in random provisions sidestepping usual democratic process a la minimum drinking age, Medicaid policies, etc.
One of the funniest things in American politics is that almost all uncritical support for Israel comes from the evangelical christians. For them, Israel is always right, no matter what, and must be defended at all costs.
The jew friends I have are way more balanced and critical of Israel human right abuses than the christians, who seems to feel that criticizing Israel is the same as denying its right to exist.
This is absolutely untrue. When you look at the political landscape, evangelicals have no power. And yet, when you look at any vote in Congress regarding Israeli issues, such as the recent vote to replenish the Iron Dome system, it was overwhelmingly voted in. The only "controversy" was the 3 or 4 people who objected initially, and were then bullied BY BOTH PARTIES into voting yes.
Evangelical Christians have enormous political power. That's why the last three appointees to the Supreme Court were vetted by pro-Life organizations and Roe v. Wade is in imminent danger.
And yet, abortions continue to be legal everywhere. It's almost as if, the supreme court is there to just rubber stamp what the elite class of our country already dictates.
Evangelicals Protestantism is the biggest religious category in the country (25%), yet no Supreme Court justice is Evangelical. By contrast, 6-7 are Catholic (21%) and 2 are Jewish (2%). That doesn't seem like enormous political power to me.
The Supreme Court includes a number of conservative Catholics, appointed by Presidents who were either evangelical Christian (Alito/Bush) or closely allied with them (Kavanaugh/Trump, Barrett/Trump), who tend to take positions on policies that are similar to that of evangelical Christians.
Amy Coney Barrett may be Catholic, but she was heavily favored by evangelicals, with specific interest in overturning Roe v. Wade.
Indeed, they are a large voting base of an alliance of religious conservatives (along with Mormons, conservative Catholics, etc.) that is hyperfocused on that one issue, and so seemingly having some success on it.
But it's not like Amy Coney Barrett is barely Catholic. She's been heavily involved in the church her whole life, and her career has been centered around a deeply Catholic university. She only represents Evangelicals in situations where their belief overlaps with those of the Catholic church.
Barrett is both deeply Catholic and part of an organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_Praise) that features aspects typically more in line with American evangelical Protestantism. The Catholic Church can be a surprisingly diverse group theologically; American bishops are frequently feuding with the Pope over issues like the death penalty and abortion.
American evangelicals didn't get in line behind Barrett and Kavanaugh on account of their Catholicism.
Sure, this is all complicated. Groups have similarities and overlaps. Anything "charismatic" gets strange. And red state politicians have been able to put a lot of pressure on abortion by basically being supreme court single-issue voters on it.
But I still tend to believe that if Evangelical Protestants were really the ones controlling who is nominated and confirmed to the supreme court more than anyone else, we'd see at least a single Evangelical Protestant on it.
Have you ever seen one of those art pieces where when you look at it from the front it looks like a jumbled mess of shapes, but when you walk around it, your perspective shifts to reveal a meaningful message or image?
Imagine if rather than gaining its independence from the UK, the USA instead of becoming its own independent country, was still called the United States of America, but over time, in practice it had become totally servile, dependent on, psychologically submissive and subjugated to the British aristocracy that rules the UK and Americans worshipped them as demigods.
Agree with the other commenter. This isn't true. Most politicians on both sides of the aisle are way out of touch with the average American who is usually pretty critical of Israel, namely due to the shocking amount of aid we send them each year.
You are edging close to questions you are not allowed to ask, let alone answers you will be allowed to discover, and surely not allowed to share.
Let me put it this way, those "evangelicals" it sounds like you are blaming are actually victims of a certain type as part of the whole abused become abusers cycle.
There is a scene in Til Kingdom Come, the PBS documentary that perfectly illustrates what is going on … people, utterly poor and destitute, in rural Kentucky having their children collect money, literally scraping together coins, to send it to Israel … and no Jewish person saying anything like "woah, hold on, you have nothing and we are immensely rich beyond your wildest dreams, you should invest that money in your own community" let alone maybe the Jewish community inverting things … to help those who are literally mentally subjugated to them like in Egyptian types where dirty slaves serve demigods rulers.
But I have said enough and do not mean to draw the ire of the demigods. Forgive me if I have offended your sensibilities, beneficent masters, please do not take away my fake internet points or muzzle my voice with a digital curse or vaporize my account.
I didn't say that. I am not referring to the congress, where probably industrial military complex considerations are the main driver of the decisions.
I am talking about the culture, the people at large. I can't see no other segment of civil society more vocal and passionate about Israels defense than some groups of evangelical christians, and this Texas law is just an example of that.
Your jew friends are under quite some pressure to fit in and not come out as priviledged/zionist pigs/disloyal Americans/etc etc. It's not really an easy position to be in.
What do the clauses look like? Do they actually mention "Israel" by name? Could it perhaps be poorly drafted clauses that are meant to convey a requirement that contractors to the government must equally consider procuring goods and services for the government from all countries and/or suppliers without bias of personal preference or opinion?
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB89, an act relating to state contracts with and investments in companies that boycott Israel, on May 2, 2017. The bill prohibits the State of Texas from contracting or entering into business with companies or entities involved in the BDS movement against Israel. The law ensures that public funds will not go to companies that participate in BDS.
In 2019, Texas started to divest $72 million worth of stock in the Norwegian financial services firm DNB ASA. Two state pension funds – the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Permanent School Fund — own $68 million and $4 million, respectively, in stock in the company. This is the first action taken under the anti-boycott legislation.
In April 2019, a U.S. District Judge ruled in favor of Bahia Amawi, a former speech pathologist who sued the state over the law after she was fired from her job for supporting BDS. The court found “the statute to be a viewpoint-based restriction intended not to combat discrimination on the basis of national origin, but to silence speech with which Texas disagrees.”
In response, the legislature rewrote the language limiting the application of the law to companies with more than 10 full-time employees and contracts of more than $100,000 with the state. The governor signed the bill.
Israel is mentioned by name because that’s who all the boycotts are against.
Notice, though, the stark difference between the legality of Texas’s own divestment and the firing of a Texas employee for an opinion. Plenty of states boycotting plenty of things; that’s normal. California bans official travel to 18 different US states (with limited exceptions to pursue taxes, and the like) over their lgbt-related laws, and CalPERS divests from oil and tobacco and the like.
No, because you are not allowed to trade with Cuba. (there are exceptions, and things have changed a few times since I last looked - if you are interested in trade with Cuba talk to a lawyer to knows this)
At the time I'm writing this, this hasn't been mentioned. How this interacts with state laws, I have no idea.
When it comes to businesses, the US government reserves the right to institute international boycotts. Companies may not, generally speaking, boycott a country (or people from that country, etc) unless that country (or person) is being boycotted by the US.
There are mandatory reporting requirements that surround this. If you work in finance and you have not received training on this topic...
"The Office of Antiboycott Compliance (OAC) within BIS is charged with administering and enforcing the Anti-Boycott Act of 2018, Part II of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA), and the antiboycott provisions set forth in Part 760 of the Export Administration Regulations, 15 CFR parts 730-774 (EAR). These authorities discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from taking certain actions in furtherance or support of a boycott maintained by a foreign country against a country friendly to the United States (unsanctioned foreign boycott). U.S. companies must report to OAC their receipt of certain boycott-related requests for information designed to verify compliance with an unsanctioned foreign boycott. Prohibited activities include, inter alia, agreements by U.S. companies to refuse to do business with a boycotted country or with blacklisted persons for boycott-related reasons, furnishing information about any person’s business relationships with a boycotted country or with blacklisted persons, and implementation (by U.S. banking entities) of letters of credit that include prohibited boycott-related terms or conditions."
Some states implement their own versions of this, but even if not, if the state agencies in question are funded federally, they may obligated to carry out the same federal contractor compliances.
> prohibit U.S. companies from taking certain actions in furtherance or support of a boycott maintained by a foreign country against a country friendly to the United States (unsanctioned foreign boycott)
This would seem to be referring to boycotts instituted by nation states against other nation states that are friendly to the United States. It doesn’t seem applicable to a discussion about BDS.
> When it comes to businesses, the US government reserves the right to institute international boycotts. Companies may not, generally speaking, boycott a country (or people from that country, etc) unless that country (or person) is being boycotted by the US.
