Criminalizing Homelessness: Scourge on the Streets

My guest columnist, Emily Patricia Graham, is a Miami Beach and Clearwater - based attorney (admitted in Louisiana and California as well). The Immediate Past Chair of the Florida Bar’s Entertainment, Arts, & Sports Law Section and well published, Emily’s work as a board member of the Greater Miami Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida and in Real Estate Development Law on issues involving the plight of America’s homeless drove her to respond to my June 5^th blog –‘Mad Assumptions Too Expensive to Reverse?’ –first with a comment and then with this thoughtful contribution:

“Anywhere I roam, where I lay my head is home”- Metallica

In a park next to the sand dunes on Miami Beach, beachgoers peacefully dozed, breathing in an out to the salty ocean air. The next thing these people knew, they were awoken by police officers and handcuffed, drowsily watching as their earthly belongings were snatched up and set on fire. Up in smoke burned their identification cards, medication, clothing and even a Bible, all then unceremoniously carried away as ashes in that light ocean breeze.

This incident, including the burning Bible, is not a maudlin sketch. It is a description of an incident documented in a court case, Pottinger v. City of Miami, brought by a group of homeless people against the City of Miami. Wait, they were homeless? Yes and they are people, and homelessness is not a crime.

“Criminalization is the practice of arresting homeless people for relatively harmless misdemeanors (obstructing the sidewalk, being in the park after hours, loitering, and the like) that they can’t help but commit while living on the streets. It typically also includes confiscation and destruction of homeless people’s belongings.“ Stephen Schnably, Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law

The Pottinger case was brought in 1988 with a legal team from the Greater Miami Chapter of the ACLU of Florida, led by board of directors’ member Benjamin Waxman. Stephen Schnably, a cooperating attorney described how the case unfolded: “Judge Atkins issued his decision in 1992 finding constitutional violations (8^th amendment – status based punishment; 4^th amendment—seizure of property; and 14^th amendment – infringement of a fundamental right to travel.) The City appealed to the Eleventh Circuit, which remanded the case for further findings. Judge Atkins affirmed his earlier decision, finding no significant change in circumstances. In the City’s second appeal the 11^th Circuit ordered the parties to mediate, the parties reached agreement after nearly two years of negotiation, and the court (by then Judge [now Chief Judge] Moreno) approved the consent decree in 1998.”

The 8^th amendment argument was that homelessness is a status thrust upon people by unfortunate circumstances 1) of financial crisis, mental or physical illness and 2) that there are more homeless people than available shelter.

The Pottinger decree requires police who find homeless people committing "life-sustaining conduct" misdemeanors to offer shelter before they can make an arrest. Furthermore, Miami police may not arbitrarily destroy a homeless person's property and police must keep records on encounters.

Recently, the Pottinger case was back in the news. Stephen Schnably describes the effort to protect hard-won victories in the Pottinger agreement: “In September 2013, the City filed a motion to amend the consent decree, which the ACLU opposed. The court ordered the parties to mediate, which we did, and we reached agreement on limited changes, which the court approved in March 2014. It was all about whether there’d been a significant change in circumstances and, if so (we said there hadn’t been), whether the City’s proposed changes were suitably tailored to those circumstances.”

Examples of some of the 2014 changes include: “Arrests can be made, regardless of the availability of a shelter bed, for bathing or going to the bathroom in public if within a quarter mile of an open public restroom; The shelter that must be offered can be a three-inch mat instead of a bed; and Registered sex offenders will no longer be protected by the agreement; however, other options for legal challenges to draconian residency restrictions that render them homeless remain open…Neither party is permitted to request further modifications to the agreement before January 2016.”

The fact that homeless people may not be allowed in certain restaurants inflames the problem, and homeless people are forced to go to the bathroom in public. Arresting homeless people for this only serves to dehumanize them further. The problem has become so widespread, that a taxpayer funded poop map of Downtown Miami was offered to provide some sort of relief.

The Winter Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust semi-annual “Point in Time” homeless census shows that the homeless population has remained the same between 2014-1015. However, on closer review an alarming trend emerged: more homeless people were living unsheltered in the streets. Hopefully the midyear report, due out soon, will demonstrate a reversal of this trend.

Even with all of this, Miami and Florida are still doing better than other parts of the country. Between 2013 and 2014, the homeless rate in Florida decreased 13.2%, whereas the homeless rate decreased at the unstatistically significant rate of 3.9% in California. Even the favorable decision in Jones v. City of Los Angeles was vacated as part of a settlement. Stephen Schnably explained, “L.A. implemented a ‘Safer Cities Initiative’ not long after the Jones ruling…(it) was aimed at breaking up homeless encampments in Skid Row, and used arrests for a variety of misdemeanor offenses (like littering) that weren’t challenged in the Jones case.” However, a police officer fatally shot a homeless man this past March, an incident many have attributed the enforcement of Safer Cities.

