April 15
GUEST: Felice Gelman, human rights activist with Middle East Crisis Response, JVP - Hudson Valley, and board member of the US Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theatre, talks the Freedom2Boycott NYS Coalition, and the fight to maintain freedom of speech when it comes to boycotting apartheid Israel.
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Every year there is a worry that Albany will pass a law making boycotting Israel an illegal act. As if refusing to buy a product made in an illegal settlement is somehow immoral or antisemitic.
The arguments against a law like this are many. The law would be blatantly unconstitutional since it would destroy protections citizens have for freedom of speech. The law would also go against two centuries of boycotts in the United States, beginning with the boycott of English tea before the Revolutionary War.
But just because a law is unconstitutional doesn't mean that it will never be passed. The "Red Scare" was another assault on freedom of speech, and it destroyed people's lives for a decade. It started with the big lie that Communists had taken over our government and had to be exposed and fired from their jobs. Years later these scare tactics look amateurish and even foolish. Yet the Red Scare was able to overthrow our freedom of speech, something that no country has been able to do since our nation was created.
Charges of "antisemitism" can be seen as the new McCarthyism. With a deft slight of hand, the state of Israel has wrapped itself in the Holocaust and proclaimed that is immune to all criticism because of the suffering of the Jewish people. Meanwhile, this same nation in the Middle East treats its Arab population very much like the Third Reich treated the Jews.
The irony is that the extermination of six million Jews is being used to justify the horrendous treatment of millions of Palestinians. It is like Nazi racism is alive and well in Israel, and the US is its single largest supporter.
Dozens of groups throughout New York State have come out to support a citizen's right to boycott Israel. Many of these groups simply support the US Constitution, and don't want another country defining the limits to our freedom of speech. But many see boycotting as America's moral issue. Our country did very little to stop the Nazi Holocaust. Now our country seems to be supporting the very same type of nationalist racism and violence in the Holy Land. Never again!
