Illinois Must Stand Firm Against BDS
Illinois Must Stand Firm Against BDS
A recent Mondoweiss article attempts to frame the effort to repeal Illinois’ anti-BDS law as a civil rights campaign and even suggests it could become a national model. That framing is deeply misleading.
This debate is not about silencing anyone. It is about whether Illinois should allow public pension dollars to be invested in companies that participate in discriminatory boycotts targeting the world’s only Jewish state.
Illinois’ anti-BDS law was not passed in the shadows. It was not a partisan stunt. It passed in 2015 with overwhelming bipartisan support, unanimously in both chambers. That should matter. At a time when very little unites elected officials across party lines, Illinois Democrats and Republicans came together around a basic principle: taxpayer-backed pension funds should not be used to support discriminatory campaigns against Israel.
The current repeal effort, HB 2723, would weaken Illinois’ ability to ensure that state investments are not entangled with anti-Israel discrimination. Supporters of repeal want to call this a free speech issue. It is not.
No individual in Illinois is prohibited from criticizing Israel. No one is barred from protesting, boycotting products personally, or advocating for BDS. The First Amendment protects private speech. But the First Amendment does not require the State of Illinois to invest public pension dollars in companies that participate in discriminatory conduct.
That distinction is critical. BDS is not simply criticism of Israeli policy. StandWithUs has long documented that the BDS movement is designed to isolate, delegitimize, and ultimately dismantle Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Its goal is not peace. Its goal is not coexistence. Its goal is not two states for two peoples. BDS seeks to pressure Israel through economic, academic, cultural, and diplomatic isolation while denying the Jewish people the same right to self-determination it claims to support for others.
That is why this issue matters so much.
BDS does not bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to peace. It does not promote dialogue, partnership, compromise, or mutual recognition. In fact, BDS often targets the very spaces where Israelis and Palestinians work together. It punishes cooperation. It discourages bridge-building. It turns complex human realities into slogans. One only needs to look at what happened with Soda Stream, which once operated in the West Bank to see how damaging and deceitful BDS really is. When BDS forced it to close operations, 1,300 employees including Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and West Bank Palestinians lost their jobs.
Illinois should not reward that.
The Mondoweiss article celebrates the possibility that Illinois could become a model for repealing anti-BDS laws across the country. I believe Illinois should be a national model for the opposite reason. Illinois should model moral clarity. Illinois should show that bipartisan leadership still matters. Illinois should make clear that public dollars must not be used to support discriminatory campaigns targeting Jews, Israelis, or the Jewish state.
This is especially urgent now. Antisemitism is rising on campuses, in workplaces, in civic life, and across our communities. At StandWithUs, we see this every day. We work with students, families, educators, professionals, and community leaders who are facing harassment, misinformation, intimidation, and exclusion because of their Jewish identity, their connection to Israel, or their refusal to accept the demonization of the Jewish state.
People can and should debate policy. Israel, like every democracy, is not above criticism. But criticism crosses a line when it becomes discrimination. It crosses a line when it singles out the Jewish state for isolation. It crosses a line when it tells Jews that their history, safety, peoplehood, and self-determination are somehow less legitimate than everyone else’s.
Repealing Illinois’ anti-BDS law would send exactly the wrong message. It would tell anti-Israel activists that if they apply enough political pressure, Illinois will walk away from a law that passed unanimously and has stood for more than a decade as a clear statement against discriminatory boycotts.
We should not let that happen.
Illinois must stand firm. We should protect our pension funds. We should reject discriminatory boycotts. We should oppose HB 2723. And we should make clear, proudly and without apology, that fighting antisemitism and standing against BDS is not a partisan issue.
It is a matter of civil rights, moral consistency, and basic decency.
Yossi Held is the Executive Director of StandWithUs Midwest, an international nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and combats antisemitism.