In the end, Criminalization doesn’t solve the problem. Stephen Schnably explains, “Criminalization is counterproductive because it makes it harder for people to escape from homelessness. The U.S. Inter-Agency Council on Homelessness (USICH) has an excellent study on this, Searching Out Solutions: Constructive Alternatives to the Criminalization of Homelessness (2012), available through the Agency’s website. As the USICH report spells out in detail, repeated arrests for minor offenses that people experiencing homelessness can’t help but commit (like sleeping in public, obstructing the sidewalk, and loitering) just make it harder for people to get jobs or find housing. And when police sweep areas where homeless people congregate and confiscate their property, the loss of ID and medication can be devastating.

“At best, criminalization might temporarily reduce the visibility of homeless people (at the cost of great suffering and violations of basic rights), but it only makes the problem worse. Ultimately it’s policies like those mentioned at the Miami Housing Summit, and others like Housing First (which aims to get chronically homeless people directly into permanent housing rather than placing them in shelters), that will best deal with homelessness, and eliminate the occasion for city leaders to criminalize the very people they should be helping.”

There is hope. On June 22, 2015, USICH released a new “Opening Doors Federal Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness as Amended in 2015.” This report advocates preventing homelessness and increasing permanent housing options for low-income people. In the meantime, jail and fines set everyone back. 

I’m Emily Graham, and homelessness isn’t a crime, but kicking people while they’re down is criminal.

Dekom: Not that homeless folks get great job offers even when mental issues don’t apply, but adding criminal convictions to the existing pain and suffering pretty much assures that homelessness perpetuates. We seem to like making poverty and misery permanent. Oh, responding to an increase in the number of homeless in the city, the Los Angeles City Council just passed an ordinance (with criminal sanctions!) making it a lot easier to take down homeless encampments – as long as authorities store the property of those “cleared.” But for the grace of God go I.

All Fail Bail

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Eighth Amendment to the Constitution (within the Bill of Rights)

Today’s blog is focused on the bail part of the above basic right. To understand where that limitation came from – a British Parliamentary act passed in 1689 – it is useful to understand the “why.” “In England, sheriffs originally determined whether to grant bail to criminal suspects. Since they tended to abuse their power, Parliament passed a statute in 1275 whereby bailable and non-bailable offenses were defined. The King's judges often subverted the provisions of the law. It was held that an individual may be held without bail upon the Sovereign's command. Eventually, the Petition of Right of 1628 argued that the King did not have such authority. Later, technicalities in the law were exploited to keep the accused imprisoned without bail even where the offenses were bailable; such loopholes were for the most part closed by the Habeas Corpus Act 1679. Thereafter, judges were compelled to set bail, but they often required impracticable amounts. Finally, the English Bill of Rights (1689) held that ‘excessive bail ought not to be required.’ Nevertheless, the Bill did not determine the distinction between bailable and non-bailable offenses. Thus, the Eighth Amendment has been interpreted to mean that bail may be denied if the charges are sufficiently serious. The Supreme Court has also permitted ‘preventive’ detention without bail. In United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987), the Supreme Court held that the only limitation imposed by the bail clause is that ‘the government's proposed conditions of release or detention not be 'excessive' in light of the perceived evil.’ In Stack v. Boyle, 342 U.S. 1 (1951), the Supreme Court declared that a bail amount is ‘excessive’ under the Eighth Amendment if it were ‘a figure higher than is reasonably calculated’ to ensure the defendant's appearance at trial.” Wikipedia.

Bail has taken the form of liens on homes, releases of prominent citizens or at least citizens with known assets on “their own recognizance,” and, of course, traditional postings of bail. A business has grown out of this right: bail bondsmen. We’ve had television shows over the years based on this profession, from Steve McQueen’s The Bounty Hunter to “reality TV’s” Dog, the Bounty Hunter based on Duane “Dog” Chapman. The concept is simple. The bonding company charges a fee, generally 10% of the amount of the court-ordered bond, to guarantee the court’s posted amount, which is forfeited unless the accused actually appears. Thus where defendants disappear, the bonding entity has to produce the no-show or lose the full amount of the court’s bond amount. Good television, but maybe not so good when it comes to fairness and justice.

You see, over the years, courts have used bonds with a bit more in the way of punitive undercurrents, posting amounts that they know the defendant cannot procure (even that 10% is often prohibitive if the bond amount is high enough or the defendant truly cannot afford it at any level). A prisoner under bond is more likely to accept a plea, may wind up serving the entire time as if convicted anyway and is clearly more vulnerable and less able to cooperate in his or her defense. Bottom line and very obviously, those least likely to post bonds are poor with a heavy consequence for racial minorities with the least economic means. The system has become horribly slanted against those unable to afford to play by its rules.