That is far from clear and has not been settled by the SC. There is a federal amendment from 1977 to the Export Administration Act (EEA) that forbade American companies from participating in the boycott against Israel that the Arab League organized. However, since then the SC decided in favor of African American organizations that in the 1960's had organized boycotts against racist white shopkeepers. The SC ruled that political boycotts was protected free speech and participating in them a constitutional right.
Another counter-argument is that the boycott against Israel is not maintained by a "foreign country" but by the BDS movement and other grassroots organizations around the world. Furthermore, the boycott targets non-Israel companies doing business in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories just as much as it targets Israeli companies. Thus, the EEA may not be applicable at all.
In either case, the EEA doesn't entail an obligation of contractors to promise not to boycott certain countries to be awarded government contracts, which is what this (and other similar state laws) is all about.
You're talking as if there is some law from time immemorial regarding this, to deal with all corporate boycotts. The 2018 law mentioned was completely driven by the Israel lobby, and all proceeding laws in this respect were due to the Israel lobby. The grand statement "When it comes to businesses, the US government reserves the right to institute international boycotts" is deceptive and farcical- this was instigated due to the Israel lobby and for all practical purposes has only applied to Israel.
...at the same time - the ability for the US to act as ONE body to impose strong political will is an important tool.
...so this law makes sense.
You cannot negotiate with 100,000 small US businesses - but now the US can use this lever of control to help force Israel or other governments to change.
This also applies to China, Myanmar, South Africa, etc...
I always find the inconsistencies and hypocrisy around free speech to be almost absurd comedy. Conservatives bemoan and attack "liberal" cancel culture. Yet they do the same like this Texan ban. Both sides want to censor and cancel.
And yet both conservatives and liberals attack China and other alleged culprits for being censorious and not being "free" . This muzzling of alternative voices is not even specific to the US. A British professor was canceled/fired from Bristol University for remarks deemed critical of Israel:
I guess thats for the courts to hash out eventually. If it is invalid, then standing seems to be more of a stretch:
Although A & R’s boycott has not materially affected any of its business decisions through the present, A&R would refuse to buy an Israeli-sourced product were the opportunity to otherwise arise. Moreover, even if A & R was not boycotting Israel, it would refuse to certify that it would not boycott Israel for the duration of the renewal contract because, by signing, A & R would be compelled to speak in furtherance of a foreign government’s interests. But for the renewal contract’s certification requirement, based on the Anti-BDS Law, A&R is ready, willing, and able to enter into the contract and perform the agreed-upon engineering services for the City.
Taking away the right (or punishing) of individuals (or groups) to boycott would seem unconstitutional at face value.
Where would the Civil Rights movement have been without boycotts?
I was once asked in an interview whether "The State of Israel had a right to exist".
I replied that no state has a "right to exist" but that individuals have a right to self-determination.
A human right that various international laws and conventions give both Israelis and Palestinians.
Needless to say, I did not get that job.
Mind you, I'm not arguing for or against the boycott.
But these laws would seem unconstitutional on the basis of the first amendment and precedent: (e.g. In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982).)
And the boycott movement is not about targeting individuals or classes of individuals. BDS encourages supporters to select targets based on their complicity in Israel's human rights violations, potential for cross-movement solidarity, media appeal, and likelihood of success.
In 1966 African Americans in Clairborne County, Mississippi, participated in a sustained boycott of white-owned businesses to put pressure on local government and business leaders to meet their 19 “Demands for Racial Justice.” The document, drafted by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), laid out specific measures to advance the civil rights of African Americans, from desegregation of bus stations to asking that blacks be addressed as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” rather than derogatory terms such as “boy.”
Three years later, a group of white business owners sued the NAACP and its leaders, who had organized and enforced the boycott, for the economic damages they had suffered.
The Supreme Court ruled that the NAACP’s boycott was composed of elements protected by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, and petition. The Court also paid particular attention to the end goal of the boycotters.
In that case, Justice John Paul Stevens compared the NAACP boycott campaign with the railroad association’s public relations campaign in Noerr and concluded that the boycott was entitled to even greater protection.
Thank you. I likewise am not making an argument for or against any specific thing but instead ask out of curiosity as the constitution is a thing from which much complexity has evolved.
I can see the similarity to Claiborne and the differences since in the case of Claiborne:
* there was a specific petition (of which I'm not aware in the case of the Israel boycott, but may exist)
* the boycott's target was a domestic entity as opposed to a foreign nation, which seems to go around traditional prohibitions against individuals conducting foreign policy
In the case of this BDS campaign, the actual boycott is not against the nation of Israel. It's mainly to boycott products of companies that are complicit in Israel's violations of Palestinian rights.
The idea is that Roger Waters (yes, that Roger Waters) wants you to stop buying Sabre Hummus and Puma products.
If the below is representative, then it is quite a bit more than that.
BOYCOTTS involve withdrawing support from Israel's apartheid regime, complicit Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions, and from all Israeli and international companies engaged in violations of
Palestinian human rights.
You're correct. It is much more then I implied. My point was that for people outside Israel, it's difficult to boycott a governmental body.
Also, it's important to mention that the academic boycott if Israeli institutions is an important component of the BDS movement. A general boycott is necessary because there is a moral imperative to end the occupation and only outside pressure, like the pressure that was exerted on the apartheid regime in South Africa, can perhaps achieve this.
Why academia? Because Israeli academia is also a mouthpiece of the establishment and is used to
enable Israel to present itself abroad as "the only democracy in the Middle East."
>> In the case of this BDS campaign, the actual boycott is not against the nation of Israel. It's mainly to boycott products of companies that are complicit in Israel's violations of Palestinian rights.
> It is much more then I implied.
Is this an inverse form of motte and bailey argumentation? Are there any institutions associated with Israel that BDS would not cover? How can a disinterested person distinguish between a moral imperative based boycott and run of the mill anti-semitism (Baptist and Bootlegger problem)? Would a constitutional test for the Texas law fail if the petitioner's motivation were the latter or does it not make a difference?
Many people here seem baffled about why there are laws here in the US that require various people to sign anti-BDS agreements specifically mentioning the State of Israel or the Israeli government.
After all, BDS campaigns may seem rather silly.
Would it possibly matter if you stop buying Sabre Hummus?
But these campaigns can be effective (for their proponents). They make US citizens aware of the conditions they would not otherwise be aware of.
Since he's being forced to sign an agreement, the state of Texas is forcing him to hold a particular political position in order to work and get paid by the City of Houston.
His political opinion (and you can agree or disagree with it) is to boycott Israeli institutions as part of an international Boycott Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because he disapproves of the treatment of Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories. You can read about how Palestinians are treated in a recent Human Rights Watch report (just google, "Human Rights Watch Israel apartheid") and decide for yourself.
This seems to violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and this is what the lower courts have held. So while the right to "free speech" is not absolute (one can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater), you are free to hold (and talk about) any political views. And a state (or federal) entity cannot punish you for your thoughts and speech (outside of work, of course).
The reason this is important is that boycotts (and talking about and organizing them) have been a powerful tool for non-violent political action and have been used throughout the world since their origin in 1880's Ireland.
But why is this important now? If a state or federal agency can require employees to hold certain political views, they can create all sorts of requirements (via laws) for not only employment, but other benefits and or services they provide. Hope this helps.
316 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 416 ms ] threadIf you can't see that before spewing out your hot take we can't help you
From: https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-opposing-s-1-combati...
If you prefer, the "Jews for Peace" organization probably employ at least one Jew.
Boycotting Israel is a dog-whistle for boycotting Israeli Jews.
There are more people with Jewish ancestry in the United States than Israel. The state of Israel does not represent the Jews of the world.
Discrimination against blacks is illegal in the context of denying individuals things like employment, access to housing and medical care, shopping, etc. You have to show that the individual or business has specifically taken action in some way to deny one or more individuals their rights.
In fact, the same rules apply to discrimination based on religion, or national origin or background. So anyone who has discriminated against someone who is Jewish or from Israel is subject to similar liability.
But nowhere in any of these laws does it say that a business has to promise to never protest or disagree with the country that one of those groups come from. I have to hire people from France if they’re qualified, but I’m also allowed to protest the French government’s policies on basically anything.
If the law from this article was applied to, say, Saudi Arabia or Mexico, would we be comfortable supporting it?
