Media Contact: Julie Wiener | jwiener@truah.org | (212) 845-5201
In response to the “ Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act of 2019” (S1) introduced by Senator Marco Rubio and scheduled for a cloture vote this afternoon, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, issued the following statement:
As the shutdown of the U.S. government stretches into its third week, as 800,000 federal employees go without pay, and as the threat of cutting off SNAP benefits for nearly 40 million Americans looms, the first responsibility of Congress must be to re-open the government. It is immoral to introduce any bill that distracts from the essential task of ensuring that Americans can pay their rent and mortgage bills, and provide food and other necessities for themselves and their families. Congress must do so without caving to the President’s demand for an unnecessary and racist wall.
Sen. Rubio’s bill not only distracts from this primary responsibility, but also threatens the First Amendment rights of Americans. Those of us who are committed both to a peaceful future for Israelis and Palestinians and to free speech must oppose this wrong-headed and dangerous legislation, which penalizes Americans for nonviolent political action and speech.
Neither I nor T’ruah, the organization I lead, supports or participates in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. But free speech — including the right to boycott — constitutes an essential component of democracy, a basic human right, and a fundamental value of Judaism. The way to fight distasteful speech is with more speech, not by shutting down the other side. We learn this from the Talmud, where the rabbis frequently use colorful language to challenge and repudiate each others’ opinions, while leaving even rejected opinions in the text for later study.
Only half a century ago, the American Jewish community suffered disproportionately from a blacklist that aimed to wipe out certain political discourse and associations. Perceptive Jews understood that an attack on the free speech of one community would ultimately affect all of us. In his 1947 testimony to the House Un-American Affairs Committee, playwright Samuel Ornitz declared, “In speaking as a Jew, I speak in a deeper sense as an American, as the one who has to take the first blow for my fellow Americans. For when constitutional guarantees are overridden, the Jew is the first one to suffer … but only the first one.”
This act indemnifies state governments that pass anti-constitutional laws that prohibit doing business with companies or contractors — including individual contractors — that participate in boycotts of Israel, and effectively invites states to pass such laws. These laws are already facing court challenges on First Amendment grounds.
This act further endangers Israel by equating the country inside internationally recognized borders with the Occupied Palestinian territories, which neither the State of Israel, nor the international community, nor decades of U.S. policy considers to be part of Israel proper. In recent years, both the BDS movement and the extremist pro-settlement movement have attempted to blur the distinction between the settlements and Israel proper. This posture, from either side, delegitimizes the State of Israel as recognized by the United Nations in 1948.
Furthermore, this bill, though introduced by Sen. Rubio and co-sponsored by three other non-Jewish senators and opposed by a growing list of Jewish and non-Jewish senators, is likely to create a backlash against the Jewish community, who may be perceived as pushing forward a bill that purports to support Israel (without actually doing so) over the life-saving task of re-opening the government immediately.
Ultimately, BDS will not be overcome through banning speech, but rather through creating a long-term agreement that protects the human rights and security of both Israelis and Palestinians by establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel, both within internationally recognized borders. Sen. Rubio’s legislation does nothing to help Israel, but only distracts from the essential task of re-opening the government; threatens Americans’ constitutional rights; and risks provoking a backlash against Israel and against the American Jewish community, the majority of whom support a two-state solution and human rights for both Israelis and Palestinians.
T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights mobilizes a network of more than 2,000 rabbis and cantors from all streams of Judaism that, together with the Jewish community, act on the Jewish imperative to respect and advance the human rights of all people. Grounded in Torah and our Jewish historical experience and guided by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we call upon Jews to assert Jewish values by raising our voices and taking concrete steps to protect and expand human rights in North America, Israel, and the occupied Palestinian territories.
