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Rueters: U.S. states and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal aid for natural disaster preparedness
I've followed the politicization of FEMA grants through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program which overwhelmingly goes to Jewish organizations. The recent Israel supplemental bill included a $390M increase to the Nonprofit Security Grant Program with $230M available through Sept 30, 2026. Schumer is pushing for an additional $500M bringing potential 2026 funding to $730M.
The timing of this is interesting also because it's in the middle of a significant back-and-forth between Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. Tucker Carlson had Candace Owens on his show, where Tucker accused Fuentes of being a fed. To justify that claim, Tucker said that Fuentes accused Carlson's father of being in the CIA which was a fact that Carlson claimed to not know until his father's death in March.
Tucker also gave a line of criticism of Fuentes that Tucker himself gave in nearly exact words to Pat Buchanan in 1999.
How does this tie in together? Where is the pushback against the clear Israeli influence in the US government supposed to come from in the Right Wing? It's only coming from Fuentes and DR Twitter. Stuff like this gives Fuentes credibility regarding his criticisms of Israeli influence- it seems Tucker Carlson is trying to ride the fine line between providing an outlet for criticism of Israeli influence among the Right Wing but still gatekeeping Nick Fuentes from going further mainstream.
While in practice I'll accept that it's complicated, both sides of the aisle seem to have, in some cases begrudgingly, agreed that "discrimination on the basis of national origin" is verboten. Under the lens of the Civil Rights Act, a company saying "We won't do business with Israeli nationals" (note the number of dual-citizenships and US citizens residing in Israel, which is more than in Canada) is a pretty transparent violation.
It is a bit less clear that this applies to foreign companies: "we prefer to buy from domestic suppliers" is well within the Overton Window, even "would prefer not to buy from China" is probably not objectionable (and "do not do business with Iran and North Korea" is effectively mandated, although those congressional mandates presumably trump congressional civil rights law). But in this particular case, "will not buy from Israel-linked companies" is pretty strongly associated with attempts to discriminate against persons of Israeli origin. I think this case is maybe winnable, but you'd likely need to be squeaky clean on the persons (not corporate) level.
Now, there are also good arguments to be made about absolute freedom of association here, but most of those have, to my knowledge, mostly lost in court. Overturning the better part of a century of civil rights law is something that is neither a small ask, nor popular outside of a handful of principled libertarians (and witches). I don't think that's to be done lightly.
Discriminating against Israeli citizens in the US seems bad from a civil rights perspective, yes.
Discriminating against Israeli companies or products seems much less problematic, especially if it is just spending decisions. Both states and companies should be free to chose with which companies they do business. If Texas prefers to arm its police force with weapons produced in Texas, that seems the kind of decision a state should be able to make. If Google decides that it hates South Korea and refuses to buy any computer components produced there, that is something for the market to solve.
I think that the use of financial incentives is pretty disingenuous, because it allows the feds to say "we did not violate your rights, you could just opt out of FEMA or not take tax credits".
If federal funds come with strings attached on how to spend that money specifically, that seems fine. "If you buy emergency shelters from your FEMA grant, you may not discriminate against Israeli companies" - "None of the medicaid funds may be spent on medical marijuana" - "5% of the medicaids funds are earmarked for abortion services. If you can not provide these, you do not get the 5%."
But my understanding is that this is not what is happening here. Instead, it is "follow our rules generally, or you don't get money", which I find bad.
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As I often do, I like to consider a counterfactual: suppose there was a movement that existed to boycott only Muslim nations. Now, it wasn't against Muslims, per se, just that for mumblemumble reasons it only called for those nations to be boycotted, and for nations that are demonstrably worse at human rights like the likes of North Korea to be not sanctioned.
I don't think a lot of the people complaining about anti-BDS would also be complaining about being anti-Muslim-Nation-boycotts. Sure, there'd still be some overlap, but not enough to really make the news.
If you want to see this in action, the political arguments are practically reversed on the issue of the "Muslim ban" in Trump's first term: that one even included North Korea! IIRC the administration at the time claimed it was based on security cooperation agreements and just happened to hit mostly Muslim nations (but not all such nations) with poor recordkeeping.
I'm not sure I'm happy with that one either, for the record.
The list of countries Trump used was compiled during the Obama administration, four countries in the original "Terrorist Travel Prevention Act" and three more added by Obama's DHS. But, in Obama's term this was a "countries whose citizens and visitors can't travel to the US under the Visa Waiver Program instead of getting a visa first" list, and Trump turned it into a "countries whose citizens and visitors can't travel to the US at all" list.
All 7 countries listed were 95%+ Muslim, but there are another 19 or 20 95%-Muslim countries that didn't make the list.
On the one hand, the popular phrase "Trump's Muslim ban" seems like an inaccurate descriptor for a ban that applied to some non-Muslims and didn't apply to most Muslims based on a list from the Obama administration; he was pretty transparently trying to get as close to his promised "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on" as he could get legally, but the end result really wasn't very close. On the other hand, that transparency made the order still a pretty clear match to our "for mumblemumble reasons" hypothetical, which is part of why the courts kept shooting him down until he'd repeatedly watered down the order.
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As a member of "some overlap" I'll say this works both way. The people screaming bloody murder about BDS, would see the kind of laws directed against it as an egregious violation of their basic civil rights, were they directed at an anti-Muslim boycott.
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In the 1980s dozens of cities and states had taken economic action against South Africa. It's not a Civil Rights issue.
I think the vibes of applying civil rights law to "white people" have changed drastically since the 1980s. Certainly not unanimously, but witness the Trump administration's consideration of refugee status for white South Africans (I'm going to choose not to express an opinion on that at this time).
But there have IIRC been a few instances of academic conferences having to walk back "International submissions encouraged. Israeli academics need not apply."
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If your goal is the support of civilization - and particularly european-derived civilization - and the flourishing of european-descended individuals, that may not be the best example to cite.
It suffices to dispense with the silly notion that it's a Civil Rights violation to boycott a foreign business. It also demonstrates how a protest towards a white civilization was supported by the government, and also widely supported by Jews (who were very prominent in the anti-apartheid activism), whereas Israel receives strong defense from the highest levels of government and all of a sudden it's racist to support the anti-Israeli activism! It shows how our government and Jews in particular react to protest against a white country versus a Jewish country.
Israel was, quite literally, the only* country which supported the apartheid government until the end.
*excluding bantustans, of course.
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