Keep this in mind.
> but I’m also allowed to protest the French government’s policies on basically anything.
So are you allowed to protest the French government by boycotting French companies? Ie. not doing business with French people? The first half of your sentence is directly at odds with the second. How do you actually boycott France if not by applying the boycott to it's people?
The Israeli boycott isn't simply saying you don't agree with their government, it's actively boycotting companies run by Israeli Jews and not hiring Israeli Jews.
That's simply not true. The Texas law does not say anything about boycotts against Jews. And BDS is modeled after the successful Apartheid boycotts, which were boycotts of South Africa, not boycotts of companies run by White South Africans.
No, yes, yes and yes. It's hard to argue that's seriously different than apartheid ( except that black South Africans weren't generally confined to an open air prison, and expelled from their land for resettlement by whites).
2 - Israel is a Jewish state just like Italy is a Christian state, and Iraq is a Muslim state. So what, given all citizens have equal rights?
wrt apartheid claims, Israel is at war with both Gaza and West Bank. West Bank is partially occupied because there is no will on either side to come up with a permanent peace agreement. Gaza is in perpetual armed conflict with Israel as per Hamas(ruling party of Gaza) founding chapter, there is no peace between the two, only temporarily cease fires. Is blockade a valuable war tactic?
> wrt apartheid claims, Israel is at war with both Gaza and West Bank.
Not really, for Israel to be at war with them they'd have to recognise their independence, which they don't :) And there can't be a permanent peace agreement while Israel claims things Palestinians can't give them ( like the entirety of Jerusalem). A blockade is a valuable war tactic, dubious morally ( civilians suffer indiscriminately), but as mentioned before Israel is not at war with Gaza, and an open air prison with atrocious conditions, more resembling a concentration camp than a counter under blockade as previously known.
Arab Israeli citizens are second class citizens in many regards, and Palestinians are even below that.
And I'm sorry, are you insisting that there's no difference between an explicitly religious country like Israel or Iran, and a country that happens to have a majority of the population from a single religion?
Conflating the behavior of "Jews" with the behavior of the "State of Israel" is racist.
You just did that. He didnt. Neither did BDS.
> Virtually all Israeli companies are complicit to some degree in Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid.
From https://bdsmovement.net/get-involved/what-to-boycott
Last dropdown link at the bottom of the page.
Israeli != Jew.
There's plenty of Muslim, Christian and secular Israelis. Stop conflating religion and nationality.
We both know that calling a boycott of "nearly every American" company an "attack on the white race" would be a racist wolf whistle, and not a particularly subtle one.
Yours is no different.
It's clear that BDS is the precipitating cause of this law, and so it's reasonable to look at BDS as the way that this was put into place, but the law itself doesn't have anything to do with BDS, and so it's not relevant to talk about BDS in the context of its effects on people today.
I find BDS problematic, but saying you can’t boycott a group of businesses for political reasons is anathema to the spirit of free speech and protest. For the same reason,’it is perfectly fine to boycott Saudi Arabian businesses for their national political policies, even though in practice that means not doing business with Saudi Muslims.
Please, people are way more sympathetic towards Taiwan than to Israel or Jews in general. The US government basically ensure's Taiwan's safety and independence, if it were up to half the people in the US, Israel would cease to exist (and there's no need to say what would happen to the Jews who currently live there, no matter what you believe about their right to be there).
Israel's setup is quite similar.
> if it were up to half the people in the US, Israel would cease to exist
https://today.yougov.com/topics/international/articles-repor...
"Most Americans believe helping to protect Israel should be an important goal of American policy toward the Middle East. On this, Democrats (59%), Republicans (64%), and Independents (79%) agree. However, the latest Economist/YouGov poll underscores the differences in opinions about Israel between Republicans and Democrats."
That's a pretty far cry from what you're asserting.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.
You cannot discriminate against an Israeli on the basis of either. You can discriminate against Israel as a state.
> A part of the Immigration and Nationality Act, found at 8 U.S.C. section 1324b, prohibits employers from discriminating against individuals based on their citizenship or immigration status, or their national origin, during the hiring, firing, recruiting, Form I-9, or E-Verify processes.
> Employers cannot discriminate against individuals when hiring, firing, or recruiting based on the individual’s place of birth, country of origin, ancestry, native language, accent, or because they are perceived as looking or sounding “foreign.”
> Employers cannot discriminate against individuals when hiring, firing, or recruiting because the individuals are or are not U.S. citizens, or because of their immigration status or type of employment authorization. U.S. citizens, noncitizen nationals, asylees, refugees, and recent permanent residents are protected from this type of discrimination.
There are exceptions if you're, say, working on ICBMs.
PS: Since I got downvoted one more remark. Germany labels BDS as antisemitic [1]. So I think the goverment has any right to act. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/world/europe/germany-bds-...
My problem isn't with holding people responsible for their actions, but with never letting up on them. If people can't change and relieve the sanctions against them, they have no incentive to change. They might as well just keep doing whatever they were doing.
Can you list at least a handful of people who apologized but still got cancelled? I assume that means remaining cancelled too. It’s silly to call someone cancelled if they just have less work for a year but don’t go homeless or on welfare, or into debt, etc. in my opinion.
- He is allowed doing cancelling
- But someone else isn't allowed to do it
Strange..
- Taking out which Govt?
- Who is the he who is allowed to cancel? What is this person cancelling?
- Who is the some one else who is not allowed to cancel?
If the last is referring to the Govt and big authority. That’s not cancelling. That’s authority and/or Govt overreach.
- Taking out which Govt?
I mean by that three parties. His company let name it A. Some Israeli Company let name it B and Govt let name it C. So let's just say there are real humans behind A, B and C.
Now A is cancelling B (that is my understanding). In response C cancels A.
- Who is the he who is allowed to cancel? What is this person cancelling?
As I understand this person (A) is refusing service to Israeli companies. Actively participating at BDS. By that he is cancelling B.
- Who is the some one else who is not allowed to cancel?
I think now it should be clear. See above. It's C.
So my assumption was that he actively participated at BDS and refused services to other companies. If that is false I take my argumentation back. But if not I don't see his reason to complain.
Using a random example what is say Quinton Flynn supposed to do get uncancelled?
This Quinton Flynn example from a quick search does appear to show a legit example of being screwed over by reactionary bullshit. Or what people call “cancel culture”. I don’t believe the way you’re portraying his situation and the evils of “cancelling” are anywhere close to as bad as they actually are.
I feel for Flynn. His situation absolutely sucks. If in 2-3 years he still can’t get any work, yeah he got cancelled as the modern definition means. If he’s able to get work still soon. Then it isn’t cancelling. It’s getting screwed over with crappy reactionary people and unlucky bad rep even if it isn’t warranted. Something that has existed before this mobile and universal internet world.
I can think of one example of what I consider real cancelling off the top of my head. There’s almost no sympathy or care for the person though.
That’s 6. Looking up lists of cancelled people would turn up many more.
Even more so. The egregiousness of how reactionary, angry, and so sure of injustice occurring for many of these non-cancel cancelling makes it seem even more absurd.
Dave Chapelle being one of the most recent and hilarious examples. He’s still selling out every ticket. Netflix and other networks still want to pay him tens of millions.
Actual cancelled famous people seem to be the rare exceptions.
As someone not from the US, I have always wondered why does the USA have a "fixation" with Israel. Like, defending Israel, defending their culture and their religion, and going overboard to protect them from people that think anything "bad" about them.
It's very peculiar the way US culture "defends" Israelis, compared to any other country or culture in the world (why not Britons? why not Portuguese? why not Mexicans? or Nigerians or what not? ).
Or said in another way, something that has no place in a modern developed country. Religion should be an entirely private matter and shouldn't have anything to do with policymaking.
Republicans always like whatever keeps the war machine rolling.
As ever, your massive overgeneralisation is bound to generate false ironies.
for the record though, I don't care much about neither the US's culture wars nor for the attempts of Israel to travel two thousand years in the past. Both look like extremely dumb ideas but taking sides means only increasing the idiocy at hand.
It was also determined long ago that all ethnostates are stupid and dangerous and should not exist.
Fpr that matter, it was determined long ago that I should be king of the world.
It's just a question of whose determinations you happen to decide to accept...
