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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <a
class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/">theintercept.com</a>
<h1 class="reader-title">A Texas Elementary School Speech
Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory
in Many States — so She Lost Her Job</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Glenn Greenwald - December
17, 2018</div>
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<p><u>A children’s speech pathologist</u> who has
worked for the last nine years with developmentally
disabled, autistic, and speech-impaired elementary
school students in Austin, Texas, has been told that she
can no longer work with the public school district,
after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does
not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or
“otherwise tak[e] any action that is intended to inflict
economic harm” on that foreign nation. A <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5631742-Bahia-Amawi-s-Lawsuit-Against-Texas-Over-Israel.html">lawsuit
on her behalf</a> was filed early Monday morning in a
federal court in the Western District of Texas, alleging
a violation of her First Amendment right of free speech.</p>
<p>The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S.
citizen who received a master’s degree in speech
pathology in 1999 and, since then, has specialized in
evaluations for young children with language
difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in
Austria and has lived in the U.S. for the last 30 years,
fluently speaks three languages (English, German, and
Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children of her
own.</p>
<p>Amawi began working in 2009 on a contract basis with
the Pflugerville Independent School District, which
includes Austin, to provide assessments and support for
school children from the county’s growing
Arabic-speaking immigrant community. The children with
whom she has worked span the ages of 3 to 11. Ever since
her work for the school district began in 2009, her
contract was renewed each year with no controversy or
problem.</p>
<p>But this year, all of that changed. On August 13, the
school district once again offered to extend her
contract for another year by sending her essentially the
same contract and set of certifications she has received
and signed at the end of each year since 2009.</p>
<p>She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until
she noticed one new, and extremely significant,
addition: a certification she was required to sign
pledging that she “does not currently boycott Israel,”
that she “will not boycott Israel during the term of the
contract,” and that she shall refrain from any action
“that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on,
or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a
person or entity doing business in Israeli or in an
Israel-controlled territory.”</p>
<p>The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must
sign reads like Orwellian — or McCarthyite —
self-parody, the classic political loyalty oath that
every American should instinctively shudder upon
reading:</p>
<p><img
src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/12/isa-1544881457-tint-1545064635.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=484"
alt="isa-1544881457-tint-1545064635"> </p>
<p>That language would bar Amawi not only from refraining
from buying goods from companies located within Israel,
but also from any Israeli companies operating in the
occupied West Bank (“an Israeli-controlled
territory”). The oath given to Amawi would also likely
prohibit her even from <em>advocating</em> such a
boycott given that such speech could be seen as
“intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or
limit commercial relations with Israel.”</p>
<p>Whatever one’s own views are, <a
href="https://twitter.com/TravisMannon/status/1074323469268123648">boycotting Israel
to stop its occupation</a> is a global political
movement <a
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/02/bds-movement-lessons-south-africa-boycott-160223072813078.html">modeled
on the 1980s boycott aimed at South Africa</a> that
helped end that country’s system of racial apartheid.
It has become so mainstream that two newly elected
members of the U.S. Congress <a
href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/rashida-tlaib-endorses-bds-movement-1006656677">explicitly
support it</a>, while boycotting Israeli companies in
the occupied territories has long been advocated in
mainstream venues by <a
href="https://www.jpost.com/National-News/Peace-Now-launches-boycott-of-settlement-products">Jewish
Zionist groups such as Peace Now</a> and the <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/opinion/to-save-israel-boycott-the-settlements.html">Jewish-American
Zionist writer Peter Beinart</a>.</p>
<p>This required certification about Israel was the only
one in the contract sent to Amawi that pertained to
political opinions and activism. There were no similar
clauses relating to children (such as a vow not to
