[News] God, Gas, and Cash: How Texas Fell in Love With Israel — and Then Trampled on the Constitution

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/israel-texas-government-relationship/


  God, Gas, and Cash: How Texas Fell in Love With Israel — and Then
  Trampled on the Constitution

Alex Kane - June 1, 2019
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_On the afternoon_ of April 19, 2018, a group of Texas Republicans 
received an email confirming their upcoming all-expenses-paid trips to 
Israel. An orientation packet filled with background on their 
destination “for reading on the flight,” the message said, was forthcoming.

The May 2018 trip to Israel would not be Texas politicians’ first — Gov. 
Greg Abbott, for one, flew to Israel on casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s 
private jet in 2016 
<https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/politics/texas/article/Abbott-flew-to-Israel-on-Adelson-jet-6768709.php>.

But it was unique in at least one crucial way: The trip was organized by 
the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, according to records 
obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and reviewed by The 
Intercept. The right-wing group of over 2,000 state legislators, 
lobbyists, and corporate backers writes legislation to be exported to 
statehouses around the country and has largely focused on issues like 
“stand your ground” gun laws and voter suppression efforts. By leading a 
delegation to Israel, ALEC was opening up a new front, demonstrating the 
extent to which support for Israel has become a central part of the 
GOP’s policy agenda, especially in Texas.

The delegation, which included eight elected Texas officials, was a 
reflection of Texas Republicans’ deep ties to Israel: rooted in a 
combination of economic interests, an Israel-loving evangelical base, 
and pro-Israel advocates whose campaign contributions have helped the 
state’s GOP maintain its 16-year governing trifecta. Those ties have 
grown stronger in recent years, even as Israel lurches to the extremist 
right, entrenches its military occupation of Palestinian land, and 
continues to build settlements, considered by most of the world illegal 
under international law.

    “The Israelis are kind of like cowboys. They’re tough and gritty and
    they don’t take any shit from anybody.”

As the Trump administration maintains the friendliest U.S. relationship 
with the Israeli right in history, Texas has become one of the most 
pro-Israel states in the country. It has forged ties with Israeli 
settlements and aggressively enforced a law targeting advocates of 
boycotting Israel. Its exports to Israel last year topped $900 million, 
and its imports from Israel are valued at $1.5 billion, according to the 
Texas Economic Development Corporation, making Texas the fourth biggest 
Israeli trade partner in the U.S. (Florida, however, is now competing 
with Texas over supporting Israel: The state’s Trump-backed governor, 
Ron DeSantis, who campaigned on a promise to be America’s most 
pro-Israel governor, traveled to Israel on a “business development 
mission <https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1132054238266298369>” 
with members of his cabinet in late May and was on hand to applaud 
theannouncement 
<https://www.flgov.com/2019/05/27/governor-ron-desantis-applauds-historic-memorandum-of-understanding-agreement-between-florida-atlantic-university-and-ariel-university/> 
of a student exchange program between Ariel University, an institution 
located in an Israeli settlement deep in the occupied West Bank, and 
Florida Atlantic University.)

“I think we have a lot in common with Israel,” Texas Agriculture 
Commissioner Sid Miller, an adviser to Trump’s 2016 election campaign 
whoonce 
<https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/texas-agriculture-commissioner-sid-miller-posted-a-facebook-meme-suggesting-the-muslim-world-be-nuked/>shared 
a meme on Facebook 
<https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/texas-agriculture-commissioner-sid-miller-posted-a-facebook-meme-suggesting-the-muslim-world-be-nuked/> suggesting 
the U.S. drop a nuclear bomb on the “Muslim world,” told The Intercept. 
“The Israelis are kind of like cowboys. They’re tough and gritty and 
they don’t take any shit from anybody.”


