What anti-Palestinian legislation to look out for in the new Congress

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What anti-Palestinian legislation to look out for in the new Congress
Mondoweiss spoke with Lara Friedman about Trump's pro-Israel Executive Orders and the anti-Palestinian legislation people should be watching in the new Congress.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/02/what-anti-palestinian-legislation-to-look-out-for-in-the-new-congress/?

In recent years we have seen an increasing amount of congressional legislation targeting criticism of Israel and boycotts of the country.

This push only increased when the genocidal assault on Gaza began last year. We can anticipate further efforts as the GOP now controls the presidency, the Senate, and the House. However, many of these bills were pushed during the Biden administration and have found support on both sides of the aisles.

Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP) President Lara Friedman. Friedman's weekly Legislative Round-Up is required reading for anyone who wants to stay informed on the latest bills in Congress and the discussion in Washington, DC. In the conversation Friedman discusses Trump's pro-Israel Executive Orders and what anti-Palestinian bills people should watch during this congressional session.

Mondoweiss: We are seeing Trump run back a lot of his policies from his first term, but also expand upon them in a variety of ways. What has stood out to you about the administration so far?

Lara Friedman: In terms of the Executive Orders, they clearly came in much better prepared this time with the intention to hit the ground running and fire in all directions.

I talked to people before Trump came in who were saying, "Don't worry, they can't do everything all at once." However, that is clearly the actual intention.

The antisemitism executive order of the first term took them quite a while to get to. Biden never rescinded it, so it was already there when they returned to power, but they came out of the gates with Executive Orders on antisemitism, targeting the ICC and going after students. They're checking all the boxes.

As we saw during the first Trump term, there is a lot of controversy over some of his executive orders, but the ones connected to Israel/Palestine are not getting a lot of pushback from Democratic lawmakers. There's largely a bipartisan consensus that it's okay for Trump to go after students who are critical of Israel, that it's okay for him to impose far-reaching sanctions that undermine the very viability of the ICC in defense of Israel.

This is just where we are. During the first Trump term, and even in the Biden era, we saw a comfortable bipartisan consensus on legislation that is either ardently in support of Israel or ardently attacking those who are viewed as not supportive of Israel.

I wanted to talk about a couple of specific pieces of legislation that come up a lot in your newsletter. Let's start with the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which was just reintroduced in the House and introduced in the Senate. What's the history of this bill, what would it do, and do you think it has a chance of passing soon?

This legislation was originally introduced in 2016 and it's been bouncing around Congress ever since. It is intended to take the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] working definition of antisemitism. with all of its examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and legislate it as part U.S. law when it comes to education under Title VI.

It's called the Antisemitism Awareness Act, but it isn't about raising awareness of antisemitism. It's about shutting down free speech on campus and the people who support it are very clear that this is its purpose.

It passed in the House last spring, and then it stalled. We saw this huge media campaign that developed around June, trying to pressure [New York Democratic Senator] Chuck Schumer to pass it in the Senate.

It's worth noting some of the reasons it stalled. After it passed in the House, there was a sudden outpouring of opposition from the right wing. Up until that point it had been groups like the ACLU and Palestine activists sounding the alarm about the bill, but after it passed the House you saw pro-Israel voices like Batya Ungar-Sargon and Bill Ackman attack it on First Amendment grounds.

Bret Stephens wrote an op-ed opposing it. Chris Rufo, along with Jenin Younes, wrote a piece in the Free Press opposing it. The Federalist and the Patriot Post ran pieces opposing it. David Horowitz opposed it in The Blaze. Matt Walsh opposed it and Elon Musk retweeted his piece. The editorial board of Tablet Magazine opposed it. Then you had all these Christian and MAGA group opposing it.

So you had this outpouring from the right. It was libertarians. It was free speech absolutists on the right. A big chunk of the right said this is just a form of stealth DEI. You're creating a category that somehow has a free speech exemption so their feelings aren't hurt.

