Defeat for US Israel lobby as bill to impose 20-year sentences and $1m fines for boycotting Israel pulled

Bill sponsors seem to have read the room and realised they’re helping create anti-Israel awareness even among the far-right

A bill in the US Congress to impose twenty-year prison sentences and fines of up to $1m on anyone who boycotts Israel has been withdrawn by its sponsors after a backlash even among right-wing extremists seems to have made them realise the measure would further spread the anti-Israel awareness that has burgeoned since Israel began its genocide in Gaza.

The “International Governmental Organization (IGO) Anti-Boycott Act”, sponsored by Republican Mike Lawler and co-sponsored by both Democrat and Republican fanatics for Israel, will no longer go forward for a vote after a number of far-right and right-wing members said publicly that they will vote against it.

More than thirty US states already have legislation requiring those applying for government jobs and contracts to promise never to boycott Israel or support the boycott movement. But even die-hard Trumpians like Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green – who welcomed the death of Pope Francis as an act of God for his anti-genocide and anti-capitalist politics – found the bill too much to swallow. She first posted to her social media that she would vote against it, questioning why a bill on behalf of other countries was even being proposed, then that it had been withdrawn:

Charlie Kirk, a prominent MAGA commentator, also came out against the proposed legislation, though unsurprisingly not without an attack on migrants and refugees:

In America you are allowed to hold differing views. You are allowed to disagree and protest. We’ve allowed far too many people who hate America move here from abroad, but the right to speak freely is the birthright of all Americans.

Even Steve Bannon, the architect of MAGA extremism, agreed with the comments of far-right politicians against the bill.

In the UK, which does not have a constitution guaranteeing freedom of speech, the right to speak out against Israel’s genocide, starvation blockade, occupation and apartheid is under an intensifying ‘lawfare’ attack from the Keir Starmer regime. Starmer is using the Terrorism Act to raid, harass, arrest and even prosecute anti-genocide journalists and activists – many of them Jewish – with potential prison sentences of up to fourteen years. Fearing acquittal by right-minded jurors, the state is also using process as a punishment against anti-genocide activists, using the Act to deny bail and hold them in prison for more than a year before their trial even takes place – in collusion with the Israeli embassy.

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