Uphill battle for legislation this session comes as Israel faces protests for its war in Gaza.
Photo: Mohammed Abubakr/PEXELS
Protestors demonstrate for Palestinian human rights. Lawmakers in Springfield supporting human rights for Palestinians have increasingly signed on to legislation opposing the decade-old anti-boycott law, penalizing companies that boycott Israel to protest its policies toward Palestinians.
by Simon Carr & Sonya DymovaMedill Illinois News Bureau
Medill Illinois News Bureau/Simon Carr
Students at DePaul University’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment face counterprotesters in May 2024. This encampment was one of at least 130 similar campus protests last year, which highlighted concerns that Israel was engaging in human rights violations.
Thousands of bills, the vast majority of those proposed, get stuck in the Rules Committee every year for various reasons.
Chicago-based investment firm Morningstar narrowly avoided state divestment in 2022, when the Illinois Investment Policy Board accused the firm’s subsidiary, Sustainalytics, of having an anti-Israel bias. The company then commissioned an independent report that found evidence of anti-Israel bias in Morningstar’s standalone product, Human Rights Radar. Morningstar agreed to accept a series of recommendations, including discontinuing the Human Rights Radar and no longer taking input from the United Nations Human Rights Council, in order to avoid state divestment.
Wavering support
While President Trump-supporting Republicans and right-wing activists rail against a bipartisan national bill that would toughen penalties for boycotting Israel’s government, Illinois’ Democratic supermajority legislature appears hesitant to put an end to its 2015 anti-boycott law, which passed unanimously in both houses.
Rashid’s and Porfirio’s bills have stalled in committee despite the initial support from about one-fifth of the Democratic caucus, including the leaders of the Latino, Black and Progressive caucuses.
Thousands of bills, the vast majority of those proposed, get stuck in the Rules Committee every year for various reasons. In HB 2723’s case, the holdup can be attributed in part to the political costs of supporting the bill, advocates said.
Deanna Othman ... said HB 2723 is urgent, citing both a humanitarian crisis and a crisis of free speech.
Sen. Napoleon Harris, D-Harvey, was listed as a cosponsor on March 20, and Sen. Adriane Johnson, D-Buffalo Grove, signed onto the bill on April 2, but both had their names removed on April 8. Neither senator responded to a request for comment on their reasoning. Porfirio, the Senate bill’s chief sponsor, said “I will continue to discuss the measure with my colleagues, to ensure that our pension system is well-informed, equitable and responsible” in an email. Its chief cosponsors — Karina Villa, D-West Chicago; Graciela Guzmán, D-Chicago, and Rachel Ventura, D-Joliet — all declined or failed to respond to requests for comment. “Even though it had quite an impressive list of sponsors and cosponsors, it's a controversial piece of legislation that is likely to engender a lot of debate that most legislators don't want to vote on, because they either have Jewish or Palestinian constituents, or both,” said Dick Simpson, a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago and former Chicago alderman. “Why should they vote on something that isn't going to pass and then cause some constituents to be mad at them?” But Deanna Othman, member of the Chicago chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, said HB 2723 is urgent, citing both a humanitarian crisis and a crisis of free speech. “Unfortunately, it's more relevant now than ever, because we've seen all of the crackdown on student protesters and people who engage in boycott and people who are just voicing their First Amendment rights,” Othman said. “If I cannot stand up for the rights of my fellow Palestinians, whose rights can I stand up for?”
‘It’s impossible to tell if this bill will ever pass’
Activists say they are hopeful a repeal of the anti-BDS law will pass in 2026 if it continues to stall this year. But it remains an uphill battle, even as they point to a steady decrease in American popular support for Israel.
About 53% of Americans express an unfavorable opinion of Israel, according to a Pew Research Center study conducted last month. This is an increase from March 2022, when that figure was 42%.
The survey found the share of Americans with little or no trust in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “do the right thing for global affairs” increased significantly from 2023 to 2024. Since Oct. 7, over 52,000 people in Gaza have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza. An estimated 1,200 people were killed in Israel during the Hamas’s attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and around 250 Israelis were taken hostage.
The pro-Israel, pro-peace advocacy group J Street does not oppose boycott initiatives “that explicitly support a two-state solution and recognize Israel’s right to exist,” according to a statement of its policies. “It is critical to maintain the distinction between boycott efforts that work against the interests of Israel, and initiatives which are limited to opposing the occupation. We neither oppose nor call for these initiatives,” the group said in a statement.
Pritzker is going to try to run for president in 2028, and he doesn't want anything to happen in the GA that could be used as an albatross on his neck ...
The original sponsor of the 2015 anti-BDS law in the House, then Rep. (now Sen.) Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, declined several requests for comment. However, when a 2022 Crain’s Chicago Business op-ed criticized Feigenholtz’s legislation, arguing it was “raising the specter of McCarthy-like scrutiny.” Feigenholtz issued a statement defending her law. “Israel is the singular democracy in the Middle East that has historically been a consistent ally to the United States,” Feigenholtz said at the time. “Boycotts of Israel, like Ben & Jerry’s/Unilever, are intended to harm and weaken Israel.” She added, “No one’s free speech is curtailed.” Ben and Jerry’s co-founders Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who no longer run the company, denied the boycott was anti-Israel or antisemitic in a 2021 op-ed. They said it was merely a rejection of Israeli policy, and that Ben and Jerry’s was in fact advancing justice and human rights, both “core tenets of Judaism.” Given the controversy surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian divide, many political obstacles to these current bills passing will probably remain next year. Politicians are less likely to discuss controversial issues like the BDS movement when there’s a supermajority of one party — in Illinois’ case, Democrats — for fear of factionalizing, said Ryan Burge, a political science professor at Eastern Illinois University. Even if a repeal of the anti-BDS law makes it through the legislature, Gov. JB Pritzker may still be an obstacle, Burge added. “Pritzker is going to try to run for president in 2028, and he doesn't want anything to happen in the GA that could be used as an albatross on his neck when he runs for the primary in a couple years,” Burge said. Should anti-BDS legislation reach Pritzker’s desk, “The Governor will carefully review this piece of legislation,” the governor’s press secretary, Alex Gough, said in an email. “It’s impossible to tell if this bill will ever pass, and the reason for that is it's impossible to predict where the Israeli and Palestinian war will be next year,” Simpson said. “I don't know, if Israel does carry through on its threats to move all the Palestinians out of Gaza and to permanently take control, that might provide enough anger to cause it to pass. But it is just predicting.”
Simon Carr and Sonya Dymova are students in journalism with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, and are fellows in its Medill Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
Editor's Note:
This story has been updated to include a comment from Sen. Mike Porfirio that was received before publish and inadvertently omitted from a previous version. Capitol News Illinois regrets the error.
This story has been updated to include a comment from Sen. Mike Porfirio that was received before publish and inadvertently omitted from a previous version. Capitol News Illinois regrets the error.