advocate for pedophiles or child abusers), nor were
there any required political oaths that pertained to the
country of which she is a citizen and where she lives
and works: the United States.</p>
<p>In order to obtain contracts in Texas, then, a citizen
is free to denounce and work against the United States,
to advocate for causes that directly harm American
children, and even to support a boycott of particular
U.S. states, such as <a
href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/27/bathroom-bill-to-cost-north-carolina-376-billion.html">was
done in 2017 to North Carolina</a> in protest of its
anti-LGBT law. In order to continue to work, Amawi would
be perfectly free to engage in any political activism
against her own country, participate in an economic
boycott of any state or city within the U.S., or work
against the policies of any other government in the
world — except Israel.</p>
<p>That’s one extraordinary aspect of this story: The sole
political affirmation Texans like Amawi are required to
sign in order to work with the school district’s
children is one designed to protect not the United
States or the children of Texas, but the economic
interests of Israel. As Amawi put it to The Intercept:
“It’s baffling that they can throw this down our throats
and decide to protect another country’s economy versus
protecting our constitutional rights.”</p>
<p>Amawi concluded that she could not truthfully or in
good faith sign the oath because, in conjunction with
her family, she has made the household decision to
refrain from purchasing goods from Israeli companies in
support of the global boycott to end Israel’s
decadeslong occupation of the West Bank <a
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kUSihH-M9M">and
Gaza</a>.</p>
<p>Amawi, as the mother of four young children and a
professional speech pathologist, is not a leader of any
political movements: She has simply made the consumer
choice to support the boycott by avoiding the purchase
of products from Israeli companies in Israel or the
occupied West Bank. She also occasionally participates
in peaceful activism in defense of Palestinian
self-determination that includes advocacy of the global
boycott to end the Israeli occupation.</p>
<p>Watch The Intercept’s three-minute video of Amawi, as
she tells her story, here:</p>
<p class="caption">Video by Kelly West</p>
<p>When asked if she considered signing the pledge to
preserve her ability to work, Amawi told The Intercept:
“Absolutely not. I couldn’t in good conscience do that.
If I did, I would not only be betraying Palestinians
suffering under an occupation that I believe is unjust
and thus, become complicit in their repression, but I’d
also be betraying my fellow Americans by enabling
violations of our constitutional rights to free speech
and to protest peacefully.”</p>
<p>As a result, Amawi informed her school district
supervisor that she could not sign the oath. As <a
href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5631742-Bahia-Amawi-s-Lawsuit-Against-Texas-Over-Israel.html">her
complaint against the school district</a> explains,
she “ask[ed] why her personal political stances [about
Israel and Palestine] impacted her work as a speech
language pathologist.”</p>
<p>In response, Amawi’s supervisor promised that she would
investigate whether there were any ways around this
barrier. But the supervisor ultimately told Amawi that
there were no alternatives: Either she would have to
sign the oath, or the district would be legally barred
from paying her under any type of contract.</p>
<p>Because Amawi, to her knowledge, is the only certified
Arabic-speaking child’s speech pathologist in the
district, it is quite possible that the refusal to renew
her contract will leave dozens of young children
with speech pathologies without any competent expert to
evaluate their conditions and treatment needs.</p>
<p>“I got my master’s in this field and devoted myself to
this work because I always wanted to do service for
children,” Amawi said. “It’s vital that early-age
assessments of possible speech impairments or
psychological conditions be administered by those who
understand the child’s first language.”</p>
<p>In other words, Texas’s Israel loyalty oath
requirement victimizes not just Amawi, an American who
is barred from working in the professional field to
which she has devoted her adult life, but also the young
children in need of her expertise and
experience that she has spent years developing.</p>
<p><u>The anti-BDS Israel oath</u> was included in Amawi’s
contract papers due to <a
href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/370725/texas-becomes-17th-state-to-pass-law-countering-boycotts-of-israel/">an
Israel-specific state law enacted</a> on May 2, 2017,
by the Texas State Legislature and signed into law two
days later by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The bill unanimously
passed the lower House by a vote of 131-0, and then the
Senate by a vote of 25-4.</p>
<p>When Abbott signed the bill in a ceremony held at the
Austin Jewish Community Center, <a