      Oil and Gas

Texas’s booming oil and gas industry was a focal point of the 
ALEC-sponsored delegation, which was meant to strengthen the already 
robust economic bonds between Texas and Israel, according to the records 
reviewed by The Intercept. The Texas energy companies CenterPoint and 
Vistra, and Zev Shulkin, a Texas doctor and pro-Israel advocate, joined 
ALEC in paying for the trip, according to the records, which do not 
reveal the total cost.

The Texas Republicans on the trip included Railroad Commissioner Wayne 
Christian; state Reps. Phil King, Ron Simmons, Tony Dale, and Dennis 
Paul; and state Sens. Larry Taylor, Brandon Creighton, and Donna 
Campbell. Their days were filled with meeting Israeli technology 
companies and discussing how Texas can help Israel out with fossil fuel 
production, along with trips to Israeli settlement businesses. (ALEC, 
the energy companies, Shulkin, and the Texas state legislators did not 
respond to repeated requests for comment.)

U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, a backer of Israeli 
settlements who met with the group on their first night in town, told 
the legislators that Texas oil and gas made “all the difference in the 
world” to Israel, according to an email sent by Christian, who as 
railroad commissioner regulates oil and gas production in Texas. From 
2009 to 2010, Houston company Noble Energy discovered two huge gas 
fields off the coast of Israel, and subsequently partnered with Israeli 
companies to sell natural gas to Jordan and Egypt for at least $25 
billion. 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-jordan-natgas/leviathan-partners-say-all-conditions-met-to-supply-natgas-to-jordan-idUSL5N1QP1NO>

    “Because of Texas oil and gas, we are now, for the first time in the
    70 years of Israeli history, able to be bold in our support of this
    great Nation.”

“Israel is one of our nation’s greatest allies, yet historically due to 
our reliance on Middle Eastern oil, the US has been hesitant to fight 
alongside Israel on the battlefield (although we have been supportive),” 
Christian wrote to Lisa Nelson, the CEO of ALEC, after he got back from 
the trip to Israel. “Because of Texas oil and gas, we are now, for the 
first time in the 70 years of Israeli history, able to be bold in our 
support of this great Nation.”

The Lone Star State’s economic ties to Israel are expanding beyond 
fossil fuels.

“What drives the Texas economy is exactly where Israel innovates the 
most: energy efficiency, water conservation and treatment, cyber 
security, health care innovation,” said Toba Hellerstein, CEO of the 
Texas-Israel Alliance.

Israel and Texas have also collaborated on the military-industrial 
complex. In 2014, Elbit Systems of America, the Texas-based subsidiary 
of Israeli company Elbit, landed a $145 million contract 
<https://www.jpost.com/International/Elbit-to-build-surveillance-towers-on-Arizonas-border-with-Mexico-344005>to 
build surveillance towers along the Arizona-Mexico border. The Fort 
Worth factory of Lockheed Martin, the American defense giant, built the 
stealth F-35 fighter jets that Israel first bought in 2010 for $2.75 
billion 
<https://www.reuters.com/article/israel-usa-f-35/update-1-israel-us-sign-2-75-billion-f-35-fighter-deal-idUSN0717986420101008>.

“We put such heavy emphasis on our law enforcement here, on ICE, on 
securing the border, a wall; all things that are mirrored in Israel,” 
said Mohamad Fattouh, a member of the executive board of Students for 
Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston. “Texas sees itself in 
Israel and vice versa.”


      “All the Land Was Given to Them by God”

Texas’ Christian right has, through its political activism, helped give 
credence to what most of the world considers illegitimate: Israeli 
settlements in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Israeli 
military wrested control of those areas in 1967, and as the settlements 
have expanded over the past 52 years, the rights of the native 
Palestinians have eroded.

In March 2017, Miller, a conservative Christian who believes God gave 
Jews the land of Israel, made a trade trip to Israel to explore export 
opportunities for Texas agriculture companies and to meet with Israeli 
companies looking to invest in Texas.

