Arizona lawmakers melt down over movie screening

Let’s start in Arizona where a controversy has been ignited over legislators being invited to watch a movie about legislation.

The movie Boycott was recently screened at the Arizona capitol, an event organized to provide deeper context for legislators. It’s a 2021 documentary directed by Julia Bacha that follows BDS legal battles in three states. Bahia Amawi is a Palestinian speech pathologist in Texas who loses her job after refusing to sign a contract with an Israel loyalty oath. Mik Jordahl is a lawyer in Arizona who is also asked to sign a loyalty pledge in order to keep his job. Alan Leveritt is the publisher of the Arkansas Times and the state tells his paper that they will be blocked from running any state university advertisements unless they sign an oath to Israel. In the film Leveritt makes it clear that he’s not even a supporter of the BDS movement, but is concerned about the chilling impact of such laws on the First Amendment.

Leveritt’s anxiety is obviously warranted. According to Palestine Legal, 233 bills targeting Palestinian advocacy have been introduced across the United States in recent years and 32 states have passed laws targeting the BDS movement. The efforts often receive overwhelming bipartisan support from lawmakers and negligible local resistance.

Officials from both sides of the aisle released a memo condemning the screening and strongly advising people not to attend because they are “likely to be documented by anti-Israel and antisemitic groups.”

Arizona’s GOP Treasurer Kimberly Yee went on a wild Twitter rant over the event, inexplicably invoking the horrors of Japanese internment. Her Democratic challenger is State Sen. Martín Quezada, one of the politicians who organized the screening.

“This is the latest demonstration that Sen. Quezada has aligned himself with the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Hate Movement (BDS),” wrote Yee. “This is a national campaign aimed at harming Israel and its trade partners. 80 years ago, Arizona hosted internment camps for Japanese-American citizens on the basis of their national origin. As a person of Asian descent, I believe we must ensure discrimination on the basis of national origin is never again tolerated.”

Similar unhinged warnings were shared by Democratic state representative Alma Hernandez, a favorite of pro-Israel groups. “It has come to our attention that members of the AZ legislature have been invited to the screening of an anti-Israel propaganda film called Boycott,” she tweeted. “Don’t be fooled. #BDS is a hate movement aimed at demonizing #Israel, asking our colleagues to say no to hate & not attend!”

“Sounds like you’re afraid they might learn something you don’t want them to see. Shame on you for prioritizing pandering on Israel above the First Amendment of the US Constitution,” shot back Omar Baddar. “Anyone who cares about free speech should attend the screening!”

I wouldn’t call Boycott an overtly political film, but it’s pretty obvious why BDS critics wouldn’t want the people who vote on these measures to see it. Mondoweiss readers are presumably well-versed in the topic, but it still remains an unknown topic for many. Recent polling even indicates that only about half of Democratic voters have even heard of the movement.

It’s not like most politicians are experts on the subject either. The most telling part of Boycott is a couple interviews with Arkansas state senators. Republican Bart Hester is the person who introduced the anti-BDS, but he can’t articulate what it means, why he did it, or what its potential implications. To him it’s clearly just another box to check off on a strident evangelical agenda. “I sponsored the anti-boycott bill because I felt like it’s the right thing to do,” says Hester. “I feel like Jewish people are God’s chosen people and I felt an obligation to do anything within my control or power to support them or protect them,” he explains. When asked about a local rabbi who opposes the legislation Hester admits that he didn’t bother consulting with any local Jewish leaders about the bill because they don’t agree with him.

The filmmakers also talk to Democrat Greg Leding, who voted in favor of the law but admits he got it wrong. “I regret not knowing more about the issue when I voted and now,” he says. “After hearing from my constituents, I probably would have voted against it.”

Two States

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave a speech to the 77th United Nations General Assembly last week and declared that he supports a two-state solution. The move was immediately greeted with backlash by his political opponents, as Israel has their elections in about a month. “Despite all the obstacles, still today a large majority of Israelis support the vision of this two state solution,” he told the UN. “I am one of them. We have only one condition: That a future Palestinian state will be a peaceful one.”

Likud leader and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Lapid was “endangering” the country with such talk. “Lapid is bringing the Palestinians back to the forefront of the world stage and putting Israel right into the Palestinian pit,” he declared.

Lapid’s sentiments were dutifully embraced by pro-Israel lobbying groups in the United States. AIPAC tweeted out a video of the remarks and the American Jewish Committee used them as a cudgel to bash the Palestinian government. J Street urged follow-up actions, but embraced the comments. “The prime minister’s comments are an important reminder that responsible Israeli leaders and security officials have long made clear a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is absolutely necessary to safeguard Israel’s security and secure its future as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people,” reads their statement.

Of course none of this stuff means anything. Politicians in the United States and Israel have been voicing support for a two-state solution for years, with the usual caveats about Palestinian terrorism. It has become less and less clear how this could work, how it could be achieved, or why it’s preferable to one democratic state, but none that matters either. Lawmakers who invoke the mantra generally just want to demonstrate that they care about the region while continuing to support the status quo. The great trick of the refrain is that the two-state solution is said to always be on the verge of collapse, which is why it’s so important to tell everyone you support it.

State Department spokesman Ned Price was recently asked about Lapid’s comments and he predictably produced a sizable amount of perplexing nonsense.  “We want to see a two-state solution,” he explained. “Equally, we don’t want to do anything that would aggravate tensions that would make achieving a two-state solution all the more difficult.”