href="https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/local/article/Being-anti-Israel-is-anti-Texas-says-Gov-Greg-11114838.php">he
proclaimed</a>: “Any anti-Israel policy is an
anti-Texas policy.”</p>
<p>The bill’s language is so sweeping that some victims of
Hurricane Harvey, which devastated Southwest Texas in
late 2017, <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/recovering-from-harvey-texas-suburb-hit-with-hurricane-israel-1.5459316">were
told that they could</a> only receive state disaster
relief if they first <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/news/texas-city-tells-people-no-hurricane-harvey-aid-unless-they-promise-not-boycott-israel">signed
a pledge never to boycott Israel.</a> That demand was
deeply confusing to those hurricane victims in desperate
need of help but who could not understand what their
views of Israel and Palestine had to do with their
ability to receive assistance from their state
government.</p>
<p>The evangelical author of the Israel bill, Republican
Texas state Rep. Phil King, <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/author-of-texas-anti-bds-bill-calls-aid-incident-misunderstanding-1.5459450">said
at the time that its application to hurricane relief</a>
was a “misunderstanding,” but nonetheless emphasized
that the bill’s purpose was indeed to ensure that no
public funds ever go to anyone who supports a boycott of
Israel.</p>
<p>At the time that Texas enacted the law barring
contractors from supporting a boycott of Israel, it was
the 17th state in the country to do so. As of now, 26
states have enacted such laws — including blue states
run by Democrats such as New York, California, and New
Jersey — while similar bills are pending in another 13
states.</p>
<p>This map <a
href="https://palestinelegal.org/righttoboycott/">compiled
by Palestine Legal</a> shows how pervasive various
forms of Israel loyalty oath requirements have become in
the U.S.; the states in red are ones where such laws are
already enacted, while the states in the darker shade
are ones where such bills are pending:</p>
<p>The vast majority of American citizens are therefore
now officially barred from supporting a boycott of
Israel without incurring some form of sanction or
limitation imposed by their state. And the relatively
few Americans who are still free to form views on this
hotly contested political debate without being
officially punished are in danger of losing that
freedom, as more and more states are poised to enact
similar censorship schemes.</p>
<p>One of the first states to impose such repressive
restrictions on free expression was New York. In 2016,
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/nyregion/cuomo-new-york-israel-boycott-bds-movement.html">directing
all agencies</a> under his control to terminate any
and all business with companies or organizations that
support a boycott of Israel. “If you boycott Israel, New
York State will boycott you,” Cuomo <a
href="https://twitter.com/nygovcuomo/status/741352188945928192">proudly
tweeted</a>, referring to a Washington Post op-ed
he wrote that touted that threat in its headline.</p>
<p>As The Intercept <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/06/06/andrew-cuomo-and-other-democrats-launch-severe-attack-on-free-speech-to-protect-israel/">reported
at the time</a>, Cuomo’s order “requires that one of
his commissioners compile ‘a list of institutions and
companies’ that — ‘either directly or through a parent
or subsidiary’ — support a boycott. That government list
is then posted publicly, and the burden falls on [the
accused boycotters] to prove to the state that they do
not, in fact, support such a boycott.”</p>
<p>Like the Texas law, Cuomo’s Israel order reads like a
parody of the McCarthy era:</p>
<p>What made Cuomo’s censorship directive particularly
stunning was that, just two months prior to issuing this
decree, he <a
href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/03/29/472268519/n-y-governor-bans-most-state-travel-to-north-carolina-over-lgbt-law">ordered
New York state agencies to boycott North Carolina</a>
in protest of that state’s anti-LGBT law. Two years
earlier, <a
href="https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-cuomo-bans-non-essential-state-travel-indiana">Cuomo
banned New York state employees</a> from all
nonessential travel to Indiana to boycott that state’s
enactment of an anti-LGBT law.</p>
<p>So Cuomo mandated that his own state employees
boycott two other states <em>within his own country</em>,
a boycott that by design would harm U.S. businesses,
while <em>prohibiting</em> New York’s private citizens
from supporting a similar boycott of <em>a foreign
nation</em> upon pain of being barred from receiving
contracts from the state of New York. That such a
priority scheme is so pervasive — whereby boycotts aimed
at U.S. businesses are permitted or even encouraged, but
boycotts aimed at Israeli businesses are outlawed —
speaks volumes about the state of U.S. politics and free
expression, none of it good.</p>
<p>Following Cuomo, Texas’s GOP-dominated state
legislature, and numerous other state
governments controlled by both parties, the U.S.