By the end of Miller’s trip, the agriculture commissioner had signed a 
one-of-a-kind trade agreement with the Shomron Regional Council, which 
provides municipal services to 35 Jewish-only settlements in the 
northern occupied West Bank. Settlements in what Israelis call the 
Shomron region are part of the ever-growing infrastructure for Israeli 
settlers whose presence has sliced through the Palestinian West Bank, 
cutting off towns from one another and killing the dream of an 
independent Palestinian state.

“I wanted them to know that the Department of Agriculture and Sid Miller 
stand in solidarity with them, recognizing Israel as a country, as a 
sovereign nation, a sovereign people, and push back on the BDS movement, 
which is absolutely terrible,” Miller told The Intercept, referring to 
boycott, divestment, and sanctions, or the social movement trying to 
enact an economic price on Israel over its human rights abuses against 
Palestinians. “What we did over there is now being mirrored by Trump and 
his peace plan for that part of the region. So we were kind of the 
leading edge of it.”

Now, Miller, who says he remains in contact with Trump, says he thinks 
the White House will follow his lead and recognize Israeli settlements, 
which would mark a sharp break from decades of U.S. policy that held 
that settlements are an obstacle to Palestinian statehood.

    “What we did over there is now being mirrored by Trump and his peace
    plan for that part of the region. So we were kind of the leading
    edge of it.”

Miller’s approach aligns with the Christian right’s backing of Israel’s 
settlement project. U.S. Christian nonprofits have sent tens of millions 
of dollars to Israeli settlements 
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-inside-the-evangelical-money-flowing-into-the-west-bank-1.6723443> over the 
past decade, and hundreds of evangelicals go to the occupied West Bank 
every year to volunteer in Israeli settlement farming projects 
<https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/245461/strangers-in-the-vineyards>. 
That commitment has led to a flowering of ties between Christian 
evangelicals, right-wing American Jewish groups that also back Israeli 
settlements, and Israeli settlers themselves.

“They’re working openly, and have been for years, to argue there is no 
distinction between Israel and settlements, that all the land was given 
to them by God, and that making a distinction between settlements and 
Israel is anti-Semitic,” said Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation 
for Middle East Peace, a liberal think tank whose work focuses on the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


      A Political Winner

The power of the Christian right-Jewish alliance in Texas was put on 
full display two months after Miller’s jaunt to West Bank settlements. 
In May 2017, the Texas legislature passed a sweeping bill that targeted 
Texans heeding the call for boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel 
because of its human rights abuses. Influential groups like Christians 
United for Israel, founded by John Hagee, a San Antonio preacher whose 
megachurch boasts 17,000 members, and the Texas Eagle Forum, another 
Christian right group, mobilized to support the legislation. Jewish and 
pro-Israel organizations like StandWithUs and the American Jewish 
Committee also lobbied for the bill.

“It was just natural. … I’m very good friends with many people in the 
House and Senate in Texas,” said Mike Isley, a supporter of the anti-BDS 
bill and the founder and president of Texans for Israel, an evangelical 
group that takes Christians to Israel. “Four Price and John Smithee are 
two of my state reps in the counties I’m part of. So, of course I went 
to them, and both of them are wonderful, they’re both lovers of Israel. 
So they were very supportive.”

House Bill 89, the anti-BDS law, prohibited the state from doing 
business with any companies or individual contractors who boycott Israel.

The bill was so popular that not a single member in the Texas House 
voted against it. In the Senate, it passed with overwhelming support 
from both parties, with only one Republican and four Democrats voting 
against it. Similar bills targeting boycotts for Palestinian rights have 
passed in 27 other states and are currently pending in others. (ALEC is 
one of the groups that has lobbied aggressively for these measures 
around the country.)

In an email to The Intercept, state Sen. Jose Rodriguez, a Democrat from 
El Paso who was one of the few to oppose HB 89, said the bill “aim[s] to 
silence political expression, and do so at a financial cost that also 
erodes First Amendment rights. If a company can do the highest quality 
job at the lowest cost to the state, and we refuse to hire that company, 
Texas taxpayers pay more.”

