And my point is that choosing not to do business with a country or company because of its unethical behavior is a form of political speech protected by the 1st amendment.

It has nothing to do with the OPEC boycott; BDS began decades after the OPEC boycott, its principal model was the boycott of South Africa (AFAIK, the OPEC boycott has never been cited as an inspiration in BDS manifestos/publications) and the countries which called for the OPEC boycott have not supported BDS (because…

BDS is not initiated by “foreign governments” unlike the OPEC boycott (whose prohibition was never tested in court, because the law forbidding participation in it has never been applied IIRC). It was initiated by Palestinian civil rights activists and its biggest supporters are human rights organizations, labor…

How is advocating for a political position “discriminatory” in any meaningful sense? Racial and religious discrimination is already forbidden and those prohibitions are completely unrelated to anti-BDS laws; one attacks a behavior, the other a point of view; one is protected by the First Amendment and the other is not.…

“I think you’d have a hard time arguing that is unconstitutional.”

How so? The right to boycott is a well-established right under the 1st amendment and it is illegal for the government to discriminate against entities based on behavior that is protected by the first amendment. Even the less-crazy laws in CA and other…

These laws are perfectly rational. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to justify Israel’s behavior, so Israel’s defenders resort to smearing pro-Palestinian activists and movements as antisemitic and push for laws criminalizing anti-apartheid activism. Just because it’s evil doesn’t mean it’s irrational.

This is kind of racist bullshit is common in both parties. Illinois, NJ and NY have all passed laws making it illegal to support Palestinian rights.

Did it ever occur to you that one could just as, if not more, easily accuse those who support Israel’s policies of state-sanctioned violence and discrimination against Palestinians of using their support for Israel as a fig-leaf for their anti-Arab racism or their Islamophobia? Both hatreds are far more normalized and…

“From the river to the sea” is a long-standing slogan for the Palestinian liberation movement, a movement of an oppressed indigenous people claiming its rights to dignity and equality. It does not call for violence or discrimination against Jews, just freedom (and the end of state-sanctioned violence and…

A second referendum would be idiotic, especially if it was marketed as a do-over. Nothing has been done to address the decline, poverty and unemployment that lead millions of UKers to vote Leave in the first pñace. Polls show little change; the vast majority of Leavers still support Leave and even he most optimistic…

Philadephia seems like an important but rare exception.

It's perfectly appropriate; we should be celebrating the death of that scumbag.

Israel regularly tortures and imprisons Palestinians, including those with Israeli citizenship, for being too uppity and criticizing their treatment.

“But West Bank and Gaza are not hotbeds of equal rights and opposition to bigotry. “

But the Palestinian community within Israel certainly is; they are much better democrats than their Jewish neighbors, who overwhelmingly support state-sponsored discrimination. And the PA was never meant to be democratic; it was…

“He rejected a bunch of offers, getting a better deal each time, but he ran out of time when Barak and Gore lost.”

The summit ended in July, before the defeat of either Gore or Barak.

“How would it not be better for illegal immigration to decrease?”

It would be better for illegal immigration to decrease because more immigrants are able to live and work here legally; it would be worse if fewer immigrants total came (which is what would happen if we somehow lowered illegal immigration without…

I don’t think that’s ever been said on the Internet before.

“Something on The Slot’s page is freezing my browser, so I won’t worry about anything but this. The “right of return” would literally overwhelm the Jewish population of Israel with the non-Jewish population of the Palestinian Territories. “

So, again, “we don’t want more Arabs here” is, in your eyes, a justification…

You’re right; it’s totally antisemitic to blame the Israeli government for the Israeli government’s actions.

So you think Palestinians are bloodthirsty savages despite all evidence to the contrary and thus it’s OK to murder Gazan civilians and turn an overcrowded strip of land filled with long-suffering indigenous people into an open-air prison? That’s pretty racist.