[COMMUNICATED CONTENT]

By: Julie Ahn & Hannah Levin

After months of advocacy, a delegation of American-Jewish communal and business leaders who comprise the United States-Israel Security Alliance, an initiative dedicated to strengthening the U.S.-Israeli relationship, will convene on Capitol Hill to urge leading and influential members of both the Senate and the House to support legislation to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and thank those that have sponsored legislation to this effect.

In the guise of promoting human rights and equality, the BDS movement seeks to delegitimize Israel by calling on the international community to implement boycott and divestment initiatives against corporations which profit from business in Israel, essentially suffocating the State of Israel economically. A political, economic, cultural, and ideological global campaign, the BDS movement has become a giant that vigorously attempts to denigrate the State of Israel by falsely stigmatizing the Jewish State as a 21st Century Apartheid regime.

This mission comes at a critical time, when the BDS movement has been increasing economic and political pressure to force Israel to submit to its demands, which include: boycotts and divestment from certain Israeli products, as well as resolutions for universities to divest from Israeli companies. The anti-Israel BDS sentiment is also seeping into corporate boardrooms and trade unions, with a growing trend in Europe to ban or label products made in Israeli factories over the green line. Due to this movement, there have been disruptions of Israeli cultural events, pressure to cancel events with cultural figures in Israel, as well as strong efforts to gain support for BDS from important religious institutions. The BDS movement, while claiming peace, will not stop until Israel is on her knees.

In 2015, President Obama signed into law the Trade Promotion Authority Act which included an amendment to, “discourage actions by potential trading partners that discourage commercial activity solely between the United States and Israel.” This amendment incorporated language from the United States-Israel Trade and Commercial Enhancement Act of which was sponsored by Representatives Peter Roskam (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA). A similar bill, knows as the United States-Israel Trade Enhancement Act of 2015, was sponsored in the Senate by Senators Cardin and Portman. The Combating BDS Act of 2016, an additional legislative effort to combat BDS, was introduced on February 10, 2016 by Senators Kirk and Manchin in the Senate, and Representatives Robert Dold (R-IL) and Juan Vargas (D-CA) in the House.

The delegation and its co-chairs Ken Abramowitz; Mark Meyer Appel; Andrew Friedman, Esq; Nathan Herzog; Dr. Alan Kadish; Joseph B. Stamm; and Stanley Treitel will be meeting with these members as well as many others.

Recently, the State of NJ and California (pending Governor Brown’s signature) have passed legislation mandating state divestment from companies that boycott Israel. Other states, including New York, issued similar policies. In all, about half of the state legislatures are considering or have adopted resolutions which condemn boycotts against Israel or defund universities that participate in such boycotts.

Members of the delegation will convey appreciation to members of Congress for preventing politically-motivated sanctions against Israel and protecting the right of both state and local governments to disassociate contracts from entities that engage in boycotting Israel, and will encourage further legislative efforts both on the federal and state level.

Ezra Friedlander, CEO of The Friedlander Group, who is organizing the mission, summed up the objective of the mission by stating, “By introducing and supporting anti-BDS legislation, members of Congress are continuing their legislative efforts to thwart the BDS movement, standing against the radical campaign to cripple Israel socially, economically, politically, and ideologically. Legislative efforts to support the anti-BDS campaign send a message against groups that force radical agendas in the name of peace.”