H.R. 867

There’s a lot of chaos that came up over the weekend, and in any ordinary circumstance, I’d be chewing through some easy fodder like Trump’s unhinged “100% tariff on foreign films to SAVE HOLLYWOOD” or re-prisoning Alcatraz Island, but there’s more important things happening under the surface and they don’t involve the White House at all. I speak, of course, of House Resolution 867, a proposed amendment of the 2018 Anti-Boycott Act.

Here’s the summary: “This bill expands an existing anti-boycott law to include certain boycotts imposed by international governmental organizations (IGOs). Current law prohibits various actions by U.S. persons (individuals or entities) in relation to boycotts imposed by foreign governments on a country which is friendly to the United States and that is not itself the object of a U.S. boycott. This bill applies those prohibitions to similar boycotts imposed by IGOs.

Prohibited actions include (1) refusing to do business with companies organized under the laws of the boycotted country, if the refusal is pursuant to an agreement with or request from the country or IGO imposing the boycott; (2) refusing to employ any U.S. person on the basis of race, religion, sex, or national origin; and (3) furnishing information about whether someone is associated with charitable or fraternal organizations that support the boycotted country.

The bill also requires the President to annually submit to Congress and make available to the public a report describing these boycotts and listing the foreign countries and international organizations involved in fostering or imposing them.

It’s got bipartisan sponsors and sounds pretty reasonable, right? After all, it’s just an amendment of the 2018 Anti-Boycott Act, and we haven’t seen people imprisoned over the past seven years with that, although it is fairly controversial in and of itself and would likely violate the 1st and 9th Amendments if it were ever questioned in court. Here’s a pretty deep analysis of what U.S. anti-boycott laws actually means- basically, under current law, it’s hypothetically criminal for an American to follow a boycott imposed by a foreign government against an ally of the United States (functionally, Israel), but in practice, this is a very narrow field. Off the top of my head, the only countries that have active boycotts against Israel are Iran, the Afghan Taliban and possibly whatever insanity North Korea maintains. This is because a government boycott or sanction is a pretty deliberative action and it takes a lot of wherewithal to install a boycott for most political leaders against the predominant economies of the world- the U.S., China, and the collective European economies. In amended form though, this definition would include international governmental organizations– for example, the Arab League, the United Nations, or even NATO or Interpol. This is a big fucking deal. Remember that the United Nations has been the official “lead organization” for things like the Korean War, the Bosnian Civil War and the various African crisis over the past 30 years. UN sanctions and efforts were a key component of the Iraq War, and UN / IAEA efforts are the official instigator of regulatory efforts against Iranian nuclear aspirations. Yes, UN mandates and military missions are practically enforced by the collective military and economic strength of its members, but the U.N. is a venue for involvement of the United States in matters more subtle than Americans may know. For example, right now, there’s several hundred American service members in the Sinai Peninsula (under the aegis of the UN-skirting MFO)

These IGOs also, critically, include the (anemic) International Criminal Court and the Arab League, whose sponsorship of anti-Israel boycotts in the 1970s was the impetus for these laws in the first place. In the minds of those who believe these bills are necessary, American constitutional rights are less important than ensuring Israeli goods and services have access to markets. Under current law, as an American citizen or business, it would be illegal to refuse to do business with an Israeli person or company on the basis of their being Israeli as a result of a boycott imposed by a foreign power, regardless of the American’s motivation for this or their beliefs (like I said, this is already a constitutionally-ambiguous set of laws). Now, let’s expand this to the proposed scope of the 2025 amendment. With the Gaza and Lebanon situations and progressive deterioration of the West Bank, it’s quite plausible to envision something like an Arab League or even ICC-endorsed boycott of Israel. Under the amended scope, it would be legal for the United States government to prosecute American citizens for refusing to do business with Israeli persons and firms. This is troubling enough that even the pro-Trump MAGA caucus opposes it. Yep, you read that right. In this case, even MTG and Matt Gaetz and Steve Bannon are correct. Under the proposed scope of this bill, it could be construed as illegal for an American to decline to do business, to include purchasing something, with an Israeli company regardless of the actual motivation. For example, Ulta (the national cosmetics chain store) might want to decline to purchase from an Israeli cosmetics company based on high cost, inferior quality, or a host of other legitimate business reasons, but how could Ulta prove that their decision not to buy Israeli was based on an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic motivator? They couldn’t. How can one prove a negative, especially when that proof is something inherently internal and nigh-impossible to prove? Under this law, the legally-safe answer would be to buy the Israeli product, even if it was otherwise inferior, because it would remove any claim of discrimination. Likewise, Ben&Jerry’s Ice Cream famously refused to sell ice cream in Israel as an expression of their solidarity with the Palestinian people. Under this bill, Ben & Jerry could both be clapped in irons and fined a million dollars…each. Seems like kind of an overreaction for having personal convictions to me.