People tend to forget this, and I raise the issue now because right now, in the Senate, the legislation has support from 18 Republicans and 18 Democrats. Schumer is now a co-sponsor and he tried to get it attached to the last NDAA. The reason it didn't get attached is because [GOP House Speaker] Mike Johnson didn't want it attached to a must-pass bill. He wants to force Democrats to have an up-down vote on it because, particularly in the House, you're going to have a lot of Democrats voting against it. You might see some Democratic Senators vote against it and the Republicans want to be able to say, "Look, the Democrats are bad on Israel."

Congress is coming off a witch hunt targeting academia over this issue, so I think there's a very good chance it will come up for a vote. It would be Congress, once and for all and on the record, saying that criticism of Israel and protests for Palestinian lives is antisemitism.

The only reason I see it being stalled again is if the right comes back and doubles down in its opposition. That's a real question. Is someone like Bret Stephens going to continue to oppose it now that Trump is in power? Will David Horowitz write another article? Will The Free Press, of all places, oppose it?

When people ask what it would like to put the Antisemitism Awareness Act into practice, what it would look like for that legislation to have teeth?

It would look like [The COLUMBIA Act.]

So that's the Antisemitism Awareness Act, but I do want to raise attention to a bill that I think most people aren't paying attention to, which I consider a corollary to the Antisemitism Awareness Act: The COLUMBIA Act.

This is a bill introduced by Reps. Ritchie Torres [D-NY] and Mike Lawler [R-NY]. It was introduced last year and reintroduced in the House last week. It's H.R. 1033. When people ask what it would like to put the Antisemitism Awareness Act into practice, what it would look like for that legislation to have teeth? It would look like this bill. It would put "federal antisemitism monitors" at institutions of higher education and seek to hold them accountable under the IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

Together, these two pieces of legislation have both a policy and an implementation arm. People should pay attention to that. Once again, it has bipartisan support.

The other one I wanted to ask you about is the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which was just reintroduced again, but forms of it have been around for awhile. What would this bill do and how is it different than the anti-BDS laws we have seen adopted at the state level?

This is totally different than the state laws. The state laws are trying to target boycotts of Israel using contracts, business with states, and investments. You can't ban people's free speech. You can't say, "If you boycott Israel we will come and arrest you."

So they found the hook. They say, you can have whatever free speech you want, but if you want to have contracts with the state, which are paid by taxpayer money, then you have to meet these conditions. So, for instance, if you want to have a contract with a state that has an anti-boycott law, you have to sign a contract that says you will not boycott Israel as a condition of being a awarded a state contract.

There are still First Amendment questions, and these laws have gone to the courts repeatedly.

The other kind of state law is an investment law, where the legislature, as a matter of law, says we will not invest state funds or state-managed funds like retirement funds in companies that are engaged in boycotts of Israel. When they say this, they almost always mean boycotts of illegal Israeli settlements, because hardly anyone's engaged in boycotts of Israel.

That's the state legislation, and those are crawling across nearly every state.

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, which is now actually called the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, does something entirely different. Some people would say this is a miraculous, brilliant thing, and some people would say it's evil and insidious.

What the bill says is that if you're complying with the EU boycott or the UN database in some way, then you are guilty of violating U.S. anti-boycott law and you are subject to massive fines and potentially massive prison terms.

It builds on existing law. The U.S. has anti-boycott law that dates back decades and was aimed at the Arab League boycott of Israel. That law doesn't say it's illegal to boycott Israel, it says it's illegal to engage in a boycott of Israel at the request or demand of a foreign government.

The logic is to say that we're not going to let foreign countries weaponize or turn our people into soldiers in their war against Israel using business contracts to blackmail them. The Arab League boycott of Israel is considered a coercive boycott by this logic. Maybe someone has no intention of boycotting Israel, but they can only do business with Saudi Arabia if they sign a contract promising they'll boycott Israel. U.S. anti-boycott law says you have to report such a situation to the government.

