All language subtitles for Boycott

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We are here for total divestment.

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That was right.

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Our fine power is going to be the thing that is going to decide the future.

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Supreme Court has long held that political boycotts are a form of expression

protected by the First Amendment.

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My name is Bart Hester. I'm from Arkansas, and I'm a state senator.

I'm the majority leader here in Arkansas.

So, first of all, I'm very open about my faith,

and I was very open about that in my campaign.

And I hope that my faith affects everything that I do.

I hope it affects the way that I'm speaking to you.

I hope it affects the way that I treat all my colleagues.

And I certainly hope it affects every vote that I take.

State leader Senator Bart Hester is recognized.

I sponsored the anti-boycott bill because, you know, I think it's the right thing to do.

Jewish people are God's chosen people, and I felt like an obligation to do

anything within my control or power to support them or protect them.

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Members, the title says what this does.

This is an act to prohibit public entities from contracting with

and investing in companies that boycott Israel.

It's a good pro-Israel bill by Senator Hester.

Appreciate a good vote.

The state is not protected from the church, but the church is protected from the state.

I would say if there's 35 members of the Arkansas Senate,

I would say 35 members would say that they are believers and followers of Jesus Christ.

Question before the House is passage of Senate Bill 513.

Share the machine, Mr. Clerk.

I would say probably half would identify as evangelical.

They understand how important it is to support Israel.

69 yeas, 3 nays, and 0 present. The bill is passed.

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[BIRDS CHIRPING]

So this is where a lot of the tomatoes are coming from now.

Our family has been here for generations.

My grandfather, he was a farmer.

All my uncles were farmers.

You know, we're Scotch-Irish.

I mean, we're just white trash farmers.

I mean, that's where we come from.

[MOOS AND BIRDS CHIRPING]

I left college in 1974 to start a magazine called the Arkansas Times.

Good morning.

Good morning.

We were a bunch of 20-somethings.

We thought we were the first people to have ever discovered Arkansas.

We were incredibly excited about the music, the history, the mythology, the beauty.

We wanted to discover Arkansas.

We wanted to tell others about it.

We wanted to write about it.

This was a great story, the Arkansas Redneck.

What was it? Lover, fighter, country boy.

It was sort of a love letter to rednecks.

The Times is free, so we can't be here without advertising.

And the state government's a big source of our income.

The schools, the colleges, the health centers, the hospitals, all those agencies advertise with us.

You sign a contract with the state to provide them advertising, and they provide you money.

Now, in order to get our money, we have to pledge not to boycott Israel.

I mean, when we got our first notice, I didn't think anyone would enforce it.

And we were able to ignore it for a long time.

And finally, there was this purchasing guy with one of the colleges, and he was just not going to let go.

He said, "I'm going to keep you from getting business from us until you sign this. It's required by the law."

You know, when we first read about this law, we did a story on it.

Say, "Look at this."

And people, most people I talk to, they go, "What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?"

I mean, you know, you have to take a, you know, it's just, it has no relevance or bearing on Arkansas.

I have the right to boycott anyone I want to, and the state has no business getting involved in that.

Period. It's none of their business.

So we said no.

Chair calls Bahia Amawi.

Please state your name, who you represent, and your position on the bill.

My name is Bahia Amawi. I'm representing myself, and I'm against this bill.

Happening today, a Muslim group plans to issue a legal challenge to a Texas law, and it's all about Israel.

It was actually the first bill of the 85th legislature Governor Greg Abbott signed into law.

Abbott says Israel is one of Texas' largest trading partners.

Today, CAIR, or the Council on American Islamic Relations, will announce a major First Amendment legal challenge to the law.

What you're really hoping the state will do is completely...

Repeal it.

Repeal the anti-BDS statute.

Repeal anything that has to violate my right to freedom of speech, my right to boycott, and to choose a political view of my own.

A Palestinian American teacher in Austin, Texas, has filed a federal lawsuit for losing her job as a speech pathologist after refusing to sign a pro-Israel oath.

And I sent an email to my speech coordinator telling her, "Listen, I cannot sign this. This is against my principles, against my constitutional rights,

and it's also against my moral and ethical values, considering that I am a Palestinian American,

and I have family that actually live in occupied territory, so it affects me personally as well.

So it affects me in both ways as an American citizen and as a Palestinian American, too."

[package crinkling]

Now you want to have a snack?

You want to have a snack first?

Hmm? Free snacks, Mama, in the pantry, snack bar.

