Two pieces of leg­is­la­tion before Con­gress have prompt­ed a heat­ed dis­cus­sion over just how far Con­gress will go to sup­port Israel in its attempts to silence its crit­ics. Although they were ini­tial­ly greet­ed with sup­port from both sides of the aisle, due to for­mi­da­ble oppo­si­tion from the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union and oth­ers, there are signs that politi­cians are respond­ing to pub­lic out­rage and recon­sid­er­ing their endorsements.

This is not the first time we have seen the shameful tradition of knee-jerk mainstream Democratic support of Israel.

The sweep­ing new leg­is­la­tion would make it a felony for peo­ple in the Unit­ed States to sup­port the Pales­tin­ian-led move­ment for Boy­cott, Divest­ment and Sanc­tions against Israel. The bills con­sti­tute a bla­tant attack on inter­na­tion­al human rights bod­ies like the Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Coun­cil (UNHRC).

The ​“Israel Anti-Boy­cott Act,” S. 720 in the Sen­ate and its House coun­ter­part, H.R. 1697, show that build­ing bipar­ti­san­ship is easy when it comes to sup­press­ing voic­es crit­i­cal of Israel. The degree of sup­pres­sion is dev­as­tat­ing: The min­i­mum civ­il penal­ty for vio­lat­ing the pro­hi­bi­tions is $250,000, but the ceil­ing is $1 mil­lion and 20 years in prison.

To say these bills would have a chill­ing effect on polit­i­cal dis­sent is an under­state­ment. They effec­tive­ly use the U.S. gov­ern­ment to silence its cit­i­zens and oth­ers for refus­ing to do busi­ness with Israel. Impor­tant­ly, this leg­is­la­tion would dole out pun­ish­ment for refus­ing to do busi­ness with com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the occu­pied Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries — com­pa­nies that are there­by act­ing ille­gal­ly under inter­na­tion­al law. Aston­ish­ing­ly, an indi­vid­ual or busi­ness could be con­vict­ed for obey­ing inter­na­tion­al human rights rulings.

The bills are tar­get­ing the move­ment to boy­cott, divest from and sanc­tion (BDS) Israel. Launched in 2005, BDS is a non-vio­lent, human-rights-based move­ment cre­at­ed with the endorse­ment of more than 170 Pales­tin­ian civ­il orga­ni­za­tions. It takes inspi­ra­tion from his­tor­i­cal boy­cott efforts in Pales­tine, as well as from the South African anti-apartheid movement.

Since its incep­tion, the move­ment has gar­nered inter­na­tion­al sup­port, and — because of that — the Israeli gov­ern­ment has unleashed a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar effort to destroy it. Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu has called BDS a ​“strate­gic threat” to the state. Yet, this has not stopped the campaign’s momen­tum. In the Unit­ed States, the move­ment has gar­nered impor­tant acts of sol­i­dar­i­ty from across social move­ments and was includ­ed in the plat­form of the Move­ment for Black Lives.

Draft­ed by the Amer­i­can Israel Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC), the new pro­posed leg­is­la­tion expands the ​“Export Admin­is­tra­tion Act” of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945. The for­mer was put in place to off­set the Arab boy­cott of Israel, estab­lished in 1945 by the League of Arab States. The Act called on the Pres­i­dent to ​“issue reg­u­la­tions pro­hibit­ing any Unit­ed States per­son, with respect to his activ­i­ties in the inter­state or for­eign com­merce of the Unit­ed States, from tak­ing or know­ing­ly agree­ing to take … actions with intent to com­ply with, fur­ther, or sup­port any boy­cott fos­tered or imposed by a for­eign coun­try against a coun­try which is friend­ly to the Unit­ed States.”

In oth­er words, one could be pun­ished for fol­low­ing the call from a for­eign coun­try to boy­cott a coun­try ​“friend­ly” to the Unit­ed States. The cur­rent AIPAC draft extends the scope of crim­i­nal­i­ty to actions aimed at heed­ing the boy­cott call of non-state actors: in this case, the Unit­ed Nations and the Euro­pean Union. The pro­posed leg­is­la­tion also rais­es the max­i­mum civ­il penal­ty from $100,000 to $1 mil­lion and dou­bles the max­i­mum prison sen­tence to 20 years.

The cur­rent bills were prompt­ed by a num­ber of res­o­lu­tions passed in 2016 by the Unit­ed Nations Human Rights Coun­cil (UNHRC) that, tak­en togeth­er, formed an endorse­ment of Pales­tin­ian rights and required com­pa­nies to bear these rights in mind as they engaged in busi­ness trans­ac­tions. Among sev­er­al actions, the UNHRC called upon states to defend human rights work­ers and orga­ni­za­tions from attack and, impor­tant­ly, ​“encour­aged busi­ness enter­pris­es to avoid, iden­ti­fy, assess and address any adverse human rights impacts relat­ed to their activ­i­ties.” The UNHRC also reaf­firmed the Pales­tin­ian people’s right to self-deter­mi­na­tion and demand­ed that Israel end all prac­tices and actions that vio­late the rights of Palestinians.