But for Abbott, the Texas governor, the bill was a political winner that 
pleased a key part of the Republican base that put him in power and 
major campaign donors to his campaign and the GOP in Texas.

At the signing ceremony for the bill held at the Jewish Community Center 
in Austin, Abbott was surrounded by pro-Israel advocates his staff had 
invited like Jerry Greenspan, the southwest regional political director 
of the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, or AIPAC; Sandra 
Hagee Parker, daughter of the San Antonio preacher John Hagee; and 
Shulkin, the Texas doctor who helped pay for the ALEC delegation to Israel.

    “I had to choose between continuing to express my support for
    Palestinian rights and the commitments I had made to sources as a
    journalist.”

Others who came to the signing ceremony included Zev Shulkin’s father 
Allan Shulkin, a physician involved in pro-Israel advocacy who donated 
$2,500 to Abbott’s campaign in 2014 and again in 2018, as well as $1,500 
to Phil King, the Texas representative who co-authored the anti-boycott 
bill; Michael Dell, an Israel backer and the CEO of Dell Technologies, 
who has given $20,000 to Abbott’s campaigns since 2004 and gave another 
$50,000 to the Republican Party of Texas in 2006; and Aryeh Natan 
Lightstone, a senior adviser to U.S. Ambassador to Israel David 
Friedman. (Lightstone is a business partner of Phil King’s and, in his 
previous role as head of pro-Israel group Shining City, lobbied for the 
Texas anti-BDS bill, according to ProPublica 
<https://www.propublica.org/article/shining-city-community-aryeh-lightstone-david-friedman-us-embassy-israel-owed-money-from-advocacy-group>.) 
Paul Singer, the New York hedge fund CEO and bankroller of 
neoconservative causes who gave $275,000 to the GOP in Texas in 2008, 
was invited but could not attend the signing ceremony.


      Silencing Dissent

After the bill’s passage, state contracts added a clause that required 
contractors to pledge to abstain from boycotting Israel. The measure 
also required the Texas comptroller’s office to compile a blacklist of 
companies supporting the boycott of Israel. In April, Texas divested $72 
million of stock from DNB ASA, a financial services group that put a 
handful of Israeli companies on a list of companies it wouldn’t invest 
in because of involvement in human rights violations.

In March of this year, the office added vacation rental website Airbnb 
to the blacklist after the company decided to remove listings from 
illegal Israeli settlers, who were profiting from land taken from 
Palestinians.

The decision to blacklist Airbnb had immediate impact. The University of 
Texas said no employee could use state funds to rent on Airbnb. Abbott 
similarly ordered that no public worker use Airbnb. Then, in April, 
Airbnb reversed the decision to remove its listings in Israeli 
settlements in the occupied West Bank, and in May was taken off the 
Texas comptroller’s list.

“The decision to stand up for human rights should have been applauded by 
state lawmakers,” said Meera Shah, a senior staff attorney at Palestine 
Legal, a group that defends the speech rights of Palestinian rights 
advocates. “Instead, they elected to punish the company and force its 
hand and force it to walk back that decision.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic 
Relations filed a lawsuit challenging the law in 2018. Their plaintiffs 
included Obi Dennar, a former University of Texas at Austin student who 
was asked to sign a no-boycott pledge as part of his work moderating 
high school debates; George Hale, the host of the popular crime podcast 
“Buried,” who was forced to sign the clause or forgo working on the 
show; and Bahia Amawi 
<https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/>, a 
Palestinian American children’s speech pathologist who was forced to end 
nine years of work in public schools when she refused to sign the pledge.

“I had to choose between continuing to express my support for 
Palestinian rights and the commitments I had made to sources as a 
journalist,” said Hale, who ended up signing the contract but made a 
clear note of his disagreement in the margins.

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