> Considering Jews' unique history of persecution it would be pretty crazy to argue they are not a people, so they are not like white South Africans.
Wait, Jews are "a people" and Boers aren't? How did that happen?
The Boers are "a people" by any reasonably principled definition, and nonetheless South African apartheid was unacceptable. Representing "a people" does not give you a license to treat other people like shit.
... and you say "a people" like that's a good thing. In fact, the concept of "peoples" (nations, whatever you want to call them) is dangerous and destructive, and the (unfortunately natural and built in) human tendency to form attachments to arbitrary abstract groups is one of the top contenders for what's going to destroy the whole goddamned species.
> Creating "one democratic state" will rob both the Jews and the Palestinians of their right for self determination.
Only individual human beings have rights, not "peoples". Especially self determination.
The idea of group "self determination" is self-evidently moronic. To have self determination, you have to have a reasonably unified will and probably a reasonably unified mind. "Peoples" have neither.
> It will also in all likelihood create chaos,
Probably true. There is no good answer at this point. Things were already bad, and the foolish decision to create Israel really locked in the doom.
It would have spared millions of innocent deaths if Jews had a country during WW2. So maybe it's not always that stupid. And in fact, taking a whiff at the current state of things for Jews in the diaspora, I still think Jews should have a place of their own. I am not forecasting another holocaust, hell no, but it sure becomes harder to be openly Jewish in the West.
The whole Nazi project was precisely to create an ethnostate. The enthnicity they had in mind didn't have much of a historical existence, true, and neither did the genetic group they imagined to make it up. But what defines an ethnicity? They had a founding myth, and they definitely managed to generate some real "Aryan" self-identification in people's minds. What does any ethnicity, including Jews, have besides founding myths and shared self-identification? It seems to me that the Nazis either had as valid a "people" to work with as any other, or at least were well on the way to creating one.
And yet somehow I really can't work up any sympathy at all for the Nazi's "purification" project, or for the "Aryan people".
Speaking of "states for peoples", a whole lot of those innocent deaths were aided by other states' unwillingness to admit Jews who were trying to get away from the Nazis. It seems they also wanted to keep their countries pure for their own "peoples". Maybe if they'd been less concerned about having states "for their peoples", they'd have been more willing to take in the actual individual human beings who were about to be slaughtered.
For that matter, even after the war, creating Israel let the winners feel a bit better about themselves while still not, you know, letting too many Jews in. I don't know if not having to "take" Jews was a major motivation, but I've heard that some of their leaders at least thought about that.
Oh, and by the way, while the Nazis definitely had a special hardon for Jews, they killed a shit-ton of non-Jews, too. If making sure people have their own country is the method we're using to save people when a genocidal psychotic system takes over the place they're living, then it seems like maybe we have to create some more countries.
Should the Roma get a country? They're definitely a "people", and they were targeted on the basis of it. Should there be a gay country? OK, not a "people", but still a targeted group that's at very serious risk in a bunch of countries today, if that's the criterion you're using.
Or, better yet, why not just take the view that Nazis, or equivalent, don't get to run any countries? And why not put a big fence around that possibility by saying that countries shouldn't be built on ethnicity at all? Would it be so awful to have a system of administrative districts without "national identity"?
Maybe there's no way to get there. I fully understand that that's now how people work.
But I don't like the idea that the way to protect against ethnic violence is to feed and further legitimize the "this for our people only" tendency, to do things that generate stronger ethnic divisions, or to make your personal safety contingent on you being able to find a state that happens to consider you one of "its people".
Israel is in some important ways analogous to what the Nazis were trying to create. It is amazingly clueless for you to offer the Nazis as an example of why Israel should be around, when in fact they are an example of exactly why Israel should not be around.
The creation of Israel fed into and sustains exactly the phenomenon that you claim it's there to protect against. Having states for "peoples" is part of the problem. People identifying with either real or imaginary "heritages" or "cultures" or "races" or "tribes" or whatever is a bad thing. Building governments around it is a worse thing. That includes Israel. And you compound that when you suggest that the way to protect somebody from violence is to have a state that's in the business of protecting that individual's "people".
And, no, for the slower-minded readers, I am not claiming that anything Israel has actually done is the same as what the Nazis did.
You sound borderline anti semitic saying stuff like that. You have no idea how obtuse that is.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_disagreement
Is level 1 out of 6 the best you can do? If so, then that's lame.
Respond to the central point that GP made, otherwise you might as well not bother participating on HN.
In fact, I would have a hard time finding one Jewish friend who was even mildly Zionist.
Finally and most importantly Jews aren't responsible for your personal shortcomings.
--Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Iron Wall, (We and the Arabs) (1923)
While some aspects of Zionism were indeed troubling in today's standards, when push came to shove the Zionist leadership accepted partition to two states (in 1947).
How does quoting Jabotinsky from a century ago help us in solving this conflict? Unless your only point is that current Israel should be dismanteld.
"I am for compulsory transfer; I do not see anything immoral in it." --David Ben-Gurion to the Jewish Agency Executive, June 1938
''The cultivated land is probably 1 million dunam. According to international law, we cannot sell anything, so maybe we should buy from those Arabs who do not want to come back.... All we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam - cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands. Land of lesser quality should be sold to private or public sectors....At least, let us say that this confiscation is an exchange for the property the Jews from the Arab world lost when they immigrated to Palestine." --Bechor Shitrit, head of the settlement department of the Jewish National Fund, Ben-Gurion's Diary, 18 August 1948.
The Zionist movement, both its left and right-wing factions, collaborated with the Nazis in attempts either to save German Jewry or insinuate themselves into the good graces of Hitler in the event of German victory in the War.
How would a boycott destroy one of the most powerful military forces on earth?
BDS isn't trying to destroy Israel. It's only attempting to bring attention to the government's inhuman treatment of Palestinians.
Human Rights watch calls the situation in the OT "apartheid" (note the little ' A'). https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
B'Tselem Israeli Human RIghts group: https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid
Not all criticism of the Israeli government is antisemitism.
I personally found the article very interesting, but I’m not sure it belongs here on HN.
Nerds finding and discussing something intellectually interesting is literally the whole point of HN.
I don't like the ban but the argument is silly.
EDIT: I'm being rate limited on replies for some reason, I'd like to respond to some comments on here but I cannot. Mayhaps I will try again in a few hours.
What next? How about a MAGA state saying "You have to acknowledge that Trump won the 2020 elections to work with us"?
Wow, the comments in here are really opening my eyes to what HN actually is instead of what I thought it was.
Look at the BDS website. They basically equate all Israeli companies with the government. In addition, Israel guarantees the right of return (ie. citizenship) to all Jews. So while BDS claims they're not anti-Semetic, they apply their definitions broadly enough that it's not hard to see what the end result is...
I guess Xi Jinping should buy off Republican lawmakers to get such a law instituted.
Countries are not protected by that act.
Because ordinarily Americans would never have direct interaction with the state of Israel.
https://www.trade.gov/country-commercial-guides/russia-sanct...
You can do a lot more business with Russia than what BDS suggests you should do with Israel...
> Can U.S. persons do business with entities in North Korea?
> No. Unless authorized pursuant to a general or specific license from OFAC and/or BIS, Executive Order (E.O.) 13722 prohibits new investment in North Korea by a U.S. person and the exportation or reexportation, from the United States, or by a U.S. person, of any goods, services, or technology to North Korea. E.O. 13810 (“Imposing Additional Sanctions with Respect to North Korea”) does not modify any of those prohibitions.
It's quite clear a) that national origin is a protected class and b) that a) does not mean it's illegal to target a nation-state.
But you absolutely can do business with some companies in Iran and Russia, the two examples you put in your previous comment.
What if this law wasn't about boycotting but said "No contracts with Texas unless you pledge allegiance to Allah"
You don't have to actually worship Allah, you just have to say it for the contract to be valid. Any problems there?
You're not constrained by the First Amendment. Texas is.
The state is not allowed to discriminate based on arbitrary attributes of that contractor.
You’ll never find a place that won’t have these sort of divides unless you specifically go to a site for only your political views.
You do have a First Amendment right to not having your freedom of speech abridged by the government. Since 1925, that restriction has been incorporated, i.e. it applies to states like Texas. Government contracts, like laws, are restricted by the Constitution.
