A controversial anti-boycott Israel bill in Maryland has been amended to remove financial penalties and the prohibition on public funds to groups that support boycotting Israel, according to activists in the state.
The original legislation would have prohibited the spending of public funds–for travel expenses or departmental membership fees-on academic groups that support the boycott of Israel. If schools violated that provision, aid to state universities would be cut by three percent.
But a new, amended version of the bill, published by a coalition of groups fighting against the anti-BDS legislation, removes the threat of financial sanctions and erases the language prohibiting state funds from going to academic groups that boycott Israel. The latest version was announced by the Keep Free Speech in the Free State coalition, which represents an array of civil liberties and Palestine solidarity groups working to defeat the bill targeting the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
At the same time, the Maryland legislation now condemns the BDS movement as “a discriminatory and racist movement,” paving the way for the state to become the first to go on the record as labeling BDS as prejudiced. The coalition notes that if passed, the bill would effectively “label Archbishop Desmond Tutu”–the South African anti-apartheid activist and current supporter of BDS against Israel–“a racist.”
So while the removal of the financial penalties is a victory for the Palestine solidarity and civil liberties groups that fought against it, the fight is not over. The Keep Free Speech in the Free State coalition in the state calls the language “unacceptable” and continues to mobilize to kill the bill. A resolution condemning the ASA’s boycott of Israel could have a chilling effect on future moves by academic groups to join the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.
The moves come a week after the co-author of the Senate resolution, Mary Conway-Carter, said that she plans on striking the financial penalties from the legislation.
Meanwhile, two Maryland elected officials –Delegates Kumar Barve and Mary Washington–who had originally signed on to the original legislation have reversed positions. But it’s unclear at the moment what their take on the new bills will be.
Barve is the Democratic majority leader of the House of Delegates, while Mary Washington is another Democrat in the House. In an e-mail passed onto me from the Keep Free Speech in the Free State Coalition, a staffer from Barve’s office said, “although the delegate co-sponsored HB 998 (Public Higher Education- Use of Funds- Prohibition), he has decided to vote against it if it reaches the House floor.” And the blog Maryland Juice, run by political consultant David Moon, reports that the office of Washington said that she “is no longer supporting HB 998 and has asked to be removed as a cosponsor.”
The Maryland effort is one of a series of state bills written in reaction to the American Studies Association’s decision late last year to boycott Israeli academic institutions due to their complicity in the abuse of Palestinian rights.
Oh, what a Wonderland that zionism has turned the world into, so that an ethno-religious exclusivist ideology like zionism once properly deemed by the UN as racist no longer deemed so by that same group (thanks, pressure on small weak nations by the zionist-controlled US government!!!), and yet the fight against that ethno-religious exclusivist ideology is slurred as racist. Down is up and up is down.
Well, I guess if hating Murder/Ethnic cleansing/Oppression/Theft/Collective Punishment and a plethora of other crimes against Humanity makes me a racist then so be it.It,s not as if I haven,t worked hard enough for the title.Does that mean I am an Anti semite and Jew Hater as well???.
Where do I get my diploma.
from the amended legislation:
A very troubling statement in its entirety, or as I slice and dice it.
Is there some sort of standard in the Maryland legislature in regard to definitions of terms? I know that is very important when crafting criminal and administrative statutes, but how about in context of legislation like this?
Non-Zionism and anti-Zionism are, in most cases, not racist. BDS isn’t either. And Jews are not a race per se. I never have thought of any of the Jews I have known or know as different from me racially because of her or his faith or cultural heritage.
I could convert to Judaism beginning right now. I’m mostly Norwegian. Would that change my race? No. Would my race be different after conversion, depending upon whether I was then pro-militant expansionist Zionism, neutral to the practice, or against it?
This legislation, even as amended, is atrocious.
I wonder how long the US will hold out against justice compared to the rest of the world.
The deeper organized Judaism goes into this kind of thuggery, the more serious the long term damage. Zionism isn’t worth it.
BDS is just another facet of the Anti-Semites to create another Holocaust (along the lines of Jack Ruby’s argument fingering the John Birch society and a Texan)
______
Unfortunately, Chief Earl Warren, had you been around 5 or 6 months ago, and I know your hands were tied, you couldn’t do it, and immediately the President would have gotten ahold of my true story, or whatever would have been said about me, a certain organization wouldn’t have so completely formed now, so powerfully, to use me because I am of the Jewish extraction, Jewish faith, to commit the most dastardly crime that has ever been committed.
Can you understand now in visualizing what happened, what powers, what momentum has been carried on to create this feeling of mass feeling against my people, against certain people that were against them prior to their power?
That goes over your head, doesn’t it?
Chief Justice WARREN. Well, I don’t quite get the full significance of it, Mr. Ruby. I know what you feel about the John Birch Society.
Mr. RUBY. Very powerful.
Chief Justice WARREN. I think it is powerful, yes I do. Of course, I don’t have all the information that you feel you have on that subject.
Mr. RUBY. Unfortunately, you don’t have, because it is too late. And I wish that our beloved President, Lyndon Johnson, would have delved deeper into the situation, hear me, not to accept just circumstantial facts about my guilt or innocence, and would have questioned to find out the truth about me before he relinquished certain powers to these certain people.
..
Mr. RUBY. I am sorry, Chief Justice Warren, I thought I would be very effective in telling you what I have said here. But in all fairness to everyone, maybe all I want to do is beg that if they found out I was telling the truth, maybe they can succeed in what their motives are, but maybe my people won’t be tortured and mutilated.
http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/ruby_j1.htm