Huh?

Okay.

I have a lot of family members that still reside in the occupied territory.

I know and I've seen firsthand the injustice and inequality that goes on there.

They close off main roads, only permitting Israelis to drive on those roads.

Basically, the core idea is to make it as hard as possible for them to function and to have any livelihood at all.

Then you have school closures and arresting young children.

He is just a child. Why are you taking him?

[indistinct shouting]

And I could not stay quiet and just go on with my life

while I know that this law is going to make it okay to continue this kind of oppression against the Palestinians.

In recent years, about two dozen states, Republican and Democrat, have passed laws or executive orders to stymie the BDS movement.

Arizona's law sailed through the legislature with broad support.

That put Mick Jordal in a difficult situation.

His parents lived in the West Bank during the '70s, and ever since college, he's advocated for Palestinian rights.

Jordal never expected his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to come up in his day job.

After all, he gives legal advice to inmates in Arizona.

I was just opening my annual contract from the state of Arizona, and I was rather shocked to see this.

[wind blowing]

I had promised my son ever since his bar mitzvah many years ago, his mom is Jewish, so I'm not,

but I had promised him a trip to the Middle East, and so some 12 years later, we finally went, and we had an incredible trip there.

I saw a lot of things that were very disturbing that we saw in terms of civil rights, civil liberties, discrimination.

My mom's parents are definitely more on the conservative side of things.

They would absolutely call themselves Zionists.

So it was interesting being exposed to that while simultaneously having all of this exposure to the injustices that are happening in Israel and Palestine.

I think after that trip, for him, it was really clear that he wanted to boycott any companies that were contributing to the injustice that's happening in the West Bank.

I am boycotting Hewlett-Packard because they are involved in the biometrics for the checkpoints.

Every Palestinian has an ID card that they must have.

And they delay Palestinians for many, many hours at a time.

And so that's part and parcel of the occupation.

After my trip to the West Bank and seeing what I had seen, I was incensed enough that I said I couldn't sign this.

And I had to file suit.

I was committed to continuing on providing the services, but not getting paid.

Substantial chunk change for me, but I was just unwilling to sign that certification.

And I didn't want to leave the jail and the lurch either, so I wanted to provide the services.

His decision to sue the state, that was not one that he made lightly.

We definitely worried about people smearing his reputation, calling him anti-Semitic.

He was very fearful that he would lose a big chunk of his livelihood.

And I'm extremely proud of him for making the choice that he did.

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I first joined the ACLU as an intern at the ACLU of Southern California.

I believe that would have been the summer of 2009. It was after my first year of law school.

It was definitely something I was seeking out. Since high school, I'd been kind of obsessed with the ACLU, to be honest.

So this was at the beginning of the Iraq War.

And I remember that there was this kind of rush to consensus that we should invade Iraq because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

And that anybody who spoke out against it was a terrorist sympathizer or a communist or fundamentally anti-American.

And I remember that the ACLU campaign at that time was that dissent is patriotic.

And that's something that really resonated with me.

I always like to tell people that we have the best clients. In this case, I think that's absolutely true.

All manner of people have been forced to sign these anti-boycott certification forms.

Many of them are reluctant to throw themselves into the middle of a major public controversy.

But we got a few brave individuals to step forward and say, "Hey, this is the right thing to do and I'm going to do it."

That's the kind of moral courage that makes me so happy to work at the ACLU.

Hey, boss.

I just want to check in briefly about the Jordahl case and where we are in the briefing.

We have basically all the levels of approval that it needs to go through and we're going to get it out, hopefully today.

And what about the other cases?

The Arkansas one, I think it's going to be filed in the next couple of days.

And then the Texas case, I hope we'll get in the next week or two.

On many fronts.

One of the things that we hope to do with these cases is win a couple of them very quickly on the states that pass these kinds of laws to kind of deter others from doing the same thing.

If all the courts are unanimous that these laws are unconstitutional, then my guess is that these bills will just die.

And I think the states, they don't want the public to really be aware of what's going on.

They don't want to have an open debate about it.

They recognize that when people actually understand what the state is doing here,

they would be absolutely horrified and appalled that legislatures would be trading away Americans' First Amendment rights so easily.

This anti-boycott bill, how did that come about? Where did that idea come from?

You know, I can't nail down exactly where it came from, but really so much just talking with my colleagues, reading,

and then a chance meeting with another legislator from another state helped me really start to wrap in what was important.

I was at a hotel in the middle of the night.

