Yesterday, Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed SB 1761, making Illinois the first state in the country to explicitly punish boycotts of Israel. The new law will set up a blacklist of companies that boycott Israel and require the state’s pension funds to divest from those companies. The law specifies that its intent is to only punish companies that are not based in the United States.
Read MoreToday, Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights released an FAQ to explain the anti-boycott provision of the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL), and to refute meritless claims that the law prohibits human rights boycotts of Israel, Israeli companies, and Israeli goods.
Read MoreIn a victory for academic freedom, the University of California Board of Regents will not consider adopting the U.S. State Department’s re-definition of anti-Semitism during their July meeting, which began yesterday. Instead, according to a statement released by President Janet Napolitano, the Board of Regents “will consider at its September meeting a statement of principles against intolerance, including, but not limited to, anti-Semitism and other types of intolerance.”
Read MoreToday, Palestine Legal, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the National Lawyers Guild sent a letter to Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro urging him to protect campus speech by rejecting calls to adopt a re-definition of anti-Semitism that could be used to silence critics of Israel.
Read MoreEarlier this week, President Obama signed into law the Trade Promotion Authority bill. The final law includes a watered-down version of an anti-BDS Amendment that Palestine Legal has been monitoring.
Read MoreAs the Palestinian and Palestine solidarity movements build power on campuses and in communities across the U.S., we face increasing backlash, including lawsuits, surveillance and criminalization.
Read MoreThe Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) unsuccessfully attempted to censor a Columbia University workshop on Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine that took place this weekend. The day-long workshop for high school and college teachers, led by Columbia law professor Katherine Franke, used Zionist and Israeli texts to explore the issues of nationality and citizenship in Israel/Palestine.
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