• As California legislature approves anti-BDS bill with a twist

It’s hard to keep track of the number of rebel factions fighting in the Syrian civil war. However, one of the major rebel confederations, comprised of over 40 rebel groups with Sunni Salafist Islamic ideologies is Jaysh al-Islam – or Army of Islam.

This enormous confederation of fighting groups operates primarily in the areas around Damascus and controls territory in Lebanon. Along with fighting against the Assad regime, they also fight against ISIS and the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). They are allied with groups such as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly known as Jabhat a-Nusra), Ahrar a-Sham, and both the Turkish and Saudi governments.

Recently, Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov at the Forum for Regional Thinking held a rare interview with Jaysh al-Islam spokesman Islam Aloush.

“I’ve been researching Syria for years and have been in contact with hundreds of Syrians all over the country,as well as refugees. I’ve never hidden my Israeli identity,” Tsurkov said.

“Over the years I’ve interviewed activists, fighters, civic leaders, and politicians – almost always on condition of anonymity,” she explained. “This is out of their fear that they would be viewed as ‘collaborators’ with Israel. The only ones who let me use their names have been Syrian refugees in Europe and Turkey. There’s a really big taboo against talking to Israeli media or even with Israelis. It’s seen as normalization with Israel and a lack of solidarity with the Palestinians.”

Tsurkov went on to explain how she met with Syrian political and military leaders in southern Turkey.

“None of them wanted to be photographed. That’s why I was so happy and surprised when Islam Aloush – the Jaysh al-Islam spokesman – allowed me to use his name when I published my interview with him. I thought that demonstrated bravery, and hoped that it wouldn’t negatively impact him.”

During the interview, Aloush expressed pessimism regarding the possibility that the warring sides would come to a political solution to end the war, and said that the Syrian regime is a “purely security and militaristic institution.”

Meanwhile, he called Hezbollah a “gang which opposes the freedom which all nations aspire to, including the Syrian nation.”

He also rejected accusations that his organization – which controls large swaths of the Damascus countryside – acts with the same tyranny and impunity towards the civilians in the area that the Assad regime does.

Tsurkov also asked Aloush what Jaysh al-Islam’s position is in regards to a peace agreement between Israel and Syria. He said that “this issue and other issues of Syrian foreign policy will be determined by the government institutions which will be founded once the Syrian revolution succeeds and the Syrian people are able to vote freely. We will not deny any decision made by the Syrian people, as the Assad regime has done for the past 40 years.”

In the meantime, when the California State Assembly voted 60-0 on Aug. 30 to send Assembly Bill 2844 to the governor, the pro-Israel groups that pushed for the legislation could claim at least a symbolic victory. The bill targets the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and backers say it will crack down on discriminatory boycotts of Israel.

“It’s been a long journey,” said Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), one of the bill’s co-authors, speaking on the Assembly floor in favor of the measure. “But with a smile on my face I can say today that Republicans and Democrats in the legislature have taken a historic step forward in the fight against prejudice.”

In the months leading to its passage, a series of amendments modified the bill’s original intentions while failing to satisfy critics who say it will chill legitimate free speech.

Now, both sides are left to guess what it will actually do if it becomes law.

The idea behind AB 2844 when Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) first introduced it in April was simple: if you choose to boycott Israel, California will boycott you.

The original version banned state contracts of more than $100,000 for companies that boycott Israel. But opponents said the bill would violate constitutionally protected boycott rights. By June 2, all reference to Israel was removed. Allen went so far as to dub it “no longer a pro-Israel bill.”

Bloom encouraged his colleagues to pass it anyway so that it could be salvaged in the state’s Senate, and it passed without opposition. Then, on June 20, the Senate judiciary committee tweaked the bill into roughly its final form.

The measure no longer forbids contractors from boycotting Israel. Instead, it requires only that companies certify they don’t violate state civil rights law in the course of boycotting a sovereign nation recognized by the United States — including Israel, the only country mentioned by name.

“The bottom line is that the state should not subsidize discrimination in any form,” Bloom said on the Assembly floor Aug. 30.

The bill’s backers say the compromise avoids First Amendment issues raised by anti-BDS bills in other states. For instance, Illinois, the first state to pass such legislation, restricts investments in a list of boycotting companies maintained by the state.

“We carefully crafted this bill to not fall into any of those pits,” Sen. Marty Block (D-San Diego) said while introducing the bill in the Senate.

From the beginning, the bill received strong support from the Jewish political establishment. Speaking on the Assembly floor, Bloom called it “the top priority” this year of the California Jewish Legislative Caucus and said it received support from every mainstream Jewish organization.

Yet its opponents maintain the bill would be both ineffectual and unconstitutional. Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) was the only senator to vote against the measure.

“Those standards already apply,” he said of the anti-discrimination measures proposed by the bill. “So we have a bill on the floor that seeks to affirm laws that already exist and people are held accountable for already.”

Nonetheless, pro-Israel groups believe it will deal a blow to the movement to economically isolate the Jewish state.

“We have another tool in our toolbox” in the fight against BDS, said Shawn Evenhaim, chairman of the Israeli-American Coalition for Action (IAX), one of the organizations leading the fight for AB 2844. Evenhaim said that once the bill becomes law, IAX would look to see that it’s used to halt discriminatory boycotts against Israel.

“We’re not just going to frame it and hang it,” he said. “It’s a much longer fight and a much longer process.”

That process will involve defining the answers to lingering questions, such as whether Israel boycotts are by nature discriminatory.

“Oftentimes, if not all the time, when there’s an entity boycotting the State of Israel, at the core, it’s anti-Semitism,” said Dean Schramm, Los Angeles chairman of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which first approached Bloom about an anti-BDS bill about a year ago. He dismissed the criticism that the bill would violate free speech rights.

“It is a consistent theme of BDS supporters to suggest that any time anything is directed towards them in the form of criticism, that somehow their free speech rights are being chilled,” he said.

Schramm said AJC is “very confident” the governor will sign the bill, and that once it becomes law it will be used to hold companies accountable for discriminatory policies. Under state rules, the governor has 12 days to sign the bill.

Some of its opponents, though, say the bill is more show than substance.

“If you take the plain language of the bill it will really have no impact at all,” said David Mandel, a Sacramento attorney who is active in JVP and the Palestine Subcommittee of the National Lawyers Guild. Rather, he said, the point of AB 2844 is to “try to make a political point, to intimidate people, to send a message.”

Kevin Baker, the legislative director of the California Center for Advocacy and Policy at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, “It’s not entirely clear how it will play out in real life.”

He said the ACLU opposes the bill because it improperly appears to endorse one side in the BDS conversation.

“We would be opposed to a pro-BDS bill in the same way,” he said.

Twenty-two states have considered anti-BDS legislation, according to Palestine Legal, a Chicago-based organization that’s fighting the bills nationwide. Of those, 11 passed laws restricting state business with boycotting companies.

Rahul Saksena, a Palestine Legal staff attorney, said in an email to the Journal that the California bill has, from the start, aimed to punish free speech. The many amendments failed to satisfy his organization.

“The sponsors have jumped through hoops and hurdles trying to amend the bill to make it ‘less unconstitutional,’ ” he wrote. “But you can’t fix a fundamentally flawed bill.”

Honest Reporting