I was at a hotel and there was an ALEC meeting going on.

A coastal resort protected by armed guards.

This isn't the state capitol. It's a resort hotel where lawmakers are wined and dined as members of the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

This is a very, very important group across the country. We've got more than 1,300 people here.

Our organization represents 25% of all state legislators in the country.

Look closely at many conservative laws passed by state legislatures and you're likely to find a hand of ALEC.

ALEC is the perfect petri dish for what ends up being a very, very destructive legislative scheme in our country.

They bring together corporate leaders, evangelical leaders, and right-wing legislators.

They meet twice a year behind closed doors.

And almost invariably, the laws that they seek to pass and move out into the world restrict the ability of people to be able to effectively operate in their democracy.

From stand-your-ground self-defense laws to strict photo ID laws, which critics say make it harder for minorities and the poor to vote.

The group says its model bills are templates for as many as 200 state laws passed a year.

They're thinking about creating what's called model legislation.

ALEC bills come complete with blanks where legislators need only fill in their state name.

You start out with one idea and it metastasizes into something that theoretically could be applicable every place in the United States.

It's pretty safe to say that there wouldn't be anti-boycott bills popping up in different states around the country without ALEC.

So we have the Troopian obviously, we have KUT, CBS, and then KXK News.

The office number? 250.

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Hi!

Yay!

We made it.

The users of CBS too much.

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When Round Rock speech pathologist Bahia Amawi filed suit against Pflugerville ISD and the state of Texas, she says she didn't do it for Israeli or Palestinian values, but for American values.

It's our responsibility to fight, to protect, and preserve free speech for our children, similar to exactly what our founding fathers had envisioned.

This law, House Bill 89, was nothing but a censorship law meant to silence Texans and punish them for expressing their political view.

Texan government should not be putting the interests of a foreign country over its own people.

Thank you.

A speech pathologist in Pflugerville says the state is trying to silence her right to free speech.

When this story, the Bahia story, started getting a lot of attention, the governor of Texas simply tweeted out, "Texas stands with Israel, period."

Any anti-Israel policy is an anti-Texas policy.

[Applause]

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[Cheering]

She's the queen of our field. I'm so proud of you, sis. Oh my god, I'm so happy.

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As far as I know, I'm the only speech language pathologist that speaks Arabic in the surrounding Austin area.

They're losing an important service that's not available otherwise.

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I feel like I am letting down my community.

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There's no boycott activism in Arkansas.

Probably this law is about the only way people even know about it.

Of course, we're not boycotting anyone. We're just saying you have no right to tell us what our speech should be.

And if we want to boycott, we can. And it's none of your business. It's a political act.

And it's not one that I choose to take.

I just object to government saying, "We got a big old wad of money over here, but we're not, and we'll give it to you. We'll advertise with you."

But here's some conditions that you need to meet first, such as, here's the political position you need to take regarding foreign policy, for God's sake, and we're in Arkansas.

Well, as I think Alan's case demonstrates, you don't have to be participating in a boycott of Israel to find these anti-boycott laws fundamentally un-American.

Alan, I hate to ask you this, but let's say that the paper action is unsuccessful in court.

And you're not even signing that pledge, or what does that mean for the future of your newspaper, should you lose?

I haven't gone there yet, but that's something that'll be a very, very difficult decision for me.

Okay. So we close this Wednesday for the March issue. We're about at 51,000, and we need to get to 65.

Okay.

Is what we got hanging out there.

We started the tab on $200.

So I wanted to go through what we advertised last year.

We've dodged so many bullets over the last 45 years.

And ortho-Arkansas.

And the newspaper business has got tougher and tougher.

Yeah.

Arkansas Pediatric Clinic.

I talked to her on Friday. We'll see.

We employ about 35 people here.

Normal people with families and mortgages.

Without state advertising, we can be out of business.

Hey, Jacob.

Can you give me any guidance as to who might be spending money in Arkansas that I could go talk to to see about some advertising with the Times or on the website?

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I do not remember hearing about the Arkansas anti-boycott bill until the Arkansas Times took up the challenge against it.

Here I am, the rabbi of the largest congregation in the state.

Nobody had talked with me about this proposal.

Supporting Israel is of the greatest importance to me.

I could not be stronger in my opposition to boycotts of any Israeli products.

However, I was appalled that a newspaper would have to sign an oath that it would not participate in any kind of political action.

American freedoms are terribly important to American Jews.