In other words, we want to continue to invoke this vision while supporting Israel’s apartheid system and human rights violations.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), one of Israel’s staunchest Democratic supporters, recently attacked a Jewish constituent on Twitter for claiming Torres doesn’t support a Palestinian state. “I have NEVER spoken out against Palestinian statehood. Israelis and Palestinians each want a state of their own and that is what I support—a 2-state solution,” Torres insisted. “Anti-Zionists like you want to force both sides into a 1 state solution against their will.”

“‘2 states’ here means perpetuation of the status quo – apartheid,” responded Al Jazeera’s Ali Harb. “If you’re a no on ending settlements and occupation, oppose Palestine membership in international orgs, think Jerusalem is not negotiable and want to criminalize Israel’s critics, then ‘2 states’ is just a soundbite.”

Writer Yousef Munayyer also pushed back at Torres. “‘I support a two-state solution’ is the Dem version of the GOP “thoughts and prayers” in the gun debate,” he tweeted. “It is phony way to pretend you care while actually contributing to the problem with the votes you cast. It exists only as a tool to maintain the status quo of Apartheid.”

Odds & Ends

? At FiveThirtyEight Zoha Qamar has a piece about support for the Palestinian cause increasing among Democrats:

In 2001, when Gallup polled Americans on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, views were clear and consistent: Only 16 percent of Americans sympathized more with the Palestinians, while 51 percent sympathized more with the Israelis. Back then, this wasn’t even a particularly partisan issue — only 18 percent of Democrats sympathized more with Palestinians. 

Two decades later, though, the landscape has changed. The share of Americans with more sympathy toward the Palestinians has ticked up to 26 percent. And that support has more than doubled among Democrats: Today, 38 percent report feeling more sympathy for the Palestinians.

✈️ Israeli Tourism Minister Yoel Razvozov has threatened to launch a “diplomatic war” against Booking.com because the company said it will begin posting safety warnings on properties located in illegal West Bank settlements.

?? At a Jerusalem Post conference in New York US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides told attendees that Shireen Abu Akleh had gone into a “dangerous place” before she was killed, praised Israel’s “investigation” of the killing, and gushed about the Israeli army. “I have an enormous respect for the IDF, I spend an enormous of my time working with the IDF, the soldiers, the leaders,” said Nides. “I’ve done hundreds of events with the IDF. They are a phenomenal, phenomenal military and they have unbelievable cooperation with the U.S. Defense Department.”

? More from that same conference. Here’s Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) worrying that House members who criticize Israel will become popular with young people. He’s particularly concerned about young Jewish people. Of course he conflates Israeli criticism with antisemitism while smearing his own colleagues here:

“I have found the most important thing to speak out when comments are made without trying to give unnecessary attention to some folks when they speak out to raise money and get a rise…you don’t want to make someone more of a superstar by making antisemitic comments. Listen, one of the things I’m most concerned about is there are millions of people on twitter including some young people, including some young Jews who follow some of my far left colleagues. When they spread false information, especially using the tools of intersectionality, using words like apartheid, we have to be very clear and stand up to that. I worry about people on social media, especially young people, being influenced by that.“

? Brian Eno, FKA twigs, Denzel Curry, Marianne Faithfull, Blonde Redhead and hundreds of other musical artists have joined the Musicians For Palestine pledge.  “As musicians we can contribute to breaking the wall of silence and protest these great injustices taking place against the Palestinian people,” reads the statement they signed. “We believe that now, more than ever, is the time to respect the Palestinian peaceful picket line by declining invitations to events that are subsidized or sponsored by the Israeli state, its lobby groups or complicit cultural institutions.”

Mondoweiss’ Dave Reed interviewed Musicians For Palestine’s Stefan Christoff about the new pledge.

?️ During a briefing with Jewish news outlets Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) attempted to throw water on Rashida Tlaib’s recent comments about true progressives not supporting apartheid. “I think support for Israel is bipartisan,” said Brown. “I think there are a few outliers in both parties, some on the far right, some on the left, I don’t agree with that. I think that the mainstream Democratic Party — and I include in the mainstream virtually almost all of us, literally — and most Republicans support Israel and will continue to.”

Brown’s certainly right about the widespread support for Israel in Washington, but who are the lawmakers on the right he’s referring to? Rand Paul has become a punching bag for pro-Israel Democrats because he held up the Iron Dome vote, but that was a stunt designed to attack humanitarian aid funding for Afghanistan. “I support Israel,” Paul has declared. “I voted for hundreds of millions of dollars to support Iron Dome.”

The only defense of Palestinians has come from a handful of progressive congress members. That doesn’t vibe with Brown’s narrative, but he also doesn’t address the substance of Tlaib’s remarks. The truth is that nearly every Democrat who has criticized Tlaib over the comments have avoided her apartheid point because nearly everyone knows that they can’t persuasively argue that Israel is not an apartheid state.

?? Jewish Currents published an unreleased 1989 letter from the late Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said, calling on his Jewish colleagues to take a stand against Israel’s human rights abuses: “When Jews speak of Israel as a place they come home to, you will allow that their word ‘home’ to Palestinian ears has a death-like effect. I do not minimize what for Jews is an age-old problem of persecuted alienation and exile, but you also must understand the wounding immediacy for us of quite literally witnessing our home turned into someone else’s house, country, even as the number of Palestinian dead—shot, beaten, asphyxiated—by Israel for the past five decades continues to increase and is now in the uncounted thousands.”

Stay safe out there,

Michael