(LifeSiteNews) — Conservatives defeated a bill that they say would have penalized Americans who engage in private boycotts of Israel.
Influencers as well as GOP lawmakers made their opposition to H.R. 867 known this past weekend, causing the bill to be pulled from the voting schedule.
“It is my job to defend American’s rights to buy or boycott whomever they choose without the government harshly fining them or imprisoning them,” U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Sunday on X.
I will be voting NO.
It is my job to defend American’s rights to buy or boycott whomever they choose without the government harshly fining them or imprisoning them.
But what I don’t understand is why we are voting on a bill on behalf of other countries and not the President’s… pic.twitter.com/faqfUUTQdD
— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 4, 2025
Conservative activist Charlie Kirk also expressed opposition to the bill, as did GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and former Florida Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz.
“Bills like this only create more antisemitism and play into growing narratives that Israel is running the U.S. government. In America you are allowed to hold differing views,” Kirk announced Sunday.
Tomorrow the House will vote on HR 867, a bill that will criminalize private boycotts of Israel. Fines up to $1,000,000 and prison time up to 20 years.
Bills like this only create more antisemitism, and play into growing narratives that Israel is running the US government.
In…
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) May 4, 2025
Gaetz echoed those concerns.
This law is “dangerous and unconstitutional.” We “shouldn’t … punish dissent or ‘thought crimes’ with prison,” he said on X.
Antisemitism is bad and should be categorically rejected.
Not every idea cooked up to respond to Antisemitism is a good one.
There’s a real danger in passing bills like this.
Somewhere Democrats are writing a bill to imprison the rest of us for 20 years if we boycott… https://t.co/mnTHlfQnek
— Former Congressman Matt Gaetz (@FmrRepMattGaetz) May 4, 2025
H.R. 867 is an amendment to the Anti-Boycott Act of 2018. It was introduced in January by New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawmaker and Democrat Josh Gottheimer. Twenty-two lawmakers are co-sponsors. Gottheimer’s office boasted that the update was intended to target “harmful and inherently anti-Semitic BDS efforts at IGOs, such as the UN, by extending protections already in place for boycotts instigated by foreign countries.”
The original Anti-Boycott Act of 2018 was approved to ban U.S. entities from boycotting certain American allies abroad. It states that “it is the policy of the United States to oppose restrictive trade practices or boycotts fostered or imposed by any foreign country against other countries friendly to the United States or against any United States person.”
Zionist George Mason professor Eugene Kontorovich, who has Israeli citizenship, has pushed back against the bill’s critics. In a recent X post, he argued that the bill does little more than codify existing norms.
“All that the new bill does is add ‘international organizations’ like the UN & EU to the scope of the prohibition, since they too wield governmental power,” he said. “Federal courts have upheld the ‘Arab League’ boycott provisions against constitutional challenge — and adding the UN changes nothing.”
I am a First Amendment absolutist, and recognize that antisemitism legislation could potentially violate it – but HR 867 is not that.
Since 1977, U.S. law has criminally punished American companies that comply with boycotts implemented by foreign sovereigns. This was a response… https://t.co/NdmunQPncT
— Eugene Kontorovich (@EVKontorovich) May 5, 2025
This past weekend, the Israeli government voted to approve an expanded ground game in Gaza as part of a larger plan to occupy the region, which Israeli has prevented from receiving medical aid for the past two months. The move has been criticized by international agencies as it is using food as a weapon to starve the people there in order to have them succumb to Israeli occupation.