We wouldn't be in the magnificently enviable position in which we find ourselves

were we not blessed with freedom of religion and the rights to express ourselves as we see fit.

I haven't spoken to leadership in the Jewish community.

The local Jewish leaders like here in Little Rock, I don't agree with.

So I didn't need the locals' opinion on this.

I don't feel like our anti-boycott bill infringes on an individual's First Amendment rights at all.

Every now and then we run into somebody that disagrees with it, like the Arkansas Times.

I know from the position where I stand, I almost agree with nothing that they write.

So if they don't take any state money, I think that's a win as well.

Luckily, we live in a country that they get their day in court and we'll see what the courts decide.

Hey, Greg, how are you?

Doing okay, how are you?

Good. It might be good to ask some questions too.

Greg, do you want to talk about the boycott, divest, and sanction of Israel?

I don't know enough about the boycott.

I know it got me in a little trouble with a few people that I represent.

Are you a Democrat or a Republican?

I'm a Democrat.

So did you get pushback for voting for the bill?

Sometime last year, somebody posted something on Facebook.

They had just discovered that we had done it.

I had completely forgotten about it.

I wasn't even sure how I voted. I had to go back and look it up.

Some people were complaining, like, "Why did we do this?"

It's just one of those bills we vote a couple thousand times during a session,

and it was one of those that, for whatever reason, just wasn't on my radar.

The Palestinian movement's not here educating the other side of the issue.

And so no one heard the other side of the argument.

I doubt there was any questions. It just flew through.

Do you regret having voted on it?

I regret not knowing more about the issue when I voted.

And knowing now, having heard from my constituents, I probably would have voted against it.

But it's only been a handful of people that have reached out.

I don't know that, unfortunately, many Arkansans even know that it's still on.

BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

The BDS movement started from Palestinian civil society.

And these are folks on the ground in Palestine who are not part of the military,

and they're not part of any sort of regime. These are people that are suffering.

They created a campaign that has now traveled worldwide that says,

"Here is what's happening to us. Here are the things that we want to be changed."

And we want your help by not investing and not continuing to support some of these problems.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement urges the international community to do something

that is within their power to put pressure on Israel in order to achieve Palestinian human rights.

We are Palestinians! We want to live in peace, freedom, and dignity!

A lot of people have joined the BDS movement, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

BDS is a tactic. We know student governments have decided that they want their universities to divest.

And churches have decided to boycott companies that are complicit.

I've seen so many similarities between the Black Lives movement and the Palestinian movement.

We want to live in peace, freedom, and dignity!

And the reason this is important to us in America is that we are helping fund this.

We are funding Israel to the tune of some $4 billion per year, $40 billion over 10 years.

So we are directly responsible for some of this.

Here's the deal. The United States has been sending money to Israel for decades.

In fact, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance since World War II.

I think the question that Democrats are starting to have, which is a very valid conversation, I think,

is if American taxpayers' money are going to be going to fund Israeli weapons purchases,

whether we have the right to have opinions about how those weapons are being used

and about the policies that are being perpetuated with American taxpayer money.

[Music]

[Silence]

So tomorrow, the courthouse opens at 8 a.m. You're not going to be able to bring your electronics.

Okay, we'll be there with your kids.

Tomorrow's my hearing, and I'm very optimistic about it.

Then we need to go upstairs, I believe, judge.

Hopefully the judge will see that this is a violation of the First Amendment, and he will repeal this law.

Do you have any questions?

No, I think we covered them earlier, so I think I'm ready.

Well, I think you should go home and eat dinner with your kids.

I will see you guys tomorrow morning.

I will see you tomorrow morning, too.

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My kids actually wanted to come tomorrow.

I have been keeping them out of the media, but they actually asked me to come tomorrow,

and I think it will be a good lesson to them.

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The process is long. It's hard, but it's worth it, because you've got to fight for your rights.

And the fact that it was your mom fighting, how do you feel about that?

Real good. Mom is awesome.

Who's your hero now?

My mom.

Definitely not daddy anymore.

I stepped down.

You're learning about the government and how does it work. You're learning about the courthouse.

You're learning about how the debate works when they see the two parties, each one presenting their arguments and the points and the counterpoints.

All that is just beautiful setting, and I think that all schools should do this all the time.

Take the kids out, especially when it comes to the constitutional matters, right?

Free speech or all the amendments that go to the Constitution, anything that's under attack on those things,

the kids should actually make a point to go out to listen, whether you agree with it or disagree.

