Twenty-six states have laws preventing state agencies from contracting with companies or individuals aligned with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. BDS is an international campaign to pressure Israel to comply with international law and respect Palestinian rights. However, its opponents say BDS is a thinly disguised anti-Semitic attempt to debilitate or even destroy Israel. We speak with Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and one of the founding editors of The Intercept. His latest piece is headlined “A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States — So She Lost Her Job.”
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, one of the founding editors of The Intercept, his latest piece headlined “A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in Many States — So She Lost Her Job.”
Glenn, why don’t you talk about, you know, exposing this story nationally? But we’re talking about the law in Texas. In fact, more than half the states in the United States have a contract like she was being forced to sign, if she wanted to keep her job as a speech pathologist.
GLENN GREENWALD: So, there are 26 states in the US that have some version of this Texas law. They’re not all as severe as the one in Texas, though many of them are. Others have various kinds of restrictions on people who boycott Israel, prohibiting the expenditure of any funds to invest in companies, for example, or in pension funds, that have companies that invest — that advocate a boycott of Israel. They all have one thing in common, which is that they impose limitations on the opportunities and abilities of private citizens or private companies that support or participate in the boycott of Israel.
I think the most extreme example, Amy,…