Congress, <a
href="https://www.aipac.org/learn/legislative-agenda/agenda-display?agendaid={B499D12C-C5ED-4CA6-93CF-61266D842328}">prodded
by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee</a>,
began planning its own national bills to use the force
of law to punish Americans for the crime of supporting a
boycott of Israel. In July of last year, a group of 43
senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — supported a
law, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720),
introduced by Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin of
Maryland, that <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakers-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boycott-campaign-against-israel/">would
<i>criminalize </i>participation in any international
boycott of Israel</a>.</p>
<p>After the American Civil Liberties Union <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-letter-senate-opposing-israel-anti-boycott-act">issued
a statement vehemently condemning</a> Cardin’s bill as
an attack on core free speech rights, one which “would
punish individuals for no reason other than their
political beliefs,” numerous senators <a
href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/congress-democrats-rethink-anti-bds-bill-in-wake-of-warning-1.5433561">announced
that they were re-considering their support</a>.</p>
<p>But now, as The Intercept <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/12/04/israel-anti-boycott-act-lame-duck/">reported
last week</a>, a modified version of the bill is back
and pending in the lame-duck session: “Cardin is making
a behind-the-scenes push to slip an anti-boycott law
into a last-minute spending bill being finalized during
the lame-duck session.”</p>
<p>The ACLU has also condemned this latest bill because
“its intent and the intent of the underlying state laws
it purports to uphold are contrary to the spirit and
letter of the First Amendment guarantee of freedoms of
speech and association.” As the ACLU warned in <a
href="https://action.aclu.org/send-message/protect-right-political-expression?ms_aff=NAT&initms_aff=NAT&ms=181210_freespeech_boycottban_blog&initms=181210_freespeech_boycottban_blog&ms_chan=web&initms_chan=web&af=##sb_query_string_encrypted##">a
recent action advisory</a>:</p>
<p>While that “new version clarifies that people cannot
face jail time for participating in a boycott,” the ACLU
insists that “it still leaves the door open for criminal
financial penalties” for anyone found to be
participating in or even advocating for a boycott of
Israel.</p>
<p><u>More dangerous attacks</u> on free expression are
difficult to imagine. Nobody who claims to be a defender
of free speech or free expression — on the right, the
left, or anything in between — can possibly justify
silence in the face of such a coordinated and pure
assault on these most basic rights of free speech and
association.</p>
<p>One common misconception is that the First Amendment’s
guarantee of free speech only bars the state from
imprisoning or otherwise punishing people for speaking,
but does not bar the state from conditioning the receipt
of discretionary benefits (such as state benefits or
jobs) on refraining from expressing particular opinions.
Aside from the fact that, with some rare and narrow
exceptions, courts have <a
href="https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2618&context=caselrev">repeatedly
held that the government is constitutionally barred</a>
under the First Amendment from <a
href="https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1656&context=clr">conditioning
government benefits on speech requirements</a> — such
as, say, enacting a bill that states that only liberals,
or only conservatives, shall be eligible for
unemployment benefits — the unconstitutional nature of
Texas’s actions toward Bahia Amawi should be
self-evident.</p>
<p>Imagine if, instead of being forced by the state to vow
never to boycott Israel as a condition for continuing to
work as a speech pathologist, Amawi was instead forced
to pledge that she would never advocate for LGBT
equality or engage in activism in support of or
opposition to gun rights or abortion restrictions (by
joining the National Rifle Association or Planned
Parenthood), or never subscribe to Vox or the Daily
Caller, or never participate in a boycott of Iran, North
Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, or Russia due to vehement
disagreement with those governments’ policies.</p>
<p>The tyrannical free speech denial would be self-evident
and, in many of those comparable cases, the
trans-ideological uproar would be instantaneous. As Lara
Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East
Peace, <a
href="https://medium.com/@LFriedman_FMEP/u-s-politicians-are-backing-a-free-speech-exception-for-israel-creating-a-template-for-broader-ebe406fdf3b7">warned</a>:
“[T]his template could be re-purposed to bar contracts
with individuals or groups affiliated with or supportive
of any political cause or organization — from the
political Left or Right — that the majority in a
legislature or the occupant of a governor’s office
deemed undesirable.”</p>
<p>Recall that in 2012, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried
to block zoning permits allowing Chick-fil-A to expand,
due to his personal disagreement with the anti-LGBT
activism of that company’s top executive. As I wrote at
the time in <a
href="https://www.salon.com/2012/07/26/rahm_emanuels_free_speech_attack/">condemning
the unconstitutional nature</a> of the mayor’s
actions: “If you support what Emanuel is doing here,
then you should be equally supportive of a Mayor in
Texas or a Governor in Idaho who blocks businesses from
opening if they are run by those who <em>support</em><strong> </strong>same-sex
marriage — or who oppose American wars, or who support
reproductive rights, or who favor single-payer health
care, or which donates to LGBT groups and Planned
Parenthood, on the ground that such views are offensive
to Christian or conservative residents.”</p>
<p>Those official efforts in Chicago (followed by mayors
of other liberal cities) to punish Chick-fil-A due
to its executive’s negative views on LGBT equality were
widely condemned even by liberal commentators, who were
horrified that mayors would abuse their power to
condition zoning rights based on a private citizen’s
political viewpoints on a controversial issue.