Because the kids will just, it's a tremendous learning experience for them.

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What does this mean for you personally? Is this a fight for you, but your daughter's here with you too. Is this also a fight for her?

It's a fight for all Texans, because this affects everybody. It's not going to affect only me, but it affects everyday people.

People that want to learn on their own, get facts on their own regarding political views.

The state of Texas has no business telling Bahia or anybody else which kind of hummus to buy, which kind of products to buy.

Those are things that are part of our First Amendment liberties.

[Music]

[Footsteps]

275.

[Knocking]

Hey there, how are you? I'm Mick, your neighbor, remember? The Democrat. Yeah, how are you doing?

Yeah, yeah, we're just checking to see if you have voted or not.

I'm active in the Democratic Party.

I'm a precinct committee person for North Sedona.

What's interesting is in all of these attempts to take away political rights is there have been many Democrats that just sign on.

Arizona's law kind of swept through the legislature without any debate.

This bill's, it's easy.

They see anything that's, "Oh, it's Israel, okay, well I better say yes to that."

This piece that we're doing today here is a bipartisan piece in this house.

So it's a good move, good piece for all of us to say Arizona does believe in Israel.

I think that so many legislators in the U.S. are afraid to take on the pro-Israel lobby.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Joseph Sabag.

I was one of the attorneys who created the model legislation upon which Arizona's law is based.

And since then I've served as an expert helping dozens of other states create laws such as the one that's being put for consideration in front of this committee today.

The pro-Israel lobby, that lobby is probably as strong as the NRA.

Today is the culmination of over two and a half years of hard work and policy collaboration for myself and the Israel Allies Foundation.

I also want to thank Florida's leading pro-Israel lobbyists.

I want to thank all of our organizational partners who stepped up to drive the public education and engagement efforts that made this success possible as well.

My friends, we must continue to stand firm against the profoundly biased campaign to delegitimize the state of Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions.

Today I'm going to sign an executive order that says if you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.

We in America must stand strong with Israel through thick and thin. We must.

One of the highest duties of elected legislators is to defend our Constitution.

But here they're just giving away our First Amendment rights to a foreign country.

[Ambient traffic noise]

I'm a reporter on The Seventh Eye, an Israeli investigative magazine about freedom of speech, transparency, propaganda, etc.

In the last few years, we started investigating the connection between Netanyahu's government and pro-Israeli organizations in America.

We filed a freedom of information request to uncover the network that they were building.

The first interesting thing that we found out is that we have an entire ministry to fight the BDS movement overseas.

Our government did not want to share this information with the public.

We get the sense that if its activities will be published, there will be an international scandal.

I would like to reveal here for the first time, our map. Here are the 42 leaders of the BDS network.

As we call it in the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the hate net.

The Ministry of Strategic Affairs had a really complex problem.

Palestinians are trying to deceive the citizens of the world into the general idea that Israel is an apartheid state.

We have to neutralize this.

They wanted to fund American organizations to combat the BDS movement.

But the Foreign Agent Act of the USA requires all organizations getting funds from other governments to be registered.

The Ministry of Strategic Affairs used an organization named "Concert" as a buffer to channel the money.

The Ministry of Strategic Affairs was fully aware that this was a problem with the laws of the United States of America.

The Director General of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs said it in an open Knesset hearing.

"Concert" was created in 2018 as part of the Ministry's understanding that it has problems with Israeli organizations

working with the Israeli government.

The understanding was that it would be easier for them to come to a civil dispute than to a cooperation where the Israeli government is in the lead.

In the end, you see a financial transition from a dispute and not a financial transition from the Israeli government.

That was the idea.

We found out that all kinds of organizations in America were getting funds from the Israeli government.

CUFI stands against BDS, which is economic anti-Semitism.

John Hagee's Christians United for Israel got around 1.3 million dollars.

Half of that came from the Israeli government and the other half from Concert confidential donors.

And we need to fight this evil darkness until it is destroyed in our Congress, in our churches, in our colleges and universities, and in our nation.

The supporters of BDS today may not be using guns and bombs, but they have the same goal as ISIS, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the complete destruction of the Jewish state.

Christians United for Israel is fighting back against this BDS movement.

BDS constitutes commercial discrimination against Israel on the basis of national origin.

This movement employs classic anti-Semitic themes, blood libels, and that's a real danger.

We still don't have the full picture, but I can say as a fact that the Israeli government allocated millions of dollars in order to change the American political discourse about Israel.