Americans have long associated economic activity with 1st Amendment protections and free speech. Citizens United vs FEC codified that; spending is a form of free speech, and if we can agree that billionaires giving RVs to our justices and massive foreign-sponsored special-interest groups raining cash on our politicians is acceptable, I don’t think its unreasonable for an American to make their own personal economic decisions based on their opinions; under this bill, those convictions could become criminal. But wait, there’s something even more insidious about this. Namely, the third section. ” furnishing information about whether someone is associated with charitable or fraternal organizations that support the boycotted country.” Let’s look at that. It would make it a criminal offense to identify if someone is “associated” with a charitable or “fraternal” organization that supports the boycotted country (Israel). This literally means that it would be a CRIME to disclose if someone was receiving support from AIPAC, for example. Notice how “association” isn’t defined. Financial association, political association, membership on governing committees, etc. There’s literally no limit to this. Let me be absolutely, boldly, crystal-clear. THIS AMENDMENT WOULD PROVIDE A LEGAL SHIELD OF INVISIBILITY OVER FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN ISRAELI SPECIAL-INTEREST GROUPS AND POLITICIANS. Sure, it would also extend to regular Americans too (so that there would be no practical way for an American to know if someone was associated with a “charitable or fraternal organization supporting the target of a boycotted country”, but the primary beneficiaries of this law would be politicians whose actions (votes) and policies are worth buying. Let me be absolutely clear…it would be A CRIMINAL OFFENSE to disclose something like a donation from AIPAC or J-Street to a congressman, or a bribe to a Justice, or a Governor, etc.

This would literally forbid Americans from learning anything about who funds our political candidates or if those candidates have any public affiliations with special-interest groups. And those allegations of anti-Semitism I’m sure people are coming up with right now? Would you tolerate these proposals if they were targeting, say, Russian Communist sympathizers? Remember, it was official government policy to target Communists for punishment for something like sixty years and it’s still legally-challenging to hold membership in advocacy groups like the Communist Party of the USA. Same with Islamic groups like CAIR- under this law, hypothetically, it would be possible for Arab billionaires to pour money into Illhan Omar’s campaign without any disclosure of her purported top-secret role as the queen of whatever group the right-wing fever apocalypse dream claims she’s a part of. Or…Putin could simply pump Russian money directly through a shell “charitable group” to Vance 2028 and it would be a literal crime to disclose it. Yes, this provision goes beyond Israel. This is literally an invisibility cloak for anonymous organizations to pump funds to our “leadership”.

Stopped clocks are right sometimes, and MAGA’s right wing is 100% correct on this. It is a violation of the First Amendment and jeopardizes the public for this bill to go forward.

Now, let’s dissect some of what the sponsors of this bill said. It was introduced by Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York. In a January 2025 statement, Lawler said “I’m proud to reintroduce the IGO Anti-Boycott Act, a bipartisan effort to protect U.S. citizens, businesses, and our allies, particularly Israel, from discriminatory boycotts. This bill closes a critical loophole by ensuring that international organizations cannot enable harmful BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] efforts. This legislation is essential to safeguarding Israel’s security and economy from unjust attacks”. Going over this, I’m not seeing how the threat of criminal prosecution and punishment is “protective” for Americans, nor do I see where it’s an American congressional representative’s job to ensure Israeli economic prosperity and “security” over the rights of Americans. As stated above, Citizens United affirmed that how we spend money is a form of free speech, so where does the United States government come from in saying that it’s criminal not to spend money on Israeli goods and services? For that matter, is it a crime not to “donate” to those Israeli “charity” groups claiming that elderly Jews are starving to death on the streets of Tel Aviv? Mike Lawler apparently believes so; he introduced this. I’d like to know why, considering that as Americans, we have no right to economic security, in fact, as an American, that right is conspicuously absent. I’d like to know his motivation for this law; I suspect it is because he has nearly $640,000 worth of donations from AIPAC to his name.

