The Trump administration has said that states and cities will not receive funding to prepare for natural disasters if they choose to boycott Israeli companies, Reuters reported on Monday, citing a terms document from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
The document says that in order to receive funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which falls under the DHS, states must certify that they will not engage in a “discriminatory prohibited boycott.”
A discriminatory prohibited boycott is defined in the document as “refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business.”
Notably, there are no restrictions on US cities and states when it comes to boycotting American companies. The Reuters report said that the Israeli condition applies to at least $1.9 billion that states rely on to cover search and rescue equipment, emergency manager salaries, and backup power systems, among other things.
The condition takes aim at the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for a global boycott to pressure Israel over its occupation of Palestinian territory and now its ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip. The BDS movement has been targeted by US laws at the state level for years, with at least 34 US states having a law on the books that prohibits boycotting Israel in some form.
The Israeli government has been involved in pushing US states to pass anti-BDS legislation. “In recent years, we have promoted laws in most US states, which determine that strong action is to be taken against whoever tries to boycott Israel,” the office of the Israeli prime minister wrote on X in 2020.
In 2021, the US-based ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop selling ice cream in illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. In response, Israeli officials called on US states with anti-BDS laws on the books to punish the company and Unilever, the British conglomerate that owns Ben & Jerry’s. Many states took action against Unilever until the British company sold its Ben & Jerry’s ice cream business in Israel and the West Bank to a local licensee.