The lat­est AIPAC bills are part of the blow­back the Unit­ed Nations is fac­ing for tak­ing this stand. Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu has even sug­gest­ed that the Unit­ed States leave the UNHRC, say­ing, ​“These types of orga­ni­za­tions must be dele­git­imized.” U.S. Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed Nations Nik­ki Haley has accused the UNHRC of being ​“over­whelmed by a polit­i­cal agen­da” for its crit­i­cism of Israel. Thus, AIPAC explic­it­ly is try­ing to use U.S. Con­gress to silence crit­ics of Israel and to ham­per inter­na­tion­al human rights efforts.

The pro­posed fed­er­al bills thus cre­ate yet anoth­er path­way for the Unit­ed States to over­ride inter­na­tion­al human rights efforts. They also grant legit­i­ma­cy to the many anti-BDS laws found in indi­vid­ual states. The Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) assert­ed in an open let­ter dat­ed July 2016 that the state bills tar­get those who express sup­port for the BDS move­ment. The orga­ni­za­tion not­ed that advo­cates are ​“penal­ized sole­ly because they choose to express their opin­ion and because their opin­ion is dis­fa­vored by the polit­i­cal class in the states in question.”

In a July 2017 let­ter oppos­ing S.720, the ACLU makes a sim­i­lar argu­ment, say­ing that the bill ​“would pun­ish indi­vid­u­als for no oth­er rea­son than their polit­i­cal beliefs” and would be in direct vio­la­tion of the First Amendment.

Short­ly after the ACLU wrote its let­ter, and Glenn Green­wald and Ryan Grim pub­lished an arti­cle in The Inter­cept con­demn­ing the pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, reac­tion set in. An arti­cle in The Dai­ly Beast dis­missed the crit­i­cism of these pieces of leg­is­la­tion as ​“fake” on the grounds that the bills involved only com­mer­cial activ­i­ties and sim­ply built on exist­ing law. This line was used, as well, by the pri­ma­ry spon­sors of the Sen­ate bill: Demo­c­rat Ben Cardin of Mary­land and Repub­li­can Rob Port­man of Ohio, who declared: ​“We can­not state this strong­ly enough: the bill does not ​‘pun­ish US per­sons sole­ly on their expressed polit­i­cal beliefs.’”

In an op-ed pub­lished in the Wash­ing­ton Post, two mem­bers of the ACLU lead­er­ship rebutted those asser­tions, argu­ing that the bill ​“threat­ens severe penal­ties against any busi­ness or indi­vid­ual who does not pur­chase goods from Israeli com­pa­nies oper­at­ing in the occu­pied Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ries and who makes it clear — say by post­ing on Twit­ter or Face­book — that their rea­son for doing so is to sup­port a U.N. or E.U.-called boy­cott. That kind of penal­ty does not tar­get com­mer­cial trade; it tar­gets free speech and polit­i­cal beliefs.”

As of this date, the Sen­ate bill has the sup­port of 31 Repub­li­cans and 14 Democ­rats. The House bill has 234 co-spon­sors: 177 Repub­li­cans and 63 Democ­rats. Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, among those sup­port­ers are not only ​“lib­er­al” mem­bers of Con­gress like Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gilli­brand, but also some who have declared them­selves part of the anti-Trump #Resis­tance: Ted Lieu, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell.

But in the face of the pub­lic out­rage that has emerged, some are report­ed­ly rethink­ing their sup­port. Haaretz reports that more than a dozen Democ­rats in both hous­es of Con­gress are recon­sid­er­ing their endorse­ments, and the lib­er­al Zion­ist orga­ni­za­tion J Street has expressed ​“seri­ous con­cerns.” The report notes that even The Amer­i­can Inter­est — a cen­trist, pro-Israel jour­nal — has expressed con­cern that the leg­is­la­tion is too sweeping.

Mean­while, Sen. Ben Cardin of Mary­land told The Inter­cept that, fol­low­ing pub­lic out­rage, he is will­ing to address con­cerns and revis­it the leg­is­la­tion. Yet, it is not year clear what con­crete steps he plans to take to address the many civ­il lib­er­ties con­cerns raised by the legislation.

Accord­ing to Haaretz, Gilli­brand stat­ed, ​“We have a dif­fer­ent read of the spe­cif­ic bill lan­guage, how­ev­er, due to the ACLU’s con­cerns, the Sen­a­tor has extend­ed an invi­ta­tion to them to meet with her and dis­cuss their concerns.”

This pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is not the first time we have seen the shame­ful tra­di­tion of knee-jerk main­stream Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port of Israel, put on dis­play in a Demo­c­ra­t­ic res­o­lu­tion to back Israel as it launched its dev­as­tat­ing attack on Gaza in the sum­mer of 2014. Thanks to prin­ci­pled oppo­si­tion, there is hope that these bills will not pass. How­ev­er, it is not enough for law­mak­ers to say they are review­ing their sup­port for the leg­is­la­tion: They must come out pub­licly against the bills and all sim­i­lar leg­is­la­tion aimed at crim­i­nal­iz­ing peace­ful protest in sup­port of Pales­tin­ian human rights.

This stan­dard par­tic­u­lar­ly applies to politi­cians who are cash­ing in on a ​“pro­gres­sive” image. After all, this pro­posed leg­is­la­tion is poised to dras­ti­cal­ly cur­tail the most basic rights to protest and dis­sent, in a land­scape where the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is orches­trat­ing incite­ment and crack­down tar­get­ing protesters.