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He’s not alone though. The bill was co-sponsored by Congressman Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat. In January 2025, he stated that “International organizations can’t get away with targeting our key democratic ally, Israel. That’s why we are introducing the bipartisan IGO Anti-Boycott Act to counter the blatant anti-Israel bias in international organizations like the United Nations, which has a long history of targeting the Jewish state. Democrats and Republicans must continue working together to combat efforts to isolate, delegitimize, and demonize our key ally, Israel.” According to the AIPAC Tracker, he has received approximately $2,000,000 dollars in AIPAC donations over his long political career…certainly no reason to suspect he might benefit from a more opaque funding plan, right? Once again, here’s a (liberal Democrat) Congressman who is dedicated to putting Israeli interests ahead of American constitutional rights. They’re not alone either. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) has nearly $400,000 worth of AIPAC funding and their endorsement for his rigorously pro-Israel voting. Fair enough, AIPAC is a private concern, but it sure seems that there’s a bit of a quid pro quo here. Parsing the cosponsors listed, it’s a rather unique alliance of conservative Christian Republicans and liberal Jewish Democrats. An otherwise-unlikely alliance centered around the prioritization of Israeli money over American freedoms.

For the record, AIPAC itself had this to say: “American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in a January statement: “AIPAC strongly supports the IGO Anti-Boycott Act which makes clear the U.S. will not countenance U.N. instigated boycotts of our ally Israel.”- from Newsweek. Yes, that’s the crux of it- the pro-Israel lobby in the United States wants to insulate Israel from internationally-declared economic boycotts at the expense of American constitutional rights and by criminalizing American private participation in any boycott. Yes…to the sponsors and supporters of this bill, your rights as an American to conduct your own economic affairs are inferior to Israeli economic interests.

Now, this isn’t a critique of Jewish identity, society, culture, or Judaism, at all. In fact, I think that bills like H.R. 867 are fundamentally anti-Semitic, because they are using Semitic identity as a wedge issue to target and punish people for their “negative” thoughts, expressions and actions, regardless of the rationale, and using Jewish identity as a justification for these actions. This corrodes both Judaism and public acceptance of Jewish culture- just look at the corrosion suffered by Islam and the Persian and Arab populations when various anti-Western groups decided to focus their revolutions through the lens of religion.

Indeed, Israel itself is actively harmed by these bills. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to point out that this is happening at the same time as the President is floating the idea of deporting American citizens to El Salvador’s CECOT Super-jail

…and here comes a bill that threatens to criminalize (with prison time and fines!) peaceful protest and criticism of Israel, to include simply not spending money on Israel. Yes, if you put this together in the mind-blenders of the average American voter, you can quite reasonably arrive at the conclusion that criticizing Israel could equal Superjail. FUCKING MARJORIE TAYLOR-GREENE CAME TO THIS CONCLUSION. MATT GAETZ BEER-BONGED HIS WAY TO THIS. If America’s least accurate stopped clocks can figure this out, it’s pretty reasonable to assume the rest of us will too, especially if its ever enforced. And if it is? Now we’re punishing American citizens, in the name of Israel, for exercising American freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. How does this look for Israel? It makes no sense whatsoever. All this proposes is to introduce yet another reason for the American public to not trust Israel, to vote for anti-Israel candidates, and to make support for Israel a partisan litmus test with no right answer and all wrong ones. This is not a sustainable long-term position for the Israeli government or their advocates. Any potential person prosecuted under this would immediately become a martyr to the anti-Semitic movement, and the potential financial consequences of a limited boycott are miniscule in comparison to the economic and political consequences of a sea change in how Americans support Israel. This bill even weakens the stances of Jewish-Americans- there are no laws proposing special treatment for other minorities of Americans, much less criminalizing failures to follow their wishes- Section 2 even opens the door to a twisted form of Affirmative Action where declining to hire a Jewish person or person affiliated with a pro-Israel organization (even in secret) could be construed as a criminal violation of the Anti-Boycott Act, thus compelling persons and companies to always defer to the positive in their interactions with anyone who may be offended by a negative interaction. It functionally would elevate those supporting Israel over every other American, at the cost of criminalizing criticism. This is exactly the same sort of twisted, outrageous allegation that anti-Semites have used in the past to pave the way for anti-Semitic policies– except that this law would make those allegations tangible and real. Giving these voices the chisel of this law will be detrimental in the extreme to Israel, Israelis and Jews as a collective whole. So, obvious answer…don’t make that chisel.

