Washington _ Palestine News Network
The Senate voted on Tuesday to pass a law encouraging US companies not to contract with supporters of the boycott movement, withdraw investments and impose sanctions against Israel or its settlements in the occupied West Bank, after it had failed to pass the law in the previous Congress.
The law was passed in the Senate after nearly a month of political conflict between Democrats and Republicans, and also within the Democratic Party itself, because of its possible repercussions in relation to freedom of expression, where Taadad progressives in the Democratic Party, including all those who have declared their intentions in waging Presidential election 2020 against President Donald Trump. Seventy-seven members, including all members of the Republican Party, voted only Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky in favor of the legislation, and 23 voted against it, reflecting previous rounds since the beginning of the year.
As in previous rounds of voting, the Democratic Party was divided on this issue, with a small majority of Democratic senators voting in favor of the law and close to half of the senators who oppose it.
The right-wing Republican senator from Florida Marco Rubio, close to the Israeli lobby of IPAC, reformulated the draft legislation at the beginning of the year, and pasted it into legislation that deals with supporting Israel and Jordan and imposing sanctions on Syria to ensure its passage.
However, all experts acknowledge that the law is unlikely to pass through the House of Representatives, which ultimately enacts laws, because of the control of the Council by Democrats.
"Today, the Senate has chosen politics (and narrow interests) instead of the U.S. Constitution and trampled on the First Amendment rights of all Americans," said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in response to the Senate vote. We encourage every senator who voted in favour of this bill to read the Constitution and understand the protection afforded by individuals against unconstitutional tactics similar to the macarism (in the 1950s) adopted by this bill.
The bill, nicknamed the Anti-BDS in the Senate, was passed as part of a "package " of laws on the Middle East that were introduced into a single law. The other draft law contains consensual issues such as security assistance to Israel and sanctions against Syria, which may have bypassed the Senate with broad support from both parties, perhaps even without opposition at all.
The powerful Israeli lobby organization AIPAC (and the two-petal project) immediately praised the Senate´s decision to approve the legislation.
Ibuck, who has waged a focused campaign for more than two years to pass the law and spent a huge amount of money in excess of tens of millions of dollars in the last two years, claimed on Tuesday, 5/2/2019 that "this legislation reflects provisions in federal law on this matter and that this legislation has no Impact on Americans ´ right to boycott Israel or Israel´s opposition policies "-
However, the American Jewish organization "G Street ", nicknamed itself "The Israeli lobby that supports the two-state solution," is a threat to individual liberties, describing it as a "full of flaws."
