398-17.
This was the result of Tuesday’s House of Representatives vote on Resolution 246 rejecting, in a powerful statement, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement.
The measure had 349 co-sponsors, many of whom spoke passionately in favor of Israel and it support of its right to self-determination.
You can easily guess where two of the negative votes came from.
One of the nay voters suggested that the U.S. would be simply doing what the government did during World War II—boycotting the Nazis—and again using the politically immature and factually inaccurate “apartheid” label to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Language in the resolution says that the U.S. “opposes the global BDS movement targeting Israel, including efforts to target U.S. companies that are engaged in commercial activities that are legal under U.S. law and all efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel.”
The measure also states that the BDS movement “undermines the possibility for a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by demanding concessions of one party alone and encouraging the Palestinians to reject negotiations in favor of international pressure.”
As we applaud the forceful nature of the House vote, we also ask that our elected officials and pro-Israel activists not be made complacent over these numbers. We know that political temperatures heat up when the outside weather becomes colder, and with debates and primaries now appearing on the horizon, one can bet that pro-BDS politicians and their supporters, especially in the Democratic Party, will be seeking any measure of influence.
This is not us picking on the Democrats, but we know that the party has a challenge with internal confrontation. And that is exactly what we’ll see as the party heads toward its convention next summer. The likes of the freshmen congresswomen from Minnesota and Michigan will seek a way to intersect BDS or any other anti-Zionist trope with their party’s platforms.
Israel is a small, young nation that has impacted the world in so many positive ways, be it through technology, medicine, agriculture, the arts or education. It has embraced people of all races and religions and lifestyle choices. These are facts.
And while untold numbers of Syrian Muslims are either dead, maimed or forced to leave, hardly a word condemning the brutal, racist Damascus regime of Bashir al-Assad comes from our freshmen House members.
Not a word about Iran’s stifling regime and the brutal, racist control it has over its population and the funding of terrorism and intimidation.
It’s always been attacks on Israel, and it always will be.
398-17. We are not discounting the significance of Tuesday’s numbers.
But it was just a start.
