Bahia Amawi is a language specialist who helps autistic and speech-impaired children at elementary schools in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. Essential and noble work, you may think. Nevertheless, she was fired by the school district that employs her.
Amawi's contract is renewable annually, and this year the school district added a clause to the contract that requires teachers and other employees to pledge not to boycott Israel.
This “oath” is now part of the Texas Government Code. Anyone who wishes to work, or keep their jobs, with the Texas government may not “penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations specifically with Israel, or with a person or entity doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territory.”
That last phrase is significant. Texas considers unacceptable even the boycott of businesses in illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, putting it at odds with international law and with the vast majority of the international community.
Nor is this policy confined to Texas, the stereotypical Wild West; 25 US states have passed such anti-boycott legislation, or have issued executive orders targeting the boycott support networks, and other states are in the process of doing so. At the federal government level, the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act would fine and imprison those who boycott Israel.
Nevertheless, Texas is at the forefront of criminalizing support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS). In the Texas town of Dickinson, which was devastated by Hurricane Harvey last year, hurricane victims were asked to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel in exchange for life-saving humanitarian aid. In other words, displaced residents were told that the meager supplies they were about to receive hinged on their support for the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. US democracy is in a sad state when the interests of a relatively small, distant country are the centerpiece of US government policies.
If firing teachers and making humanitarian aid conditional on taking a political stance occurred in China, for example, Washington would lead an international campaign condemning Beijing’s intransigence and violation of human rights.
Ramzy Baroud
Israel’s supporters are working with influential lobby groups, not only in Washington but also at state and even city level, to make the boycott of Israel punishable by law. Many US politicians could not care less, and few even truly understand the nature of the debate about BDS, but they appear willing to violate the sanctity of their own constitution and democracy to win favors from the lobby groups, or at least avoid their wrath.
The anti-BDS campaign in the US began in earnest a few years ago. Unlike BDS’s own tactics, it avoided grassroot efforts, and focused instead on quickly creating an official body of legal work that places boycotters of Israel in the dock.
Although the hastily composed legal language has been challenged, and at times reversed, by civil society lawyers and organizations, the Israeli strategy has managed to place BDS supporters on the defensive.
That limited success can be attributed to powerful friends of Israel who have generously and forcefully responded to Tel Aviv’s war drums. The Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson took the helm of leadership. He established the Maccabee Task Force, which raised millions of dollars to fight what Israeli officials define as an existential threat to Israel and the delegitimization of the country as a Jewish state.
A country that violates international law and UN resolutions, practices racism as a matter of course, defends racial segregation and builds apartheid walls deserves nothing but complete boycott. That is the minimum level of moral, political and legal accountability required of the US and other countries obliged to honor and respect international law. The US, however, behaves in the same way as countries that Washington relentlessly attacks for undemocratic behavior and violation of human rights. If firing teachers and making humanitarian aid conditional on taking a political stance occurred in China, for example, Washington would lead an international campaign condemning Beijing’s intransigence and violation of human rights.
Many ordinary Americans have yet to realize how the US submission to Israel’s political will is affecting their everyday lives. But with more and more such legal restrictions, they will soon find themselves fighting for basic political rights that, like Bahia Amawi, they have always taken for granted.
Sure, Israel may have succeeded in coercing some people into not openly supporting BDS, but it will eventually lose this battle as well. Muffling the voices of civil society rarely works in the long term, and the anti-BDS campaign, now penetrating the very heart of the US government, is bound eventually to resurrect a nationwide conversation.
Is protecting Israeli apartheid more important to Americans than preserving the foundation of their own democracy? That is a question that every American, regardless of how they feel about a distant Middle Eastern conflict, must answer, and urgently so.
- Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. Twitter: @RamzyBaroud
