Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has sharply criticized the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement as anti-Semitism masquerading as a crusade for free speech.
At an event Tuesday hosted by the Rule of Law Defense Fund, Rubio decried what he’s called an anti-Israel movement.
“Let’s pass the resolution condemning anti-Semitism, and then let’s put some muscle behind it, by passing a bill that actually gives states the ability to go after anti-Semitism disguised as economic policy and disguised as a free-speech argument,” he said, the Daily Signal reported.
The pro-Palestinian BDS movement encourages boycotts and other measures to put Israel under pressure to withdraw its settlements from territories in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
“[T]he state of Israel is a state that is being targeted internationally, and by some, in a way that I view as anti-Semitism, but obviously hiding behind the veneer of public-policy initiative,” Rubio said, the Daily Signal reported.
“How it’s depicted basically is that Israel is some grotesque human rights violator that needs to be punished economically,” he said, according to the news outlet.
“[It’s] an argument made by the same people…who are against, for example, Israel being a pro-American, free-enterprise democracy, the only nation in the Middle East that fits those three criteria—pro-American, free enterprise and democracy—in the Middle East,” he added. “Imagine if we [had] multiple countries like that … how much better the world would be.”
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