Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is launching a review of State Department assistance to foreign entities to cut U.S. funding where it indirectly supports the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement targeting Israel.
“We will immediately take steps to identify organizations that engage in hateful BDS conduct, and withdraw U.S. government support for such groups,” Pompeo said Thursday in Israel. “We want to stand with all other nations that recognize the BDS movement for the cancer that it is, and we’re committed to combating it.”
Pompeo made that announcement during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who hailed as “simply wonderful” his denunciation of the campaign to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel. The BDS effort is modeled on the kind of economic pressure that was used by anti-apartheid activists against South Africa at the end of the Cold War.
“As we have made clear, anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. The United States is, therefore, committed to countering the Global BDS Campaign as a manifestation of anti-Semitism,” Pompeo said in a separate bulletin. “To ensure that department funds are not spent in a manner that is inconsistent with our government’s commitment to combat anti-Semitism, the State Department will review the use of its funds to confirm that they are not supporting the Global BDS Campaign.”
The subject has proven divisive on Capitol Hill, as a small, but vocal, bloc of Democratic lawmakers support the movement.
“I can’t stand by and watch this attack on our freedom of speech and the right to boycott the racist policies of the government and the state of Israel,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat, said when House lawmakers passed a resolution to condemn the movement.
That resolution passed on 398-17, but a GOP-led effort to ban U.S. support for the movement failed in 2020 when Democrats blocked consideration of the bill. “This legislation does not impede the right of an individual American to boycott or criticize Israel,” Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican, said at the time. “It is okay to have reasonable, legitimate concerns with any government, including our own, and allies like Israel. But this hate-fueled movement is not all about affirming the rights of Palestinians.”
Pompeo’s announcement builds on a series of decisions designed to fortify Israel’s strategic and diplomatic position, including U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the assessment that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are not illegal — internationally controversial positions that Pompeo ratified with in-person visits this week.
“Imagine, imagine with Assad in control of this place, the risk, the harm to the West and to Israel and to the people of Israel,” Pompeo said Thursday while visiting the heights on the border of Israel and Syria, where dictator Bashar Assad has clung to power through a brutal civil war.
The BDS decision could also help endear Pompeo further to pro-Israel conservatives in the U.S. ahead of an expected 2024 campaign.
“Secretary of State Mike Pompeo‘s announcement to designate BDS ‘antisemitic’ and eliminate government funding to any organizations linked to it is another example of a bold and courageous move by the Trump administration to target hate organizations that hide behind a paper-thin wall of legitimacy,” Dark Wire founder Sara Carter, a conservative media figure, said Thursday. “BDS is antisemitic and should be called out as such.”
Foreign entities that support BDS could also jeopardize their access to the U.S. foreign aid budget under the new policy. “The United States urges governments around the world to take appropriate steps to ensure that their funds are not provided directly or indirectly to organizations engaged in anti-Semitic BDS activities,” Pompeo said in the bulletin.