The term you're looking for is the "unconstitutional conditions doctrine" [1]. It's not black and white. But it will be difficult for Texas to argue that U.S. foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel is germane to soil volatility in the Gulf of Mexico.
[1] https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...
If a person is aware that he/she is waiving their rights, and is not some accidental waiver, the government is not being deceptive or coercive, the person is free to reject the offer from the government without sanction, and the person waiving their right has the capacity to understand that they are doing - then there is no (generally) constitutional violation.
In the context of employment or government contracts, the government does not guarantee employment to every person. The fact that a potential employee (for example) may be impoverished and desperate for a paying job does not make the government’s conditions for the job coercive, unless the government specifically created the person’s unemployment.
Yes, it is. The government refusing to do business with you solely because of First Amendment-protected speech would be a clear interference with that right.
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/05/09/Texas-anti-boycott-i...
This is not unprecedented among states in the U.S. Many states have banned government work and travel to other states and countries due to policy issues.
https://apnews.com/article/california-florida-lifestyle-trav...
Not only will the US government refuse to do business with you, they'll charge you with a crime.
They go against the market to bend over backwards for certain other groups of people: https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/grow-your-business/become...
This is not really bending over backwards, but they do need you to spend additional resources on other shit as well: https://www.employer.gov/EmploymentIssues/Federal-contractor...
Don't be surprised to find out that the federal government doesn't believe in the free market.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/57170576
Won't you think of the MBAs!
> America to miss out on giving money to Israel to give back to America
America[n tax payers] to miss out on giving money [as charitable aid] to [the apartheid regime controlling] Israel to [spend it at] America[n weapons manufacturers].
And in that case it becomes clear why directly from taxpayers to weapons manufacturers is not going to fly: it's too obvious and does not put the weapons where they can be (ab)used!
Israel has a lot of critics that are plainly against its existence, but that does not justify banning any dissent.
I am afraid of large powerful private companies - now and even more in future. They can fire you, reject providing services that are essential to function in a modern society - if your position on some topics is different from theirs. Now you cannot refer to the freedom of opinion - it is a private entity and they are free to decide whether they want to cancel or fire you.
When it comes to utilities, I absolutely agree. But not a specific email provider or social media site or video site, etc.
Also my friend went to a university where the official communication for course-work happened through Facebook. I'm not sure how someone without access to Facebook would be able to participate in that program.
That's absurd and a failure on the university's part. What country was this in.
Well this is moving the goal-posts isn't it? The comment I responded to said that the effect of being denied access to a certain social media platform is overstated. I would argue for media professionals it's basically a requirement.
> That's absurd and a failure on the university's part. What country was this in.
This was a masters program in Germany
Witholding access to course materials, unless a student enters a contract/relationship with a third-party (Facebook or otherwise), is coersion. I would certainly kick up a fuss: start politely with those running the course (who probably didn't give it much thought); go up the chain as necessary.
At each step, make sure the focus remains on the coersion: the University is retroactively adding terms (e.g. whatever is in Facebook's policies) to the contracts agreed during enrollment. It is threatening to impose penalties (e.g. lost marks) on those who don't accept such unilateral changes.
Do not allow the issue to get derailed into tangential concerns, especially money (e.g. price of the service, or provision of equipment/connections, etc.). Those things could be solved by signing a cheque; but would not address the real problem. If concrete reasons is really needed, there are a bunch to choose from that aren't easily solved (and are not under the University's control): for Facebook/Meta there are a whole bunch, from real name requirements, privacy concerns, non-consentual psychology experiments, etc. Personally I would just say I find the company, their products and their business practices unethical.
(I had a similar experience when my Physics course tried to make me use Microsoft Excel)
If I find myself agreeing with the average Redditor or Twitter user (god-forbid a blue check!) it’s usually a sign that something is missing from my thought process and I should shake things up a little.
If I was forced to change my email address, I might not be able to recover some accounts. Some don't support changing username (which is my email). I don't want to count the number of websites I'd need to update.
The only way corporations will take control of our society is if we let them. I am continually amazed by how much people let corporations and attorneys bully them. There is this pervasive attitude that they control everything and it is dangerous to fight back. If that attitude continues to prevail, then yes - that is when we will have serious problems.
I am not sure you have an accessibility case regarding a facebook group. It is accessible for individuals with disabilities, via the use of electronic aides such as screen readers. Accessibility does not mean, "I get whatever I want whenever I want." It means, "I can access this without my disability impeding that."
Not having facebook is not a disability.
I'm very, very confused by what you're saying.
But that is missing the forest for the trees - the specifics of this anecdote are one small point. Standing up for yourself is the bigger point. I could be 100% wrong about the accessibility in schools, but that doesn't change my larger wish - that we would all stand up and push back when we see problems... not just dismissively say, "well, we'd never win that fight, so don't even try."
I don't see a more accessible option. Facebook is as close to ubiquitous and universal as you can get, really. If someone cannot, not won't as the original poster said, but simply cannot access facebook, what other option is there? That means they have no smartphone, or internet access, at all. Therefore, there are no electronic options that exist. Physical paper mailers home? If they cannot afford a smartphone, what are the chances they have a permanent residence? Or, what for the parents who have no permanent residence. So that's not a solution. Next option - in person group meetings? Work, kids, health, transportation, any number of things exist that could be a barrier there. So what's the solution? That's not a flippant question, that's a real question. I don't see it.
Again, accessibility should be about ensuring everyone has the opportunity to access the goods and services in an equivalent way. Not about ensuring everyone gets to access the goods and services in the specific way they want to.
This all started with OP originally talking about not wanting a facebook. Not to sound too hateful, but part of living in society is understanding that certain personal concessions will have to be made. Like it or lump it, decisions have consequences.
Maybe I've gone too far off the path, but I think it's all related.
E-mail for instance: You need an E-mail account to sign up for Facebook, so that means E-mail's userbase is at least a superset of Facebook's. Since you need Internet for E-mail, then the user-base for a normal, Internet web site should be a superset of E-mail users. Keep looking for supersets until the effort spent reaching the next one doesn't make sense anymore.
You could try pushing back with a First Amendment complaint. Say you have a sincere and deeply held belief that using Facebook is wrong, and that forcing you to use it violates your First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court has held that beliefs do not need to be strictly religious in order to be protected. It's the same route anti-vaxxers take.
I still wouldn't hold my breath. You might win, but your children will already be in college by the time it's all sorted.
A lot of people who sell crafts and bespoke items will probably rely on access to various marketplaces and payment processors; and arguably the social media platforms could be considered essential for marketing. Drivers and people working delivery gigs would rely on their own platforms like Uber or Deliveroo, etc.
For personal use, I would be inclined to agree with you; many of the platforms are more of a nuisance than anything else.
We have a lot of examples in history when the institutions that are designed to be moral guides bend their principles to the ruling ideology: Catholic Church in Nazi Germany, Orthodox Church in Soviet & Putin Russia.
I think large companies tend to eagerly adopt any moral principles that bring them more customer, attracts more employees, helps to get government contracts, and avoid lawsuits.
A vaccine mandate is a non-starter only in the current poisonous US political environment. There is historical precedent for vaccine mandates in the US: polio. What else are reasonably careful policy makers to do if a very vocal minority has the ability to block any progress?
The mechanism here appears to be (the article itself is light on facts) a contract, same as would be with a private entity. The entity on the other end of the contract could be private, public or mixed. The rule/clause may originate in a contract between this entity and a 3rd party, or the entity's interpretation/implementation of a regulatory framework.
In regulated industries, the last version is ubiquitous. A bank, casino or whatnot will have a "compliance" function. There will be "regulatory/compliance" requirements, rules and clauses. It's never clear whether these are government rules, private policies, etc.
Boycotting Jewish companies (for being owned by Jewish people) is antisemitic, but the goal of BDS is boycotting Israeli companies over accusations against the Israeli government the same way e.g. the US sanctions Iranian companies over accusations against the Iranian government.
Even if the majority of them were, the defining issue for BDS itself is not doing business with Israeli entities. Not doing business is not armed conflict. For you to have a point, they would have to somehow using the boycott itself to aid in shooting up the place. That doesn't even pass the laugh test.
Why should the government be able to punish individuals who voice such opinions, excepting diplomatic or national security roles?
