The New Congressional Mandate - Battling Antisemitism and Protecting Israel

Here is a recent House Resolution that seeks to root out anti-Semitism throughout the United States:

While it doesn't specifically mention Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) by name, it might just as well, particularly given her recent comments about the powerful Israeli lobby in Washington, in particular, the power of the American Israel Political Action Committee or AIPAC.  In large part, it is this lobby that has steered Washington's policies toward Israel and its ongoing conflict with Palestine. 

The aforementioned resolution was drafted by staff for Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top leaders including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md).

It's not just the House that is in on Washington's efforts to ban what it terms "antisemitism".  The new Senate's very first bill, S.1 aka "Strengthening America's Security in the Middle East Act of 2019" which deals with key issues like ensuring Israel's qualitative military advantage, increasing military security assistance for Israel  and defence cooperation with Jordan, contains a section "Combating BDS Act of 2019" as follows:

Under S.1 which was introduced by Marco Rubio as lead sponsor, state and local governments have been given Washington's blessing to boycott U.S. companies that are participating in certain activities as follows:

"An activity described in this subsection is a commerce-related or investment-related boycott, divestment, or sanctions activity in the course of interstate or international commerce that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with Israel or persons doing business in Israel or Israeli-controlled territories for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the Government of Israel."

You will note that this includes the global Boycott, Divest and Sanction or BDS movement.  On the upside, the entity that is facing the boycott is actually allowed to defend themselves against the charges that they are undertaking what will soon become illegal activities.

Bill S.1 has now passed the Senate with the following 77 for and 23 against vote:

Here is the text of the First Amendment to the Constitution:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Apparently, the rights granted by the First Amendment to the Constitution, that of free speech, is now defined more narrowly as speech that is not anti-Israel.

One would like to think that Congress has better things to do than deal with anti-Israel/anti-Semitic issues, however, such does not appear to be the case.  What Washington seems to have conveniently forgotten is that antisemitism is not the same as being anti-Israel.  Being anti-Israel does not imply any sort of hatred of the Jewish people, it simply means that one is against the policies of the Israeli government who, most definitely, do not deserve a blank cheque when it comes to their actions in the Middle East.  After all, we must remember that this is the nation that very clearly lied multiple times to Washington when it came to the development of their top secret nuclear arsenal.