Kudos to Sen. Kristen Gillibrand for requesting more protections on Free Speech in the anti-BDS Bill moving through Congress…
“I would never support any bill that chills free speech,” Gillibrand said at a community town hall in Flushing this afternoon. “I would never be for something that you stated the bill says. It’s not something I would support. I met with the ACLU and we sat down…and why they believe it says it chills free speech, which leaves the bill as ambiguous. So I am going to urge the authors of the bill to change the bill and I will not support it in its current form.”
According to the ACLU, violators would face “a maximum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.”
The legislation is seen by some as targeting the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement—known as BDS—which calls for boycotting, divesting from and sanctioning the people of Israel. Gillibrand is against BDS. But she recently asserted that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does “not have a plan for peace” nor a “vision for peace.”
Gillibrand said the point of the original legislation was the undermining U.S. foreign policy on the grounds that they did not want the private sector working with countries who are not American allies “to somehow support U.S. foreign policy..."
observer.com/...