In January, the lower house of the Irish parliament voted in favor of a measure, already approved by the Irish senate, to criminalize the purchase of goods or services from Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Two months prior, the lower house of the Chilean parliament voted, by a margin of 99 to 7, to call upon the government to reconsider trade deals with Israel so as to restrict commerce in lands acquired in 1967. Amir Prager writes:

Ireland and Chile have long been a platform for global anti-Israeli activity, including for the boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movement. Last October, 50 Irish lawmakers, including a lower-ranking government minister, called for an arms embargo on Israel. In April 2018 the Union of Students in Ireland and the Dublin City Council expressed their support of BDS. . . .

Chile, [for its part], is home to the largest community of Palestinian expatriates outside of the Middle East. The Los Rios province, in the south of the country, announced in April 2018 that Israel is responsible for war crimes and for maintaining an apartheid regime, and called on the Chilean government to condemn Israel’s actions and reevaluate existing collaboration with the Israeli military. . . .

At this point, the direct impact of both proposals is not significant. The Chilean proposal is not binding. The Irish proposal, while detailed and binding, requires additional steps to become legislation and might actually run into procedural and political hurdles that could neutralize it altogether or remove its obligating aspects. . . . Nevertheless, in the medium and long terms the impact of both proposals could become significant. The proposals highlight the illegitimacy that different countries ascribe to Israeli activities in the West Bank and the growing willingness to take substantive action against it and . . . provide moral support for organizations that delegitimize the state of Israel.

Confirming the proposals against the backdrop of reports that a blacklist of companies operating in the settlements is about to be published by the UN Human Rights Council might motivate anti-Israel organizations and activists to promote similar campaigns in other countries and forums, some of which might be more important to Israel and could also lead to the adoption of more severe decisions. In addition, there is growing concern that an official decision about boycotting settlement products could encourage additional formal or informal boycotts on Israeli companies associated with the settlements, for example, through the activity of Israeli banks that provide loans and mortgages for residential and commercial purposes in the settlements.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.