The Los Angeles City Council demonstrated its support for Israel on June 14 in a unanimous vote (13-0) in favor of a resolution to support California Assemblyman Richard Bloom’s Assembly Bill (AB) 2844. Two council members were absent from the vote.
Bloom’s version of AB 2844, titled “California Combating the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel Act of 2016,” would prohibit California from entering into contracts with companies engaged in a boycott against Israel. A later version of the bill, amended by the Appropriations Committee, passed the state Assembly on June 2 with the new title, “Public Contracts: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Recognized Sovereign Nations or Peoples.” The committee deleted all mention of Israel, and also stripped a demand that the state cease business with companies participating in economic boycotts.
These changes are now the subject of debate among the bill’s original Assembly backers, who say they will no longer support it unless it is changed by the state’s Senate.
The L.A. resolution, authored by L.A. City Councilman Bob Blumenfield, states that the city would support AB 2844 “if amended to its prior version.”
“My resolution shows that the city of Los Angeles supports restoring AB 2844 to its original form. The unanimous vote and the outpouring of public support sends a strong message that Los Angeles does not want to be complicit in the BDS anti-Semitic movement. BDS is a global effort to demonize and delegitimize the State of Israel and we must do everything we can to stop it,” Blumenfield said in a statement June 14.
Members of the pro-Israel community addressed the council before the vote, including Janna Weinstein Smith, regional director of American Jewish Committee (AJC), Dean Schramm, outgoing regional president at AJC, and Sam Yebri, president of the Iranian-Jewish organization 30 Years After.
“Today is a positive thing, because L.A. City Council took a stand against BDS in general,” Smith said, “and now we’re on to the Senate.”