Now, let’s also define the entire purpose of boycotts. Bluntly and simply put by one of my favorite fictional TV characters, the Jewish-American speechwriter and White House staffer Toby Ziegler of the West Wing…

Free trade stops wars. People who have money, their necessities and (some) luxuries of life, and who live in general comfort are a lot less likely to harbor discontent, irritability and revolutionary thoughts than someone who is deprived of those, is starving, or who is oppressed. The American Revolution was triggered by a really really minor imposition on free trade within the Colonies; the Civil War was started by the threat of regulation of the slave trade and limitations on its expansion and practice. World War I’s explosive beginning was fueled by the breakdown of free trade as Britain and Germany imposed blockades on one another. World War II was a direct result of the breakdown in effective free trade in Europe and Asia that severed German and Japanese ties to the greater global economy and allowed nationalist leaders to rise to power. The rise of the Soviet Union, Cold War and ultimately the horrors of Communism were directly due to the failures of capitalistic free trade to extend to those economies. Conversely, the successes of Pax Americana are due primarily to our unprecedented and fabulously-successful economic partnership with China (that has resulted in the significant enrichment and improvement of Chinese society and the Chinese economy), global free trade that has made America a marketplace for most of the world, and that has created economic links across most of the world, both with the great consumer economies of Europe and American and the producer economies of China and Asia and the supplier economies of the Third World. Money, fuel, ideas and comforts are far more appealing than dying in battle; breakdowns in that trade like we’ve seen in Afghanistan, Syria/Iraq, Russia and East Africa are the factors that fuel extremist revolutions and wars.

https://www.aipacpac.org/winning-candidates-2024The flip side of the Free-Trade gold coin is that isolation from that trade can cause those deprivations. That is the purpose of a boycott- to trigger social pressures that will hopefully change the course of those activities to something more agreeable to world opinion. Reference the South African boycott that ultimately drove their white government to end Apartheid and grant civil rights to their Black population. I’m not claiming that any boycott activity is just or well-founded or even reasonable, but it is a lot less significant to simply boycott a person, company or nation than it is to imprison them, bomb their homes, kill their families or invade the places they live. The fact that boycotts impose hardships on their targets to the extent that legislation like H.R. 867 is proposed is proof that they do work; the fact that they are being advocated for against Israel (as a result of the Israeli conduct of the Gaza war and their attacks on Lebanon and the ongoing occupation of the West Bank) is an unfortunate (for the Israelis) consequence of Israeli decisions and activities in those places. I’m not saying that it isn’t legitimate, I’m pointing out that those actions have consequences and that how those actions are perceived across the world is going to matter a lot. Doing morally-questionable things like killing tens of thousands of civilians, bombing and bulldozing homes, invading neutral third countries, executing little girls and paramedics with tank cannon and machine guns and killing fifteen other paramedics and first responders in a multi-hour ambush seems to have a detrimental effect on how Israel is perceived as a state; demanding American and European governments act to put Israeli interests before the interests of their own nations and people corrodes trust in Israel as an ally; and introducing arbitrary, self-serving, racist legislation like H.R. 867 that presupposes that anyone with an opinion that isn’t in lockstep with the current right-wing fascist Zionist leadership of Israel and their paid-for American Quisling and Apocalypse-preparatory fellow travelers

is a terrible blow to any future trust in Israel for any reason. After all, if it’s a crime to criticize the murder of this kindergartener

and if it’s a crime to boycott Israel because you can’t quite live with the knowledge that you’re supporting the lifestyles of the cowards who execute little girls and paramedics from behind the helms of Merkava battle tanks…

…and it’s a crime to figure out which of your politicians has financial obligations to the Israeli polity and its political advocacy groups…

…and it’s potentially a crime to even speak out against Israel and its fellow travelers for fear of deportation to Superjail…

Then how exactly are the beneficiaries of these “protective laws” any different than the dudes we literally fought a World War to put down?

For now, MAGA is actually working and H.R. 867 is off the schedule for a vote, largely because (I shit you not) CAIR and right-wing not-super-far-away-from-white-supremacy-and-I’m-pretty-sure-they-know-dudes-in-the-Klan Republican caucus and the ACLU brought a lot of attention to it. That does not mean that it won’t be rescheduled, resuscitated or installed in the dark of night; I don’t trust Mike Johnson or Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries to put country over shekel at all and I know Trump would reflexively sign anything that gives him more leverage over Americans. Keep an eye out and stay angry; they really are coming for our institutions, freedoms and way of life. Remember, your freedom is yours, and it is not for me, American society or the government, or a foreign government to tell you how to live, how to spend your money, or how to vote or what to say or who to support. Your identity, your faith, your convictions and intellect and beliefs and joys and fears and affiliations and prejudices and acceptances and accomplishments are yours, and this bill would change that. If you give government an inch, they’ll take miles.

And who’s to say what those miles will contain next time?