Gillibrand, at rare town hall, vows to reconsider Israel-boycott bill
By: Will Bredderman
Source: Crain’s
Constituents confronted Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand with questions about her support for a controversial bill that would penalize the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement—and extracted a promise that she would seek changes to the legislation or withdraw her backing.
Residents crammed into the Queens Library branch in Flushing Monday afternoon to press the junior senator from New York, just a week after she held her first town hall in New York City in eight years as U.S. senator, in the Bronx. Two audience members at the Queens event voiced concerns about her co-sponsorship of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a bill aimed at discouraging the BDS movement, which seeks to pressure Israel to end its occupation of the West Bank and its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Gillibrand noted that the measure, which enjoys the backing of a bipartisan group of 43 senators, intended to update the Export Administration Act of 1979—a law that authorized the president to leverage American trade policy to oppose the Arab League embargo of Israel nearly 40 years ago.The language of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act would expand the existing statute to apply to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, which has endorsed the BDS movement and called for economic penalties on the Jewish state.
“The way I read this bill that we’re talking about is just that it was an extension of that, to add international organizations to it. That was how I saw it: just don’t undermine U.S. foreign policy,” Gillibrand said. “You didn’t want the private sector, working with countries who are our allies or who are not our allies, to somehow subvert U.S. foreign policy.”
But the American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the bill could empower the government to impose heavy fines and even significant jail time on individuals who refuse to purchase Israeli goods and services, violating their First Amendment right to free expression. The senator said she had met with representatives of the ACLU and agreed that the language of the bill is too “ambiguous.”
She promised to seek revisions to the bill to increase clarity and eliminate any constitutional complications.
“I am going to urge the authors of the bill to change the bill, and I will not support it in its current form,” she said. “I’m going to urge them to rewrite it to be sure it says specifically ‘this does not apply to individuals, this is only applying to companies.'”
The senator stressed that she opposes BDS but believes in the right of its supporters to voice their views.
“I am against BDS, but I feel that anybody who’s in favor of it should feel very comfortable speaking on any stage, anywhere in America,” she said, drawing copious applause and a single boo.
U.S. law and juridical precedent recognizes corporations as individual citizens with full First Amendment rights, so it is unclear whether the revisions Gillibrand described would fully rectify the issues with the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and 12 other Democrats besides Gillibrand have endorsed the Israel Anti-Boycott Act.
Gillibrand is holding another town hall meeting midday Wednesday in central Brooklyn, part of a series of such events she has scheduled across the state.
