The Anti-Semitic BDS Movement Advocates Illegal Discrimination
By David French
July 18, 2019 3:59 PM
Yesterday, in a rather stunning feat of what looks like malicious trolling, Representative Ilhan Omar co-sponsored a resolution designed to support the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against the state of Israel. The resolution itself is clever. It doesn’t mention Israel, and is crafted as an ode to free speech. Its key operative provision merely “affirms that all Americans have the right to participate in boycotts in pursuit of civil and human rights at home and abroad, as protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.”
Well, yes. Free expression is free expression. Individual anti-Semites have just as much a constitutional right to boycott Israeli products as individual racists have a constitutional right to refuse to patronize black-owned businesses. The fact that the Constitution protects such conduct doesn’t render it any less repugnant, and lest you doubt the underlying intention of Omar’s actions, she made it very clear in an interview with Al-Monitor that the resolution was an “opportunity for us to explain why it is we support a nonviolent movement, which is the BDS movement.”
Supporters of BDS, however, must reckon with some inconvenient facts and some rather important laws: The movement’s anti-Semitism often leads it to advocate violations of the law.
Before I came to National Review, I served as a senior counsel at the American Center for Law and Justice, and we intervened directly to inform BDS-supporting institutions of both the movement’s anti-Semitic roots and its unlawful conduct toward Israeli students and academics.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/...iscrimination/