A bill sponsored by roughly half the members of Congress would — so we are warned by New York magazine, at least — “make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel” and “make avoiding the purchase of Israeli goods for political reasons a federal crime.” While those claims may be somewhat overstated, I argue in a new post at Ricochet that the proposed Israel Anti-Boycott Act “is plenty bad enough. By punishing boycott participation grounded in political belief, it would infringe on individual liberty.” And: “It is not a proper function of law to force Americans into foreign commerce they personally find politically objectionable, whether their reasons for reluctance be good, bad, or arbitrary. The furor would make a good occasion to revisit the 1979 law itself in light of principles of individual liberty; at a minimum, we should decline S. 720’s invitation to extend it further.”
One Comment
Thank you. You are the first person I’ve read that calls for revisiting the 1979 underlying law, it needs too go.