The Senate Appropriations Committee passed a measure Wednesday combating the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, despite resistance from a group of Democrats. The committee passed the amendment, which is an outgrowth of the February Combating BDS Act of 2016, 21-to-9, as part of the 2017 State and Foreign Operations spending bill. It will grant state and local governments legal authority to divest taxpayer funds from pro-BDS companies.
“Today, 21 Senate appropriators joined me to take a strong bipartisan stand against anti-Semitism, and voted to protect Illinois and other states seeking to fight back against the BDS movement’s economic warfare targeting Israel,” said Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, who helped draft the legislation.
Kirk, along with a bipartisan group of pro-Israel senators, attempted to pass the measure as part of a defense spending bill in early June. The amendment was met with resistance, however—first from Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, then from Patrick Leahy of Vermont.
A congressional source told THE WEEKLY STANDARD at the time that Brown opposed the measure because of its use of the term “Israeli-controlled territories,” which opponents argue prejudges the outcome of potential Israeli-Palestinian border negotiations. When Brown dropped his objection due to external pressure, an objection from Leahy, who has openly criticized Israel, soon cropped up. The Vermont senator also cited opposition to the measure’s language, despite voting for similar phrasing in the past.
After Leahy blocked the amendment, a spokesman for the Vermont senator told TWS that the measure was a “cynical attempt to enact legislation in the name of anti-BDS that would recognize disputed occupied territories as part of Israel.”
“The Kirk amendment defines an ‘Israeli Occupied Territory’ as ‘Israel.’ That is factually inaccurate [and] contrary to longstanding U.S. policy,” spokesman David Carle said, though the measure did not use the term “Israeli Occupied Territory.” Instead, it used language with legal precedent and, in response to similar concerns, included a clause which stated that, “nothing in this section shall be construed to alter the established policy of the United States … border delineation … can only be resolved through direct negotiations between the parties.”
Still, Carle told TWS Wednesday that Leahy, the ranking member of the subcommittee responsible for the spending bill, voted against the anti-BDS amendment this time around for similar reasons.
“[Senator Kirk’s] amendment didn’t change, and for the same reasons as before, Senator Leahy’s position on this amendment therefore is also the same,” Carle said.
In addition to Leahy, Democratic senators Dianne Feinstein of California, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Brian Schatz of Haiwaii, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin voted against the measure. Reed’s state, Rhode Island, passed an anti-BDS law days before the appropriations vote.
Despite opposition to the amendment, Omri Ceren of The Israel Project, which provides information on BDS to journalists and the public, told TWS that the measure’s success reflects a broader pro-Israel consensus in Congress—and the United States.
“Ultimately the vote reflected what Congressional votes on Israel always reflect: lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are broadly supportive of Israel, because American voters are broadly supportive of Israel,” Ceren said. “Even Senators who voted against the amendment justified their vote by saying they had concerns with technical language, not with the bipartisan consensus in favor of protecting Israel from economic warfare.”
The Israel Project is one of many pro-Israel groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—better known as AIPAC—that supported the amendment.
“We applaud the committee for adopting this important legislation that provides critical protection for states that take action to combat boycotts against Israel,” AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittmann told TWS Thursday.
This post has been updated to add a list of those who voted against the measure.
