[CTC] Lawmakers Are Using Trade Rules to Blacklist Critics of Israel

[Manuel Perez Rocha]

*sorry for crosspostings....*
http://fpif.org/lawmakers-are-using-trade-rules-to-blacklist-critics-of-israel/
Lawmakers Are Using Trade Rules to Blacklist Critics of Israel

Legislation to fast track new trade pacts specifically targets supporters
of the BDS movement against the Israeli occupation.

By Rachel Ida Buff <http://fpif.org/authors/rachel-ida-buff/>, June 24,
2015.
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In 1952, Abner Green — leader of a civil rights group called the American
Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born — served six months in
prison for refusing to cooperate with federal investigators who were spying
on progressive civil rights organizations.

A longtime anti-racist activist and advocate for the rights of immigrants,
Green was sentenced under the McCarran Act of 1950, which created a
“Subversive Activities Control Board” to scrutinize the activities of
organizations and individuals suspected of association with communism.

When Green was released from jail, he found the supporting membership of
the ACPFB greatly reduced. Many other civil rights organizations were
forced to close their doors amid the chilling effects of McCarthyism.

In her acclaimed book, *Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the
African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955*, Carol Anderson
traces the ways that anti-communists cast opponents of segregation as
subversive. In order to survive in this climate, rights advocacy
organizations were forced to adopt a *civil rights*, rather than *human
rights*, framework. Anderson argues that the consequences of this shift
ultimately undermined the impact of civil rights victories, allowing for
the persistence of profound racial inequality long after the high water
mark of the movement.

This Cold War shift finds many parallels in the contemporary debate over
foreign policy and free trade. More than half a century after Green’s
incarceration, public discussions about the relationship between the United
States and Israel are impeded by allegations of bigotry and
disloyalty. Supporters of the Israeli government in particular often equate
criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, narrowing the possibilities for
civil debate.

This narrowing particularly truncates progressive conversations around the
global human rights activism represented by the movement for Boycott,
Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel to protest its militaristic
policies. Critics fume that the movement is anti-Semitic, much as FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover worried that Martin Luther King Jr.’s critique of
racial segregation made him “anti-American.”

Sheldon Adelson <http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/adelson_sheldon>,
a billionaire GOP super donor and staunch supporter of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recently launched a “Campus Maccabee”
initiative to combat increased activism around the BDS movement on college
campuses in the United States. He says it’s to protect Jewish students from
anti-Semitism. But all students have the right to free speech, and advocacy
and boycotting are constitutionally protected activities.

Legislative activism against BDS has a similarly chilling effect, both on
civil liberties and on global movements for human rights. Hitching their
political wagons to regressive “free trade” agreements such as the
Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, uncritically pro-Israel lobbyists like
AIPAC have taken aim against companies that comply with the global movement
to boycott Israel and its illegal settlements in the West Bank by making
trade contingent on opposition to BDS. This is a decidedly McCarthyist
approach.

The “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority bill recently debated in
Congress contains provisions that would make
<https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr825/text> discouraging BDS a
central objective of U.S. trade policy. The bill includes language
prohibiting “state-sponsored unsanctioned foreign boycotts against Israel
or compliance with the Arab League Boycott of Israel by prospective trading
partners.” Such proscriptions are likely to accompany any future version of
the TPP and other pacts.

The related Trade Facilitation and Enforcement Act, versions of which have
now passed the House and Senate, also discourages the adoption of BDS
tactics, asserting that
<http://www.gop.gov/bill/h-r-644-trade-facilitation-and-trade-enforcement-act-of-2015/>
“among
the principal U.S. trade negotiating objectives for trade agreements with
foreign countries are to discourage actions to boycott, divest from, or
sanction Israel.” Further, in language redolent of McCarthyism, the bill
“requires the President to report annually to Congress on politically
motivated acts of boycott against, divestment from, and sanctions against
Israel.” Effectively, this bill authorizes the State Department to create a
blacklist of companies as well as individuals that have adopted non-violent
sanctions against Israel.

Current legislative proscriptions against the global BDS movement represent
an assault on civil liberties. Suppressing BDS is, to borrow a McCarthyist
phrase, simply un-American. In this case, it also advances the
anti-egalitarian, pro-corporate agenda of “free trade.”

By outlawing a key non-violent tactic for political change, the
proscription against BDS adds to the potentially chilling impact that pacts
like the TPP will have on global movements for human rights. “Free trade”
agreements work to delimit the power of grassroots movements for labor,
environmental, and human rights.

At the state level, meanwhile, there are reportedly
<http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/South-Carolina-becomes-first-US-state-to-take-action-against-anti-Israel-boycotts-405120>
18
anti-BDS bills underway. State legislatures in Indiana and Tennessee have
passed anti-BDS resolutions, while bills passed in South Carolina and
Illinois — and proposed in Pennsylvania and New York — prohibit state
entities from investing in companies that boycott Israel or its settlements.

In his work for the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign
Born, Abner Green sought to defend a vision of human rights that extended
beyond the borders maintained by nation states. Similarly, the global BDS
movement opposes Israeli militarism and occupation, advocating Palestinian
human rights. This is a strategy well worth consideration and open debate.
Contemporary sanctions against the BDS movement represent a repressive
response to this global vision of justice and decency.

*Rachel Ida Buff is the co-Coordinator of Milwaukee Jewish Voice for Peace.
She teaches history and comparative ethnic studies at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her book, Fighting Deportation: the American Committee
for the Protection of the Foreign Born and Immigrant Rights Advocacy,
1932-1982, will be published by NYU in 2016.*
Manuel Pérez-Rocha
Associate Fellow
Institute for Policy Studies
*Celebrating 50 years of turning ideas into action! *
Cel. 240-838-6623
www.ips-dc.org
http://www.ips-dc.org/issues/trade/
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