NYC Council to Vote on Condemning Israel Boycotters

A New York City Council committee will consider a resolution next week whether to condemn boycotters of Israel.

The Contracts panel resolution scheduled for next Thursday would condemn “all efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and the global movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction the people of Israel.”

The original language, introduced in May by Councilman Andrew Cohen, a Manhattan Democrat, had originally been to support bills in the state legislature to cut off state ties from companies that boycott Israel. The bills failed, though, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo ended up issuing an executive decree declaring that persons and entities engaged in boycotting Israel would be ineligible for state contracts.

Cohen’s bill accuses BDS as a movement which “does not recognize the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination,” and that “some of the BDS Movement’s supporters and leaders have trafficked in unacceptable anti-Semitic rhetoric, including comparison of Israeli policy to that of Nazi Germany.”

It also notes that the city “has the largest population of Jewish residents in the nation and is home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel.”

This article appeared in print on page 32 of the August 31st, 2016 edition of Hamodia.