Obviously, if a company discriminated against LGBT
employees in violation of the law, it would be
legitimate to act against them, but as Mother Jones’s
Kevin Drum <a
href="https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/rahm-emanuel-needs-back-chick-fil/">correctly
noted</a>, this was a case of pure censorship:
“There’s really no excuse for Emanuel’s and [Boston
Mayor Thomas] Menino’s actions. … You don’t hand out
business licenses based on whether you agree with the
political views of the executives. Not in America,
anyway.”</p>
<p>The ACLU of Illinois also <a
href="https://www.aclu-il.org/en/press-releases/statement-chick-fil-matter">denounced
the effort by Chicago against Chick-fil-A</a> as
“wrong and dangerous,” adding: “We oppose using the
power and authority of government to retaliate against
those who express messages that are controversial or
averse to the views of current office holders.” That, by
definition, is the only position that a genuine free
speech defender can hold — regardless of agreement or
disagreement with the specific political viewpoint being
punished.</p>
<p>Last week, the ACLU’s Senior Legislative Counsel Kate
Ruane <a
href="https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights-protesters/congress-trying-use-spending-bill-criminalize-boycotts-israel-and">explained
why</a> even the modified, watered-down, fully
bipartisan version of the Israel oath bill pending in
the U.S. Congress, and especially the already enacted
bills in 26 states of the kind that just resulted in
Amawi’s termination, are a direct violation of the most
fundamental free speech rights:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is a full-scale attack on Americans’ First
Amendment freedoms. Political boycotts, including
boycotts of foreign countries, have played a pivotal
role in this nation’s history — from the boycotts of
British goods during the American Revolution to the
Montgomery Bus Boycott to the campaign to divest from
apartheid South Africa. And in <em>NAACP v. Claiborne
Hardware</em>, the Supreme Court <a
href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/458/886.html">made
clear</a> that the First Amendment protects the
right to participate in political boycotts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The lawsuit which Amawi filed similarly explains that
“economic boycotts for the purposes of bringing about
political change are entrenched in American history,
beginning with colonial boycotts on British tea. Later,
the Civil Rights Movement relied heavily on boycotts to
combat racism and spur societal change. The Supreme
Court has recognized [in Claiborne] that non-violent
boycotts intended to advance civil rights constitute
‘form[s] of speech or conduct that [are] ordinarily
entitled to protection under the First and Fourteenth
Amendments.'”</p>
<p><u>Who can justify</u> that — as a condition for
working with speech-impaired and developmentally
disabled children — Amawi is forced by the state to
violate her conscience and renounce her political
beliefs by buying products from a country that she
believes (in <a
href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/sc12657.doc.htm">accordance
with the U.N</a>.) is illegally and brutally occupying
land that does not belong to it? Whether or not you
agree with her political view about Israel and
Palestine, every American with an even minimal belief in
the value of free speech should be vocally denouncing
the attack on Amawi’s free speech rights and other
Americans who are being similarly oppressed by these
Israel-protecting censorship laws in the U.S.</p>
<p>As these Israel oath laws have proliferated, some
commentators from across the ideological spectrum have
noted what a profound threat to free speech they pose.
The Foundation for Middle East Peace’s Friedman, for
instance, <a
href="https://medium.com/@LFriedman_FMEP/u-s-politicians-are-backing-a-free-speech-exception-for-israel-creating-a-template-for-broader-ebe406fdf3b7">explained</a>
that “it requires little imagination to see how
criminalizing Americans’ participation in political
boycotts of Israel could pave the way for further
infringements to Americans’ right to support or join
internationally-backed protests on other issues.” She
correctly described such laws as “a free speech
exception for Israel.”</p>
<p>The libertarian lawyer Walter Olson, a senior fellow at
the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, <a
href="https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/senates-israel-anti-boycott-act-has-good-intentions-bad-results">similarly
warned</a>: “It is not a proper function of law to
force Americans into carrying on foreign commerce they
personally find politically objectionable, whether their
reasons for reluctance be good, bad, or arbitrary.”</p>
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