The Bipartisan Effort against Campaigns for Corporate Responsibility

The Trump Administration's efforts to legitimize the Israeli occupation and illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories has received surprising bipartisan support. A series of bills passed or under consideration in Washington and in state capitols seeks to punish companies, religious denominations, academic associations, and other entities which support the use of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) to challenge the occupation of Palestinian land.

Some elements of the BDS movement have been criticized for not distinguishing between Israel, a recognized nation-state, and territories seized by Israeli forces in the June 1967 war, which remain under foreign belligerent occupation. For example, while most of the BDS efforts on college campuses and within religious denominations have focused primarily on U.S.-based companies which directly support Israel's repressive occupation and colonization efforts in the West Bank, the formal BDS call by Palestinian civil society groups also supports academic, commercial and other forms of boycotts and sanctions of Israel itself.

However, a number of the recent anti-BDS legislative initiatives in the United States, have also failed to distinguish between the two by legally defining Israel as including the occupied territories and illegal settlements.

Claiming the BDS campaign is "anti-Semitic in nature and seeks to destroy Israel," the 2016 Republican platform calls for the passage of "effective legislation to thwart actions that are intended to limit commercial relations with Israel, or persons or entities doing business in Israel or in Israeli-controlled territories." [emphasis added]