Congressman Schiff,
What were you all thinking when you overwhelmingly approved H Res 246?
For what other nation would you make it illegal to protest and boycott their human-rights abuses? Please, list for me the countries for which you would pass the same legislation. You would make it illegal to boycott Russia? Ukraine? France? Israel is no longer exceptional. The laws are the same for Israel as for any other nation.
Your vote to oppose efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and the Global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement Targeting Israel is reprehensible. What would you do if you had been chased from your home at gunpoint and then other people moved in and the courts issued them a new deed to the property without the new owners paying a penny for your home? Seriously, what would you do if that happened to you? You would say that the nation whose military pushed you out of your home at gunpoint was perfectly justified in doing so? Don't shrug it off. Don't evade the question. Address it. What would you do if it were you?
What does the Israel lobby provide for you?
I'm appalled that the vote was 398 to 17. What were you all thinking? That making boycotting illegal is constitutional? That Russia's disruption of our election process is far more important than the treatment of the people of Gaza? This vote simply makes me shake my head and think "That Israel lobby, they're good."
You know the history of Israel. What other nation would you approve of being retaken after 18 centuries of diaspora? Seriously, which? Not only approving but abetting the takeover. Which nation? South Africa retaken by native Africans? England retaken by the peoples conquered in the Norman Invasion? The US retaken by Native Americans? You would oppose an uprising or armed incursion in any other nation, but you oppose any protesting of Israel having done the same thing.
If your reasoning is something like "God gave the land to Israel forever," consider that you and a large percentage of Jewish people admit that Torah and the history books were redacted and synthesized by the priests and scribes themselves before, during and after the Babylonian captivity. You're overlooking that Israel gave the land to Israel forever. Israel's claim to the land is based on an unwitnessed verbal agreement 4 millenia ago which was not written down until centuries later? Now there's a strong basis for a claim.
The answer to "what were you all thinking" is that you pander to the Jewish voters in your districts. The bloc of Jewish voters in your district is very strong, but they are also very wrong. Israel's exceptionalism faded about the time of the Six Day War. Their privileged status before then was earned by what they had endured in Europe. By 1967, however, the need for a Jewish homeland had diminished, as most Jews were successful and living safely outside of Israel. I know that, as a Congressman, you're obligated to faithfully represent the beliefs and wishes of your voters. But if your voters believe something wrong, it's your responsibility to educate them so that you can faithfully represent them and do the right thing, at the same time.