Do the recent reports on Israeli treatment of Palestinians go beyond criticism?
https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/27/threshold-crossed/isra...
What about B'Tselem's report? Is that beyond criticism?
https://www.btselem.org/topic/apartheid
Note that anti-semitism is very unlike racism against people of color in that it holds the enemy to be already ensconced in higher positions of power; sometimes (as you'll see in the Unz/Sailer kind of literature) it even holds Jews to have superior intellects.
(Sometimes a firm pro-Israel stance is grounded on a very weird conception of Christianity as closer to Jewishness than it really is. The New Testament is written in Greek, and whatever its ultimate truth is, it is expressed in the language of Greek philosophy.)
This is considered genocide in many other places (think of the Chinese practice of forcibly moving Han Chinese into an area they wish to control, the difference being the unwanted ethnicity isnt turned into stateless refugees).
The whole Israeli question is really too complicated for a HN comment. All I'm claiming is that the BDS movement claims a kind of moral certitude that's not only not sufficiently grounded, it doesn't try to be sufficiently grounded. And while I'm sure many support "global progressive movements" out of the goodness of their hearts, the fact that there is such a movement betrays something darker. Remember that I said "xor" -- the firm anti-Israel position is naïve xor malicious.
Then: you don't have to be "firmly anti-Israel" to see many of their crimes.
I agree, that's why I mocked your assertion that any dislike of Israel is due to ignorance, arrogance, or racial hatred. Thank you for immediately engaging in a whataboutist slander to defend your position, it's a great indication of your ability to have a discussion about this topic fairly.
The USA and Israel are both guilty of horrible atrocities that fairly allow reasonable people to hate them. They are not "naive or malicious" they just have a different point of view than you do.
It is an entirely ridiculous assertion from a zealot.
Many both-sidesisms are bogus, but this one isn't. There's enough horror to account for on, uh, both sides. (Isn't it amazing how we're conditioned to mock the phrase "both sides" now?)
If you've made up your mind about the openness of my own, then I suppose we're at the end of our conversation.
There's plenty of horror to go around here. Both parties have committed atrocious crimes, and they plan on continuing to do so indefinitely. (Israel pays lip service to a two-state solutions, while the policy on Arab leaders everywhere is "destroy Israel". But eh, words.)
By (financially!) punishing only one side in this mess, you're rewarding the other side. Are you that certain this is the righteous path?
That's nihilism that prevents anyone from being "righteous" as long as a single grain of evil exists. It's not a very practical way to engage a moral compass.
Claiming the Israeli government is actively and deliberately harming a group of people and defying international agreements to pursue distasteful goals is not a naïve view of international elations and doesn't require believing there is a meaningful category of "good" and "evil" actors.
The problem with the argument for the foundation of Israel (if we ignore the specific historical and religious claims for the area it is located in, because that's a whole can of worms) is that the nature of Israel is entirely different from the nature of any other post-colonialist state.
Usually how this works is that we have a population living in an area over a long period of time, then a (usually white European) population conquers the region and establishes its own settler government while its own population expands and the pre-existing population is treated as second class citizens or fully disenfranchised. Liberatory struggle is easily justified in a situation like this because in order to restore the rights and political power of the original population the new population must be removed (either physically, or at least from political power, but in effect this will often involve repossession of illegitimately claimed territory, capital and wealth). The consequence can appear as an ethnostate or Apartheid regime with the original colonizers temporarily becoming an apparent "underclass" until the original population has established a new power structure that can accommodate them without reverting to the previous system (e.g. because the previous ruling class still holds all capital despite having formally ceded its political power).
The problem with Israel is that this isn't how we got here. There was a small minority of Jewish people in pre-Israel Palestine and there were Arabs (and other groups) in pre-Israel Palestine, but there wasn't one group acting as a "colonizer". The groups were all already endemic and well-established. What happened instead is that some people holding claims to land sold their land to a group intending to found the state of Israel in that territory and with the help of international political and financial supporters a new nation state was established and non-Jewish people already living in the land were evicted by the people now claiming ownership over their land -- this process is in fact still ongoing. Additionally Israel being envisioned as a "Jewish nation" enacted policies granting non-Jewish residents fewer rights while actively promoting immigration and easy access to citizenship for Jewish people living in other countries. But as even some Jewish people have pointed out the Israeli government tends to favor "white Jews" over Jewish POC and e.g. heavily promoted Hebrew for political reasons despite Yiddish initially being far more widely understood and established.
So the argument for the legitimacy of the modern state of Israel (if you ignore the religious/historical argument or an argument of might makes right) hinges on how legitimate the original "sale" of Palestinian land to the Jewish settlers was, which is a question with no clear answer. And that's just the question of legitimacy, not even getting into any of Israel's behavior since that point.
Now, even if you think the original land claims justify the expansion of Israeli settlements into autonomous Palestine and the eviction of Palestinian residents in those areas, and even if you see no problem with the quasi-Apartheid second class citizenship of Palestinian Arabs in Israel, and if you don't think any of the claims of Israel being deliberately racist against non-white Jews are valid, there's st...
That does not mean that Israel can claim land on the west bank, it is a question completely detached from that. Otherwise Israel would of course claim as much as it can.
One could call Israel an Apartheid state for its citizenship system and focus on (esp. white) Jewish immigrants over resident Palestinian Arabs and one could call the displacement of Palestinian Arab an ethnic cleansing, but my point is that both of these topics are more complex than just being emergent properties of antisemitic conspiracy theories or a naïve view of international politics.
For example, it is factually correct that Israel has been continuously expanding its settlements and land claims into supposedly autonomous Palestinian territories: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/13786
Of course Israel does serve a special function to provide shelter from prosecution and this specifically but not exclusively for Jews. I could call the prosecution of Jews in Arab and other countries and ethnic cleansing too, but this does not provide anything constructive to any dialogue.
I think a lot of people want to see Israel purged from the region. It is an irrational hatred against Jews that fails to hide behind pretexts.
Jews from Europe that happen to be white or not are very rarely those that settle in the Westbank and I don't disagree that these settlements are illegal. But that doesn't invalidate Israels right to exist. Accepting this as a fact would leave the opposition to these policies with more options.
Sure, and you'll find that most people who genuinely criticize Israel on these grounds (rather than looking for an excuse to justify their antisemitism) would argue that we shouldn't fund those countries' defense budgets either.
> Of course Israel does serve a special function to provide shelter from prosecution and this specifically but not exclusively for Jews.
This isn't a politically neutral statement of facts, though. I think you'll find many people who criticize Israel for other reasons than being antisemitic to also support refugee rights and be pro-immigration.
The US state of Utah was essentially formed by Mormons as shelter against prosecution but as far as I know Utah doesn't give Mormons legal privileges, not to get into comparisons regarding the Native peoples that once lived on that land.
It should be obvious that it's a contentious argument that a) Jews need "their own" country to protect them from prosecution, b) Israel was a good solution for doing that and c) this purpose trumps all humanitarian concerns for Palestinian Arabs.
> I could call the prosecution of Jews in Arab and other countries and ethnic cleansing too, but this does not provide anything constructive to any dialogue.
I think it's absolutely legitimate to point out ethnic cleansings in other countries in the region when they happen. And you'll find plenty of news media having done exactly that, even if they mostly only care to point them out when the victims are "relatable" (e.g. Christian minorities in majority Muslim countries). The difference is that using words like "ethnic cleansing" or "Apartheid" or even expressing criticism of Israeli military bombings of civilian targets (or "terrorist targets in civilian areas" that just happen to be full of civilians because the terrorists use them as meat shields, if you think the distinction is important) is an easy way to be guaranteed not to work for any Western news media company ever again.
> I think a lot of people want to see Israel purged from the region. It is an irrational hatred against Jews that fails to hide behind pretexts.
Sure. I already acknowledged that a lot of antisemites use language critical of Israel to justify their antisemitism. It's also true that a lot of antisemites use language supportive of Israel to justify their own ethnonationalism, though. You'll find plenty of white supremacists use Israel (or Japan, although for different reasons) as an example when arguing for white ethnostates or a "Europe of sovereign fatherlands". They of course usually don't say the quiet part out loud (i.e. that they want all Jewish people to be moved into Israel) and "Jewish" isn't really an ethnicity, but you'll find some on the Israeli far-right all but agreeing with them on those points as well.
