
Ban on Boycotting is a Gift to Trump, Threat to Jews.
Dear Senators Gillibrand and Schumer,
I’ve volunteered many hours for your campaigns. Senator Gillibrand, I applaud you being the best Democrat in the Senate’s resistance to Trump. Senator Schumer, I applaud your leading Democrats away from collaboration with Trump. When you’ve supported things I disagree with, I’ve disagreed with you. I’ve also reasoned with people on street corners when I thought they were unfair to you, and in many cases succeeded in winning their support for you.
I am in utter shock to see that you are sponsoring the Israel Anti-Boycott Act S720, a bill that is using my name and my family’s names and histories as Jews and protection of us to begin to curtail, perhaps forever, the most enshrined right of all Americans. No matter where one stands on BDS, supporting such a bill impacts our nation and the lives of many in the world in several ways:
1It sets a dangerous legal precedent for Trump and Republicans to use to make other 1st amendment protections punishable by law. By introducing this crack into our constitution, you’re allowing them to place a wedge in it for generations to come. You will be creating an opportunity for a permanent and sustained attack on the one core value that every single other American value is hinged upon.
2 While some use BDS to further anti-Semitism, boycotting alone is not anti-Semitic. Disagreeing with Israel is not alone anti-Semitic. You cannot oppose Trump at home, and still empower Israeli’s own version of Trump and white nationalists (Extreme Right in Government, and Settler Movement). When you empower them, you empower a global rightist movement. You empower Trump. Le Pen. And worse, you empower the recruitment of terrorists who are a danger to us all, Muslim, Jewish, Christians, everyone.
3 This will put Jews in crosshairs. Americans, even the ones who disagree with you and me on almost every issue, vehemently agree to defend free speech. When it becomes clear that it was Democrats making an Israel-only exception to free speech, the cost to Jews here and worldwide will only further anti-Semitism.
4 Palestinian suffering is a daily nightmare. It is administered by some of the most anti-Democratic right wingers in the world. And taken advantage of for terror recruiting all over the world. It lays the environment where within Palestinian society, might is right, no matter where it comes from in the name of self defense against hopelessness. It doesn’t have to be this way. Six former Israeli security leaders have voiced opposition to the occupation on security grounds alone. (See Israeli-made documentary שומרי הסף “Shomrei HaSaf” aka The Gatekeepers in their own words, their own warning to Israelis). Former Prime Ministers have warned against continued occupation because it would force Israel to choose apartheid to sustain (their word, not just Jimmy Carter’s).
5 The occupation puts, at risk forever, the fate of Judaism. Our shared rich history is under attack. It cannot survive the moral pretzels right wing administrators of Palestinian suffering bend it to. Jewish youth are fleeing our culture and it breaks my heart. I want the Judaism I grew up with. The one that we practice when we “pray with our feet” at rallies as Jews did with Dr. King. Some paying with their lives. And for boycotts. The one I’m proud to hand down to my daughter. Not the one that is threatened, with this bill, to be linked with the a SCOTUS-bound challenge to our Democracy. A challenge that will rest upon Trump appointees siding with you. Trump. Appointees. Siding. With. You.
6Had it not been for the power of boycott, me and my family would have not been able to find refuge in America. The boycott and protests were unpopular at the time. And could have easily been banned under some seemingly good intentions without the clarity of time.
Please talk to us. Talk to Jews and others in New York State who oppose this. Hear us out. Find thousands of Jewish youth and millennials at IfNotNow. Find 25 years worth of Jewish advocates in NY at Jews for Racial & Economic Justice. Not only on the progressive left. Find the masses of Jewish agencies, rabbis, and leaders who spoke out to oppose Israel’s own ban of travelers who support boycotting the occupation including the American Jewish Committee.
We will not stand by on this. This bill is linked to our well being and the well being of our loved ones and the future of this nation of love we are building.
Sincerely, Rafael Shimunov
