American Muslim Civil Rights Group Attacks Anti-BDS Legislation

Yesterday’s issue of the I for Friday, 11the January 2019, reported that CAIR, an American civil rights organization defending Muslims, has challenged the local legislation in Maryland banning the state authorities from dealing with firms boycotting Israel. The article, entitled ‘Rights Group Sues State Over Israel Boycott Law’, by Michael Kunzelman, ran

A Muslim civil rights group says that an order in Maryland barring state agencies from signing contracts with businesses that boycott Israel is a violation of First Amendment.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) has launched a lawsuit that seeks to block the state from enforcing an executive order that Governor Larry Hogan signed in 2017 forbidding contractors from boycotting Israel.

The US Muslim group claims the order amounts to an un-constitutional attack on the First Amendment rights of groups supporting the Palestinians. Cair’s lawyer, Gadeir Abbas, says 25 other states have enacted measures similar to Maryland’s, through legislation or executive orders.

The group has sued Mr Hogan and state attorney general Brian Frosh on behalf of software engineer Syed Saqib Ali, a former state legislator, who claims that the order bars him from government contracts because he supports boycotts of businesses and organisations that “contribute to the oppression of Palestinians”.

“Speech and advocacy related to the Israel-Palestine conflict is core political speech… entitled to the highest levels of constitutional protection,” the lawsuit says.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hogan’s office said: “We are confident our executive order is completely consistent with the First Amendment and will be upheld in court”. (p.25).

It’s about time laws banning local government from working with firms boycotting Israel were challenged and overturned. They are a clear infringement of civil rights. These laws, and an attempt to pass similar legislation in Congress are an attempt to outlaw criticism and protest against Israel under the spurious guise of tackling anti-Semitism. This is despite the fact, as Harry Tuttle amply showed on his Twitter stream the other day taking Rachael Riley’s specious wails of anti-Semitism apart, many of the leaders and supporters of the BDS and other movements critical of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, are decent, self-respecting secular and Torah-observant Jews. This includes people who either survived the Holocaust themselves, or had parents who did, and who lost relatives in the horror. People, who have suffered real anti-Semitism, instead of using it to try to discredit even the mildest criticism of the state of Israel and its military.

The anti-BDS legislation has already resulted in more than one terrible injustice against firms and employees. Last week or the week before an Arab woman in a Texas school was sacked because she refused to sign an agreement behind her and other staff from criticizing Israel or supporting the Palestinians. The woman was speech therapist, whose skills are obviously needed by the school. She also wasn’t a Palestinian. None of the reports of her sacking suggested that she was any sort of genuine anti-Semite. She was sacked simply because she insisted on her right to criticize Israel for its savage maltreatment of people of the same ethnicity and religion as herself.

The attempt to stifle criticism of Israel by libeling those who do as anti-Semitism is increasingly being attacked and rebutted in its turn. Tony Greenstein on his blog today put up a piece about how the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and Birmingham Holocaust Education Council have been seriously embarrassed by their attempts to refuse the veteran Black civil rights activist Angela Davis the Fred Shuttlesworth Award for her human rights work. This is, I assume, Birmingham, Alabama, the centre of civil rights activism in America, rather than our Birmingham over here. Davis is a civil rights activist and a former Black Panther. She was first recommended for the award, but the BCRI then withdrew it following a letter of complaint from the B.H.E.C., who said they were concerned about her support for the Palestinians and the BDS campaign. The result was public protests by civil rights groups against the decision. The city council immediately published a resolution supporting her. Civic, religious, educational, legal and business leaders also announced their support, and that they were going to hold a special day to honour her, culminating with an event in the evening, ‘A Conversation with Angela Davis’. The chairman, vice-chairman and secretary of BCRI resigned, and the Holocaust Education Centre has backpedaled from their letter, claiming that they didn’t intend it to be taken as it was. The whole affair has spectacularly backfired.

Greenstein in his comments about this affair concludes

The Zionist attempts to humiliate and ban Angela Davies and the reaction to them are a sign of the increasing weakness of political Zionism in the USA. Following on from their inability to promote a Bill in the Senate making support for BDS akin to a crime and the recent election of Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, a supporter of BDS, the Zionist hold is beginning to weaken in the USA as the Jewish community itself becomes more divided. For this we can thank, at least in part, Donald Trump. Indeed according to Netanyahu, Evangelical Christians are Israel’s best friends. For American Jews that isn’t true.

See: https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/01/zionist-attack-on-angela-davies-symbol.html

I’ve seen it reported elsewhere that the number of Jewish Americans going on the Israeli state-sponsored heritage tours of Israel has fallen by 50 per cent. Coupled with the fact that one third of the Israel firms operating in the Occupied Territories have closed, this shows an increasingly large section of the American Jewish community is not supporting Israel because it, like many non-Jews, is sick and tired of the Israeli state and military’s persecution of the Palestinians. Which also has a downside. We can expect the Zionists in America, Britain and elsewhere to increase their efforts to criminalise or discredit reasoned opposition and criticism of Israel by screaming that it’s all anti-Semitic.

Undoubtedly Davis was able to confound her libelers and abusers because she is such a prominent figure in the American civil rights movement. Just as the British Labour party was embarrassed, and had to reverse its decision to expel the very well respected Israeli mathematicians and pro-Palestinian activists, Moshe Machover, after he was smeared as an anti-Semite. Unfortunately, there are thousands of lesser people, who aren’t so lucky. People like Mike, Martin Odoni, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone and so many, many others.

But hopefully this, and CAIR’s challenge to the odious Maryland anti-BDS legislation, will be the beginning of the collapse of the Zionists’ efforts to smear and defame decent people.

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