> But that doesn't invalidate Israels right to exist.
I think "right to exist" is a red herring. No country in history has existed continuously and permanently and within its same borders and with the same form of government. Look at a map of the US in 1776 and tell me this is the exact same country as today (not to mention how much of the constitution has effectively been rewritten since). Most national mythologies (especially in Europe) were made from whole cloth in the 19th century with the rise of nationalism. My own country, Germany, has fundamentally been reinvented at least five times since then (if you can even argue that the post-1990 federal republic is in any meaningful way "the same" as the German Empire).
I don't think any country has a "right to exist" but I think it's absurd to talk about countries having rights to do anything in the first place: even recognition as a country entirely depends on a country's ability to use violence (either through military power or eco...
I think this is exactly what happens.
They have apartheid in the lawbooks, but I think no US MSM channel goes as far to dare to say this... They dare say it about Arab countries (maltreatment of migrant workers). They've said it about South-Africa.
> You're reflexively labeled anti-Semitic and often castigated for it.
So? Freedom of speech is not freedom from criticism or reproach.
This is clearly not everyone in the US, but it's enough that if you're a business or public figure who makes noise about it, you'll be branded anti-Semetic by a particular "news-as-hatred" cable network and certain members of Congress.
They have no business doing that and this is absolutely ridiculous.
If I were a Texan, and I found out that my state government is potentially over-paying contractors based on a completely irrelevant criteria to the work, I would not be pleased.
You can "say" this all you want, but in fact states do not have this right: their criteria can't violate individual Constitutional rights.
If their criteria said "whites only" or "you can't support gay martiage" the issue would be the same: there is nothing special at all about which specific freedom the criteria violates.
I mean if it's relevant fine: like if the project is to provide security to Israeli diplomats by all means make this a hiring consideration, but for a contractor in Texas?
This is why the KKK gets to adopt highways. https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/05/us/georgia-kkk-adopt-a-highwa...
Your logic is deeply flawed.
Ironically, on almost every other issue, it should be decided at the state level, and it's the federal government that is unconstitutionally meddling,
What is there to hide?
What/where is the "particular legal clause? This article veers from there into a personal biography. Is it part of his contract, a local bylaw? What's the legality or legal history of such actions?
Sigh. So much journalism is just tweet + fluff.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/four-ti...
For example a similar law in a different state was found unconstitutional by a Circuit Court:
> The US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas heard the case involving Act 710, a statute that forbids state parties from establishing contractual agreements with companies that boycott Israel.
> The Court ultimately concludes that supporting boycotts of Israel is protected under the Constitution and that Act 710 violates First Amendment rights.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/eighth-circuit-state-law...
But these kind of laws are controversial and different courts have come to other conclusions.
It's a long article, but it's mostly an article about the person. Almost no information about the actual issue at hand. Where is the journalistic curiosity. How does the clause work? How many contracts is it in? Are there other boilerplate clauses that work like this? What about other states? What about other lawsuits. I assume a lone Houston businessman isn't the only affected party taking legal action.
It's terrible that reading articles on a topic doesn't actually inform you about it.
There has been a lot of legal analysis about this topic too. Most believe that these anti-boycott laws are unconstitutional and will (eventually) be struck down by the Supreme Court. But it may take years or decades before a final decision is made.
This alleged contract clause seems a lot like the sorts of nebulous "we reserve the right to back out without penalty if you do something not befitting our brand image" clauses you get when providing services for prestigious institutions but with a more government style legalese applied to it. Basically Houston doesn't want to potentially deal with the blow-back of a contractor is taking a particular stance on a particular political issue. It would be unsurprising if cities like Boston have similar clauses barring contractors from expressing strong anti-lgbtq or anti public employee union political sentiments. At the end of the day none of this really matters. The city will a ways terminate a relationship with a contractor if they cause political problems. The contract clause just makes the inevitable lawsuit slightly more uphill. Houston probably doesn't really care for the state's law on this issue so odds are they will likely never try and enforce these specific terms anyway.
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/85R/billtext/html/HB00089I...
The realpolitik move here is for Hassouna to include the clause so the bureaucrat evaluating his submission can check the box without sticking their neck out and then do what he damn well pleases. The state isn't gonna take him to court for the same reason the states you cheer-lead for only ever use their gun laws to secure better plea deals and never actually prosecute them in court.
It's quite clear that's not the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Constitutional_c...
What part of "the Court held that "content based laws...are presumptive unconstitutional" was unclear?
That's what caused Texas to turn around and revise the law saying it needs to be in contract boilerplate. And every city rolls their eyes and says "ok, whatever mom" and implements it. What do you think the odds that Houston a) wants to enforce the terms b) will actually decide to try and enforce the terms are.
Even unenforced laws can have a chilling effect, as well.
Chilling is the whole point of this law. He's presumably not an idiot and he figured that out as soon as he knew about the change. If he thought suing the state would actually jeopardize his income (suing the state creates a massive conflict of interest his government clients could easily use to justify cutting ties) he almost certainly wouldn't be doing it. In reality he knows how the people he does business with lean and knows they won't care or will think well of his lawsuit.
If he says "I hate Jews so therefore I won't do business with Israel.", then yeah - that's a big problem for the city.
You can argue that the current popular boycott is against Israel, but the US has had multiple waves of boycotts.
This law allows the US to move as one. ...to act as one. Which affords very significant leverage to our government in order to enact change - whether that's against China, Israel, Russia, South Africa, etc...
The jew friends I have are way more balanced and critical of Israel human right abuses than the christians, who seems to feel that criticizing Israel is the same as denying its right to exist.
There are further policies planned in a similar vein.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Heartbeat_Act
This is expected to change shortly, due to those very same "three appointees to the Supreme Court".
The assertion that "evangelicals have no power" in the US is simply silly.
I'm just pointing out that the Supreme Court is a ridiculous example of this, as they are arguably the most underrepresented group there.
Amy Coney Barrett may be Catholic, but she was heavily favored by evangelicals, with specific interest in overturning Roe v. Wade.
But it's not like Amy Coney Barrett is barely Catholic. She's been heavily involved in the church her whole life, and her career has been centered around a deeply Catholic university. She only represents Evangelicals in situations where their belief overlaps with those of the Catholic church.
Barrett is both deeply Catholic and part of an organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_Praise) that features aspects typically more in line with American evangelical Protestantism. The Catholic Church can be a surprisingly diverse group theologically; American bishops are frequently feuding with the Pope over issues like the death penalty and abortion.
American evangelicals didn't get in line behind Barrett and Kavanaugh on account of their Catholicism.
But I still tend to believe that if Evangelical Protestants were really the ones controlling who is nominated and confirmed to the supreme court more than anyone else, we'd see at least a single Evangelical Protestant on it.
Imagine if rather than gaining its independence from the UK, the USA instead of becoming its own independent country, was still called the United States of America, but over time, in practice it had become totally servile, dependent on, psychologically submissive and subjugated to the British aristocracy that rules the UK and Americans worshipped them as demigods.
Let me put it this way, those "evangelicals" it sounds like you are blaming are actually victims of a certain type as part of the whole abused become abusers cycle.
There is a scene in Til Kingdom Come, the PBS documentary that perfectly illustrates what is going on … people, utterly poor and destitute, in rural Kentucky having their children collect money, literally scraping together coins, to send it to Israel … and no Jewish person saying anything like "woah, hold on, you have nothing and we are immensely rich beyond your wildest dreams, you should invest that money in your own community" let alone maybe the Jewish community inverting things … to help those who are literally mentally subjugated to them like in Egyptian types where dirty slaves serve demigods rulers.
But I have said enough and do not mean to draw the ire of the demigods. Forgive me if I have offended your sensibilities, beneficent masters, please do not take away my fake internet points or muzzle my voice with a digital curse or vaporize my account.
I am talking about the culture, the people at large. I can't see no other segment of civil society more vocal and passionate about Israels defense than some groups of evangelical christians, and this Texas law is just an example of that.
Here’s the Texas info, for example:
Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed HB89, an act relating to state contracts with and investments in companies that boycott Israel, on May 2, 2017. The bill prohibits the State of Texas from contracting or entering into business with companies or entities involved in the BDS movement against Israel. The law ensures that public funds will not go to companies that participate in BDS.