Whoever will destroy us is doomed.

In recent years, we have advanced in the United States, and in most countries there are laws that whoever destroys Israel will be condemned.

God will help them. We are not excited about this, and we will fight it.

[Music]

[Praying]

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And the results there are 71% of Democratic Party voters are in favor of reducing military aid to Israel if it annexes portions of the West Bank or continues to expand settlements.

So that's us, three out of four Democrats believe that.

[Music]

When we launched the lawsuit, I was very confident.

I mean, any country that bases its founding mythology around the Boston Tea Party and the boycott of tea,

I would think that today, a few hundred years later, we would still see boycotts as a political, a form of political speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, the judge in Little Rock disagreed.

[Music]

So, we lost.

It doesn't make a bit of sense to me.

It's just an insult.

[Music]

You doing all right?

I'm okay.

[Music]

It's never fun to lose a case.

I think litigators often get emotionally invested in their cases. I'm certainly very emotionally invested in these cases.

I think Alan's frustrated.

I think it's a lot of pressure on the Arkansas Times.

They are really leaving a lot of money on the table to participate in this lawsuit.

[Music]

What we know from the judge's decision is that he really thinks that participating in these boycotts is not constitutionally protected.

I just think he got it wrong.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments today in the biggest civil rights case it faces this term.

In the 1960s, the citizens of Fort Gibson, Mississippi organized a boycott of white businesses to protest ongoing segregation.

[Music]

You have to understand that was the only weapon we had at our disposal.

We were not in positions of power. We were not in positions of leadership.

The only thing we had was the dollar.

[Music]

And the boycotted merchants sued all of the boycott participants, as well as the NAACP, for all the business losses they sustained as a result of the boycott.

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And the Mississippi Supreme Court held that the boycott was illegal under state law.

And so the case goes all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.

I hope and pray to God that the Supreme Court don't rule that the boycott was illegal.

Because I think that's one of the only means we as black people have in order to let people know, in the world know, that we will no longer go back to where we was in the past.

[Music]

And the justices hold unanimously that the First Amendment protects the right to boycott.

And what they say is that boycotting is a practice deeply embedded in the American political process.

It's a way in which individual citizens can band together to make their voices collectively heard, when individually their voices would be lost or silenced.

The NAACP says that while it is the immediate beneficiary of the Port Gibson ruling, the ruling goes beyond that to allow any organization, anywhere, to use boycotts and selective buying campaigns to support its political grievances.

[Music]

We're appealing the district court decision in Arkansas.

And I think that's what appeals courts are for, is to correct decisions when district courts get it wrong.

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The decision isn't a surprise.

I believe that this bill is going to continue to win in the courts.

It very well may be that God has chosen to bless us because we protect Israel.

And so I'm going to continue to do on a state level all that I can to support that.

[Silence]

This is my great-great-grandfather, and he was the Confederate.

This is my mom. This is my dad.

She was always very conservative.

I was raised conservative.

And I started moving to the left over the years.

[Music]

As a recovering conservative, I want to be left alone.

You know, you do your job, you get your business on merit, and you get paid for it.

And you don't pass some political litmus test. This is America.

[Music]

These legislators, they want to be in your bedroom. They want to be in your business.

And they call themselves conservative?

You know, I don't think they're any better than the Ayatollahs, frankly.

They just want to be involved in your life and tell you what to do.

Get you to heaven.

I don't get it.

[Music]

A lot of this is motivated by this evangelical, biblical literalism.

It's scary.

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It's all in here.

38th chapter of Ezekiel.

God promised to protect Israel against total annihilation by her enemies from the north.

[Music]

The Bible is very clear.

There's going to be certain things that happen in Israel before Christ returns.

Listen to this very closely.

The Bible says when Jerusalem is no longer trodden down by the Gentiles,

then shall the end times be. Luke 21...

There will be famines and disease and war.

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And the Jewish people are going to go back to their homeland.

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At that point, Jesus Christ will come back to the earth.

When the King comes, we will all go to heaven while the earth is burned with fire.

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Jesus says I will come as a thief in the night.

You won't know when I'm coming. You don't know how I'm coming.

I'm just going to be there. Right?

And he's going to take up the people that believe in him.

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There will be people driving cars.

There will be people flying airplanes.

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Where are you?

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Anybody, Jewish or not Jewish, that doesn't accept Christ, in my opinion, will end up going to hell.

