The California State Assembly voted 60-0 to approve the law, after it was passed in the state Senate in a 34-1 vote on August 24. Jerry Brown for a signature or veto by the end of September.
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The wording was altered following criticism that the proposed bill would infringe on constitutional rights, with all references to Israel being taken out.
Dexter Van Zile, a Catholic pro-Israel activist, who monitors and analyzes the Christian media for the Committee on Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) said that “the Lutheran Church has an outrageous obsession with Israel”.
Following passage of the IL bill previous year, legal expert Eugene Kontorovich said that the measure reflected an understanding that “BDS is not like the civil rights protests, as its supporters love to claim, but rather more like the anti-Jewish boycotts so common in Europe in the 20th century, and in the Arab world until this day”.
Opponents of the bill are skeptical that it would be significant.
Jonathan Schanzer, vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, outlined at a congressional hearing in April how members of a network that used to fund Hamas have become the driving force behind the BDS campaign in the United States through the group American Muslims for Palestine. Bill Monning said. “So we have a bill on the floor that seeks to affirm laws that already exist and people are held accountable for already”.
David Mandel, an attorney active in the California-based Jewish Voice for Peace, told the Jewish Journal that the legislation was not meant to have a significant practical effect, but rather to “try to make a political point, to intimidate people, to send a message”. The Anti-Defamation League highlighted complaints it received about anti-Semitic rhetoric by both students and professors at, among others, Vassar, Oberlin, UCLA, and Northeastern. In June, New York Governor Chris Cuomo signed an executive order prohibiting the state from doing business with any entity that boycotts Israel.
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Proponents of anti-BDS legislation say that it is acceptable for a state or city to make stipulations as to which companies they do business with and that the laws do not limit free speech. The goal of BDS is to end the 48-year Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, including the ever-expanding illegal Jewish settlements, and to recognize the Palestinian refugees’ right of return.