In 2019, Texas started to divest $72 million worth of stock in the Norwegian financial services firm DNB ASA. Two state pension funds – the Employees Retirement System of Texas and Texas Permanent School Fund — own $68 million and $4 million, respectively, in stock in the company. This is the first action taken under the anti-boycott legislation.
In April 2019, a U.S. District Judge ruled in favor of Bahia Amawi, a former speech pathologist who sued the state over the law after she was fired from her job for supporting BDS. The court found “the statute to be a viewpoint-based restriction intended not to combat discrimination on the basis of national origin, but to silence speech with which Texas disagrees.”
In response, the legislature rewrote the language limiting the application of the law to companies with more than 10 full-time employees and contracts of more than $100,000 with the state. The governor signed the bill.
Notice, though, the stark difference between the legality of Texas’s own divestment and the firing of a Texas employee for an opinion. Plenty of states boycotting plenty of things; that’s normal. California bans official travel to 18 different US states (with limited exceptions to pursue taxes, and the like) over their lgbt-related laws, and CalPERS divests from oil and tobacco and the like.
When it comes to businesses, the US government reserves the right to institute international boycotts. Companies may not, generally speaking, boycott a country (or people from that country, etc) unless that country (or person) is being boycotted by the US.
There are mandatory reporting requirements that surround this. If you work in finance and you have not received training on this topic...
For more info: The Office of Antiboycott Compliance -- https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oac. From their intro:
"The Office of Antiboycott Compliance (OAC) within BIS is charged with administering and enforcing the Anti-Boycott Act of 2018, Part II of the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA), and the antiboycott provisions set forth in Part 760 of the Export Administration Regulations, 15 CFR parts 730-774 (EAR). These authorities discourage, and in some circumstances, prohibit U.S. companies from taking certain actions in furtherance or support of a boycott maintained by a foreign country against a country friendly to the United States (unsanctioned foreign boycott). U.S. companies must report to OAC their receipt of certain boycott-related requests for information designed to verify compliance with an unsanctioned foreign boycott. Prohibited activities include, inter alia, agreements by U.S. companies to refuse to do business with a boycotted country or with blacklisted persons for boycott-related reasons, furnishing information about any person’s business relationships with a boycotted country or with blacklisted persons, and implementation (by U.S. banking entities) of letters of credit that include prohibited boycott-related terms or conditions."
This would seem to be referring to boycotts instituted by nation states against other nation states that are friendly to the United States. It doesn’t seem applicable to a discussion about BDS.
That is far from clear and has not been settled by the SC. There is a federal amendment from 1977 to the Export Administration Act (EEA) that forbade American companies from participating in the boycott against Israel that the Arab League organized. However, since then the SC decided in favor of African American organizations that in the 1960's had organized boycotts against racist white shopkeepers. The SC ruled that political boycotts was protected free speech and participating in them a constitutional right.
Another counter-argument is that the boycott against Israel is not maintained by a "foreign country" but by the BDS movement and other grassroots organizations around the world. Furthermore, the boycott targets non-Israel companies doing business in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories just as much as it targets Israeli companies. Thus, the EEA may not be applicable at all.
In either case, the EEA doesn't entail an obligation of contractors to promise not to boycott certain countries to be awarded government contracts, which is what this (and other similar state laws) is all about.
...so this law makes sense.
You cannot negotiate with 100,000 small US businesses - but now the US can use this lever of control to help force Israel or other governments to change.
This also applies to China, Myanmar, South Africa, etc...
And yet both conservatives and liberals attack China and other alleged culprits for being censorious and not being "free" . This muzzling of alternative voices is not even specific to the US. A British professor was canceled/fired from Bristol University for remarks deemed critical of Israel:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-bristol-58765052
Lawsuit text:
https://www.cair.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Memorandum.p...
Although A & R’s boycott has not materially affected any of its business decisions through the present, A&R would refuse to buy an Israeli-sourced product were the opportunity to otherwise arise. Moreover, even if A & R was not boycotting Israel, it would refuse to certify that it would not boycott Israel for the duration of the renewal contract because, by signing, A & R would be compelled to speak in furtherance of a foreign government’s interests. But for the renewal contract’s certification requirement, based on the Anti-BDS Law, A&R is ready, willing, and able to enter into the contract and perform the agreed-upon engineering services for the City.
Where would the Civil Rights movement have been without boycotts?
I was once asked in an interview whether "The State of Israel had a right to exist". I replied that no state has a "right to exist" but that individuals have a right to self-determination. A human right that various international laws and conventions give both Israelis and Palestinians. Needless to say, I did not get that job.
BTW, there was a good documentary about this recently in DOC NYC: https://www.docnyc.net/film/boycott/
On what basis? Would a boycott of a protected class of persons be permissible?
But these laws would seem unconstitutional on the basis of the first amendment and precedent: (e.g. In NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. (1982).)
And the boycott movement is not about targeting individuals or classes of individuals. BDS encourages supporters to select targets based on their complicity in Israel's human rights violations, potential for cross-movement solidarity, media appeal, and likelihood of success.
In 1966 African Americans in Clairborne County, Mississippi, participated in a sustained boycott of white-owned businesses to put pressure on local government and business leaders to meet their 19 “Demands for Racial Justice.” The document, drafted by the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), laid out specific measures to advance the civil rights of African Americans, from desegregation of bus stations to asking that blacks be addressed as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” rather than derogatory terms such as “boy.”
Three years later, a group of white business owners sued the NAACP and its leaders, who had organized and enforced the boycott, for the economic damages they had suffered.
The Supreme Court ruled that the NAACP’s boycott was composed of elements protected by the First Amendment: speech, assembly, and petition. The Court also paid particular attention to the end goal of the boycotters.
In that case, Justice John Paul Stevens compared the NAACP boycott campaign with the railroad association’s public relations campaign in Noerr and concluded that the boycott was entitled to even greater protection.
I can see the similarity to Claiborne and the differences since in the case of Claiborne:
* there was a specific petition (of which I'm not aware in the case of the Israel boycott, but may exist)
* the boycott's target was a domestic entity as opposed to a foreign nation, which seems to go around traditional prohibitions against individuals conducting foreign policy
BOYCOTTS involve withdrawing support from Israel's apartheid regime, complicit Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions, and from all Israeli and international companies engaged in violations of Palestinian human rights.
https://bdsmovement.net/what-is-bds
Also, it's important to mention that the academic boycott if Israeli institutions is an important component of the BDS movement. A general boycott is necessary because there is a moral imperative to end the occupation and only outside pressure, like the pressure that was exerted on the apartheid regime in South Africa, can perhaps achieve this.
Why academia? Because Israeli academia is also a mouthpiece of the establishment and is used to enable Israel to present itself abroad as "the only democracy in the Middle East."
> It is much more then I implied.
Is this an inverse form of motte and bailey argumentation? Are there any institutions associated with Israel that BDS would not cover? How can a disinterested person distinguish between a moral imperative based boycott and run of the mill anti-semitism (Baptist and Bootlegger problem)? Would a constitutional test for the Texas law fail if the petitioner's motivation were the latter or does it not make a difference?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootleggers_and_Baptists
After all, BDS campaigns may seem rather silly.
Would it possibly matter if you stop buying Sabre Hummus?
But these campaigns can be effective (for their proponents). They make US citizens aware of the conditions they would not otherwise be aware of.
His political opinion (and you can agree or disagree with it) is to boycott Israeli institutions as part of an international Boycott Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign because he disapproves of the treatment of Palestinian people living in the Occupied Territories. You can read about how Palestinians are treated in a recent Human Rights Watch report (just google, "Human Rights Watch Israel apartheid") and decide for yourself.
This seems to violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and this is what the lower courts have held. So while the right to "free speech" is not absolute (one can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater), you are free to hold (and talk about) any political views. And a state (or federal) entity cannot punish you for your thoughts and speech (outside of work, of course).
The reason this is important is that boycotts (and talking about and organizing them) have been a powerful tool for non-violent political action and have been used throughout the world since their origin in 1880's Ireland.
But why is this important now? If a state or federal agency can require employees to hold certain political views, they can create all sorts of requirements (via laws) for not only employment, but other benefits and or services they provide. Hope this helps.