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At some point, I believe that God is going to open the Jewish people's eyes to really who Jesus Christ was.

You have two options.

To know and to serve Jesus Christ.

Or to know and to serve the antichrist.

But you're going to serve one of those two.

Who have you chosen?

Even though the Jews are going to burn in Armageddon because they're not going to become Christians,

the Israelis still want the support.

It's just this weird marriage of cynicism and convenience between the evangelical right

and the lobbying outfits for the state of Israel.

Christians everywhere must be brought to understand that you guys are not merely supporters of Israel.

You guys are stakeholders.

[Applause]

By making your voices heard, you guys are going to ensure the overwhelming passage of this law.

We're putting together an army.

Absolutely.

[Applause]

It's my honor to welcome my dear friend,

the ninth and current Prime Minister of the State of Israel,

Benjamin Netanyahu, to our gathering.

[Applause]

Pastor John Hagee, thanks to your leadership,

now there are millions and millions of devout Christians who stand with Israel.

So I want to thank you on behalf of all the people of Israel,

and I want to thank the thousands of you who have come to Washington from across America to stand with Israel.

[Music]

[Train sounds]

Today we are filing our appeal to the Eighth Circuit.

This is the final brief that gets filed before oral argument.

[Phone ringing]

Hello?

I'm almost done, I've got ten pages left.

Okay, thanks.

Bye.

[Music]

Nicola, let's do it.

Alright.

Oh my goodness.

Alright, we're going to submit.

Woo!

Congratulations.

Thank you, likewise.

Awesome work.

So excited to win this case.

[Laughter]

Don't jinx it, man.

No comment.

[Music]

So the power the state is claiming here is the power to outlaw or even criminalize boycotts

based on nothing more than ideological hostility.

So if the state can outlaw BDS boycotts because it doesn't like the messages they send about Israel,

then it can have the same power to outlaw boycotts of the NRA because it doesn't like the messages they send.

Americans across the political spectrum...

There's a lot at stake here.

It is not just about what is good for Israel or good for justice in Palestine.

The issues here are deeper and run broader.

If we're going to go ahead and punish people for not supporting Israel in Arkansas,

let's punish people for not supporting Planned Parenthood in Massachusetts,

and in California, and in New York.

You know, where do you want this to stop?

You may not care about Israel-Palestine,

but you should care if it's being used as a hook to legislate in your states and at the federal level against free speech.

How many words would I have to change in this legislation to use it to condition contracts

and thereby quash free speech of anyone who, say, supports Black Lives Matter

or is involved in protesting for environmental reasons?

And it's like ten words.

It's a template.

Why people are not more worried about it is just baffling.

Do you envision one of these cases reaching the Supreme Court?

If it does, we'll be prepared to defend it there.

Good morning, Your Honor, and may it please the Court.

My name is Brian House, and I represent the appellant to Arkansas Times.

As long as I am president of the Alabama Public Service Commission,

I'm going to see that our segregation laws are upheld.

When we think about what influence we have over our government in America,

there's only a couple of ways that we can do that.

One is by voting.

Another way is withdrawing my time and my labor and my money until things change.

And if we think about 1955 and the Montgomery boycott of the buses, that is a key example.

Black people decided we're going to walk to work.

Why should we be paying money to be discriminated and to be marginalized that way?

It doesn't make sense.

This morning, the long-awaited mandate from the United States Supreme Court

concerning bus segregation came to Montgomery.

The year-old protest against city buses is officially called off,

and the Negro citizens of Montgomery are urged to return to the buses tomorrow morning

on a non-segregated basis.

[applause]

So back when I was in college, one of the big issues that I was involved in

was a boycott and divestment from apartheid South Africa.

[explosion]

And if we look back at that period of time,

some of the most active places where that was happening were on college campuses, including my own.

And the idea there was that it was up to the students to put pressure on the administration of the school

to not have investments in companies that were essentially furthering and enabling

the horrible, racist apartheid regime in South Africa.

Looking back on that period, from a number of years, most people would say

it was not only the right thing to do, it was one of the high points of American engagement in the question of justice.

We have not forgotten that it was the masses of the people of the United States of America

who supported us when we were all alone.

And so what becomes really deeply important is for people to be able to say,

I am going to be active in the political discussion by withdrawing my time and my labor and my money

until things change.

And to have a proliferation of bills that are criminalizing or penalizing that

is really, really troubling and problematic.

And so in closing, your honor, I just want to say that it's not for nothing

that we say that people vote with their pocketbooks.

