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JTA — Iowa’s governor signed payments into regulation this week codifying a definition of antisemitism for the state and proscribing state enterprise with corporations that boycott Israel.
One of many two payments signed by Republican Kim Reynolds on Wednesday requires the state to undertake the Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in discrimination and anti-bias coaching.
The opposite builds on an present part of the state code that prohibited it from investing in “corporations that boycott Israel,” by increasing the definition of a “firm” to incorporate subsidiaries and guardian corporations.
“At present we specific Iowa’s enduring help for the State of Israel and our categorical rejection of anti-Semitism,” Reynolds mentioned in an announcement. “Collectively, these payments ship an vital message: Iowa continues to face shoulder to shoulder with the State of Israel, considered one of America’s most vital and dependable allies whereas preventing all types of non secular and ethnic discrimination.”
The payments fall into two separate however associated traits of laws. The IHRA’s 2016 working definition of antisemitism, whereas controversial for together with sure criticisms of Israel, has additionally been adopted by greater than 800 entities worldwide, together with 200 simply final yr, based on a latest examine by the Fight Antisemitism Motion and Tel Aviv College. Its use in anti-bias coaching, as is proposed within the new Iowa regulation, has confirmed standard whilst some Republicans are searching for to outlaw anti-bias coaching altogether.
And state provisions on working with corporations that “boycott Israel,” handed in a flurry throughout the preliminary heyday of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions motion, have reentered the highlight for the reason that ice cream firm Ben & Jerry’s introduced final yr that it will now not do enterprise in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
Since that announcement, quite a few states (together with Colorado simply this week) have invoked their anti-boycott legal guidelines to divest public funds from Unilever, the guardian firm of Ben & Jerry’s.
Although Iowa has already had such a provision on the books since 2016, the particular description of which corporations at the moment are included underneath the regulation would doubtless make it simpler for the state to inflict subsequent punishment on Unilever over the Ben & Jerry’s controversy. The invoice was first launched final month.
Reynolds was accompanied on the signing ceremony by Yinam Cohen, Israel’s Consulate Normal to the Midwest.
About 5,400 Jews dwell in Iowa, making up 0.2% of the state’s inhabitants, based on a 2020 examine by Jewish demographers Ira M. Sheskin and Arnold Dashefsky.
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