Anti-Boycott Laws Don’t Violate the First Amendment

Yesterday, a federal court upheld an Arkansas law prohibiting state agencies from doing business with companies that boycott Israel. The law had been challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is also fighting similar laws in other states, and will no doubt do the same if Congress passes the currently proposed federal version. In Arizona, the ACLU won an injunction against such a measure; the case is now being heard by a federal appellate court. Alyza Lewin explains why, contrary to the ACLU’s claims, these laws do not violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech:

Federal, state, and local governments across the United States regularly and appropriately use conditions in government contracts to promote equality under the law, combat discrimination, and ensure that public funds are not used for illegal or invidious purposes. Conditions on contracting are a pillar of anti-discrimination laws at all levels of government. The First Amendment does not require the government to subsidize discriminatory conduct.

However, these regulations only target discriminatory conduct, not speech, by state contractors. Contractors may speak passionately, associate, and advocate openly in any forum and on any subject, even an anti-Israel boycott. They may also forgo state contracts if they choose to engage in an active boycott of Israel.

The ACLU’s position rests on a perverse interpretation: . . . that the government must subsidize discriminatory conduct. Such a rule is not required—or even supported—by the First Amendment. It conflicts with a deeply embedded web of federal, state, and local anti-discrimination laws. Government must have the power to discourage discriminatory boycotts by prescribing non-discrimination conditions in government contracts.

Read more at Kol HaBirah

More about: American law, BDS, First Amendment, Politics & Current Affairs

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society