AOC, Democrats Backs Ban on Jewish Charities

The Democrat version of the Nurembergs Law.

A proposed New York bill backed by the Democratic Socialists of America would single out Jewish charities for government sanction.But donations (and government funding) of Hamas and terror-tied groups in the US like CAIR, American Muslims for Palestine, ISNA, ICNA et al are welcome.

AOC Backs Awful, Antisemitic New York Charity Ban

By Dan McLaughlin, The New Repubic, May 22, 2024:

A proposed New York bill backed by the Democratic Socialists of America would single out Jewish charities for government sanction.

One of the textbook definitions of antisemitism is holding Jews and/or the Jewish state to a standard that is applied to nobody else. Progressives in the New York state legislature are pushing legislation, the “Not On Our Dime Act,” that fits the definition to a T. As Jeff Coltin of Politico notes, the bill “is a priority of the Democratic Socialists of America and is sponsored by DSA-aligned lawmakers — Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani and state Sen. Jabari Brisport.” Introduced last spring, it has now attracted the support of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The bill is an attack on Jews, on free speech and free exercise of religion, on private charity, on private property, and on federal control of U.S. foreign policy.

The full title of the bill is “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act.” Right off the bat, we see the progressive mind at work in the notion that the state’s allowing people to donate their own money to a non-profit is somehow the government “funding” with “our dime” the recipients of those donations simply because non-profits are tax exempt. AOC says, “This should be part of our broader human rights commitment to ensure that U.S. taxpayer funds do not go to the violations of human rights anywhere in the globe,” but even if she was similarly concerned about human-rights violations by non-Jews (she’s not), it’s not “U.S. taxpayer funds” when people give their own money.

The bill aims to ban not-for-profit corporations in New York from engaging in “Unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity,” meaning “aiding and abetting activity by the Israeli armed forces, the government of Israel, or citizen [sic] thereof, that is illegal” under the Geneva convention “or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party.” Notice that you do not need to personally engage in such activity to fall within the act’s prohibitory sweep; aiding and abetting is enough. Under New York common law, that should still be a stringent test, entailing actual knowledge and substantial participation in the underlying conduct. That said, the bill’s authors plainly aim to use the mere threat of legal action to chill fundraising.

What conduct is banned? Prohibited activity includes aiding and abetting not only violence but also “the unlawful transfer of Israeli civilians into occupied territory,” the acquisition of land there, and even “eviction” of Palestinians. So . . . are these people consistently against illegal immigration? Not unless the immigrants are Jews — the DSA is usually stridently opposed to any effort to prevent people from crossing borders to settle, legally or otherwise. Illustrating the disparate treatment, another provision of the bill prohibits involvement in the “deportation” of Palestinians just as it demands the removal of Jews.

“Occupied territory” is defined as “the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.” Geography is not the DSA’s strong suit. Gaza is not part of the West Bank any more than West Virginia is included in Maryland, and at the time the bill was written last May, Gaza was in no sense occupied by Israel or inhabited by any Jews.

The bill arms Attorney General Letitia James with enormous powers: She can sue to “dissolve a charitable corporation” for violations or seek civil penalties “of not less than one million dollars” — that’s right, a million-dollar minimum with no maximum. Surely, James would never engage in a heedlessly political vendetta with the powers of her office, you say. But in case that’s not enough, the proposed bill also allows “any individual damaged” to sue “any trustee, director, manager, or other officer or agent of a not-for-profit corporation” for damages and/or injunctive relief, with such suits being encouraged by authorizing the plaintiffs to recover attorneys’ fees. And both the attorney general and private plaintiffs are given a ten-year statute of limitations in which to bring claims, ensuring that the threat of litigation will mount as it becomes harder over time to factually rebut bogus claims.

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