Boycotts are an expression of popular sovereignty.

They're an embodiment of "we the people," and the district court's decision here effectively

is to implement an unchecked power to silence those voices based on nothing more than viewpoint discrimination.

Thank you. Thank you to both parties for your briefing and argument, and we'll take the matter under advisement.

It's just been crazy yesterday.

I was driving the kids to their tournament, their taekwondo tournament, and then all of a sudden

the phone just kept, you know, vibrating and making noise, and so I was like, OK, what's going on?

So then I pulled over, and that's when I saw it.

[typing]

[music]

[typing]

A federal judge has blocked a Texas law that stops government agencies from doing business with contractors who boycott Israel.

It is a victory for a former Pflugerville ISD speech pathologist.

It's hard to have words to describe my emotions, but I was in tears.

I was, you know, joyful tears, elated, very content at the news,

and quite relieved that I can now go back to work and be able to service.

These children otherwise wouldn't have someone available for them,

and being able to go back and make a difference, and that's what I really love about my job.

[music]

[speaking in foreign language]

[speaking in foreign language]

[speaking in foreign language]

So I just want to thank everybody, and many of you guys kept me in your dua and came into the courtroom,

and I just want to say you are all amazing, and we're all strong as one.

[speaking in foreign language]

It's such an amazing, amazing, amazing feeling, alhamdulillah.

It's so beautiful when justice goes, all the way to the end.

And my care team, my care team, you guys are all...

You went through a process, a really challenging process.

And I'm so proud of the community members here, who saw what you did,

and who say, "Wow, that's so great," and that should turn into a, like, "I can do it, too."

[speaking in foreign language]

I was thinking about your kids, actually, to know that their mom,

someone who, you know, makes their breakfast for them...

I hope they remember that, I hope they remember that.

...did this. I mean, that's such a cool feeling.

[music]

They're very proud of the fact their mom was able to voice her opinion,

and stand up for principles and values.

[speaking in foreign language]

You don't know me, but I know you. Thank you for standing up for us.

Aw, thank you. Aw, thank you, sister. Thank you.

[speaking in foreign language]

Oh, that's sweet. Thank you.

[speaking in foreign language]

[speaking in foreign language]

[music]

[phone ringing]

This is Alan.

Hey, Alan, it's Brian House calling from ASW. How are you?

I'm doing fine, Brian. How are you?

I just wanted to call to congratulate you on the ruling this morning.

Thanks, Brian.

It's such an honor to represent you, you know.

The great privilege of this job is getting to represent people

who really stick by their principles, even when it gets tough.

[music]

The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis today,

we won Arkansas's misguided boycott bill.

We won.

[music]

I was really pleased.

It just confirms that we still have a First Amendment.

It's not been eroded.

[music]

It was incumbent upon us as journalists to protect it.

[music]

Okay, ready?

Okay, cooperate.

You want one with me?

Yeah, just you.

After all the briefing was done, the oral arguments were made,

we all went home, carried on our lives,

and finally, we had a ruling.

We seemed to have prevailed on everything that we wanted.

We won.

So I had not been paid for about a year.

Once that ruling came out, a couple of days later,

I got a check in the mail, which was great.

I don't think I've ever been there.

It's so utterly clear that what my dad is doing is right.

So it's really validating to get support from the court.

I think the lawsuit has given us a lot more to connect about.

We haven't always been super, super close,

but politics and justice work is this venue where we get to collaborate,

and that has really strengthened our relationship and our connection.

[music]

[music]

Cheers.

We drink when we file, when we win, and when we lose.

[laughter]

Well done, well fought.

Thank you.

So we got a great ruling from the district court in Arizona.

The district judge there recognizes that the fundamental purpose of these laws

is to suppress expression that the government doesn't like,

and that's exactly what makes these bills unconstitutional.

[music]

And I think sooner or later, we will ultimately realize the truth

that's staring everybody in the face,

which is that these anti-boycott certification forms

belong in the dustbin of history.

[music]

[music]

But what I want to close with saying is

the protection of First Amendment rights will not ultimately be decided by federal courts.

Even the federal Supreme Court will not ultimately decide whether these rights are protected.

Rights are enshrined in the hearts of the people,

and it's only by exercising and advocating for these rights day in and day out

that they will be maintained.

And if people do that, then no court, no Congress,

and no president can ever take them away.

Thank you very much.

[applause]

[music]

She can hold it.

Yeah. Oops. Help mommy out.

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