What the IGO Anti-Boycott Act tries to do is essentially argue that the European Union's [EU] policy of differentiating between Israel and illegal Israeli settlements and the United Nations [UN] database on companies doing business in the settlements, is the same as the Arab League's boycott of Israel.

Now, the EU policy and the UN database have no coercive elements whatsoever. You could argue there is an implied, exhortative element saying you shouldn't invest in the settlements, but the UN database is purely informational. If you're someone who loves illegal settlements, you can go to that database and find companies based in settlements that you want to support. The EU policy is advisory and has no implementation method whatsoever.

What the bill says is that if you're complying with the EU boycott or the UN database in some way, then you are guilty of violating U.S. anti-boycott law and you are subject to massive fines and potentially massive prison terms. That's what that is.

That bill has been introduced in the House and the Senate. It is bipartisan once again, but not massive numbers. It's hugely controversial and I'm guessing that it would not hold up to court scrutiny in normal times. This is effectively trying to deprive Americans of the right to engage in purely voluntary, values-driven boycotts of Israel and its settlements.

With the Republicans controlling the House and the Senate, I am wondering if there are any other recent bills that you think people should keep an eye on.

I think the legislation that drew all the attention at the end of the last session is worth keeping an eye on. This targeted NGOs and the nonprofit status of NGOs for alleged support for terror. It would move the process of determining whether a group supports terrorism away from the Justice Department and to the Treasury Secretary.

There is pressure to support this. We're still seeing periodic articles saying that it's a critical bill, and I think many of the U.S. Jewish organizations are invested in it.

I'd also note there was recent legislation introduced in the Senate targeting the nonprofit status of organizations that work undocumented immigrants. This idea of weaponizing the Treasury against the 501(c)(3) status of groups, it's clearly a theme in Congress.

We've also had a couple of pieces of legislation out targeting the Palestinian Authority (PA). As the Trump administration moves into this space of calling for ethnic cleansing and no Palestinian state, we're likely to see more efforts from Congress to flesh out what that means in terms of U.S. law. There was a bill introduced in the Senate last week that expands Trump's attacks on the ICC to include the PA because they cooperate with the ICC.

In my experience of following this, anti-Palestinian legislation never goes away.

In my experience of following this, anti-Palestinian legislation never goes away. Maybe we can imagine a future where the White House or even Congress is more receptive to Palestinians, but there is currently no energy to rescind anti-Palestinian legislation. So I'd watch bills like that closely.

There's also legislation targeting the PA's prisoner payments. The Palestinians have announced that they've changed the way they're doing these, but right-wing pro-Israel groups say they're just "terror payments" under a different structure. That legislation could move ahead very easily.

Then I think we're obviously going to see a lot of bills targeting campuses. This is one of those issues that has bipartisan support. Hardline Republicans can get Democrats to jump in with them by claiming our education system is a mess because of students protesting for Palestinian lives.

They were doing this already during the Biden administration, so we should expect it to get worse under Trump. You have the mainstream of the Democratic party in denial about Israel having an impact on the 2024 election. They think if there was an issue, it was that the Kamala Harris campaign wasn't pro-Israel enough

Now pro-Israel groups are targeting [Democratic Georgia Senator] Jon Ossoff, who is Jewish. They're trying to build a public narrative that says Jews don't support him because he questioned unlimited military aid to Israel. In actuality right-wing Jewish donors in the Democratic Party are turning on him, but they want to build the narrative that his Jewish support has shrunk.

Can you expand on how crackdowns on campus activism might intersect with the agendas of pro-Israel lawmakers?

I follow this on the sidelines and am not someone on campuses, but I think a lot of universities hit a critical decision point while Biden was in office. They decided they just weren't going to risk pushback from the government over free speech on Palestine.

With Trump now in office they are finding out that they are going to face that same decision point for other issues. DEI. Immigrant students. Are you going to risk it over the rights of your most vulnerable students? Are you going to risk it over whether or not Trump can deport your students? I think that's the space we're in now.