It’s a really, really big problem, and it costs taxpayers a fortune in incarceration costs. The economic costs to families losing a breadwinner are incalculable, further taxing public social services. According to the DOJ’s National of Corrections, on any given day, there are half a million pre-trial detainees in the United States, the largest number on earth. The modern system of bail really doesn’t seem to benefit society or defendants. And when you think of conditions in most major urban jails, the thought that innocents are spending time in such cruel institutions should be reprehensible to most of us. It’s time for a change.

“Colorado and New Jersey recently voted to revamp their bail systems, while in New Mexico last November, the State Supreme Court struck down a high bail it said had been set for the sole purpose of detaining the defendant.

“This year, the Department of Justice weighed in on a civil rights lawsuit challenging bail amounts based on solely on the charge, calling them unconstitutional. In several states, including Connecticut, New York and Arizona, chief justices or politicians are calling for overhauls of the bail system.

“The money bail system is supposed to curb the risk of flight by requiring defendants to post bond in exchange for freedom before trial. But critics say the system allows defendants with money to go free even if they are dangerous, while keeping low-risk poor people in jail unnecessarily and at great cost to taxpayers.

“For those who cannot afford to post bail, even a short stay in jail can quickly unravel lives and families. Criminal defendants are overwhelmingly poor, many living paycheck to paycheck, and detention can cause job losses and evictions. Parents can lose custody of their children and may have a difficult time regaining it, even when cases are ultimately dropped. And people in jail who are not guilty routinely accept plea deals simply to gain their freedom, leaving them with permanent records.” New York Times, June 10^th.

In short, the undercurrents of unfairness that the Eighth Amendment’s limitations on bail were meant to address are simply ignored by too many courts. There is a complex balance between a constitutionally-required speedy trial to giving a defendant enough time to prepare for an adequate defense. Crowded court calendars don’t help. We seem to have assembly-line simulated justice. We go through the motions, but for most defendants, we expect convictions.

We have too many offenses, very long sentences (among the longest in the world) and for a nation with only 5% of the total global population, it is hard to justify why we have a quarter of the earth’s incarcerated prisoners. Too many convictions are drug-related. How many innocents have accepted “shorter sentences” rather than face an unpredictable judicial system that threatens vastly longer sentences if there is a trial. Is this really a nation where innocents are treated fairly? Not to anyone looking at statistics or has ever visited or been themselves incarcerated in a jail or prison. Our entire system of criminal justice seems to have become “cruel and unusual” against the standards of most nations in the developed world. It is also the world’s most expensive at almost every level of measurement, so taxpayers rejoice!

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless we stand up and rail against our own human rights abuses, care about our fellow citizens the way we care about ourselves, nothing will change!

Hack N’ Sack

The news about the recent hack of federal personnel records – which the government is telling us traces back to China – was initially a nasty-but-incomplete delving into a limited universe of employee records. The media pressed onward. Leaks suggested that the damage was considerably more than a limited intrusion. Not only was the depth of what was taken a litany of extreme personal details of those whose records were hacked, but there were reports surfacing everywhere that the hack was dramatic in its scope… perhaps embracing every single government employee – from bureaucrat to soldier to spy. Everyone was pissed; some were screaming.

With search engines and computer software with extreme sensitivities, that massive database could now be trolled for every sort of information, identifying medical and mental issues, religious preferences, strengths and weaknesses in assessment reports… just the kind of stuff you would want to know if you considered the United States your main antagonist. Precisely the information you would want should you desire to recruit a legion of spies and those likely to leak information inadvertently.  Blackmail stuff. Stuff about family issues. Stuff you really would never want public even here in the United States.

The game of mutual hacking has been going on for quite a while, and we are as guilty as the next nation in this endeavor. But the obvious weakness evidenced by our inability to stop this most-sensitive intrusion to some of our most sensitive confidential information is staggering. And now the F.B.I. is telling us that we have been subject to another wave of penetration.

“The White House on [June 12^th] revealed that hackers had breached a second computer system at the Office of Personnel Management [OPM], and said that President Obama was considering financial sanctions against the attackers who gained access to the files of millions of federal workers.

“Investigators had already said that Chinese hackers appeared to have obtained personal data from more than four million current and former federal employees in one of the boldest invasions into a government network.

“But on [June 12^th], officials said they believed that a separate computer system at the agency was breached by the same hackers, putting at risk not only data about the federal employees, but also information about friends, family members and associates that could number millions more. Officials said that the second system contained files related to intelligence officials working for the F.B.I., defense contractors and other government agencies…

“A senior government official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that investigators became aware of the second intrusion while assessing the damage from the first breach. The official said the information apparently taken in the second breach appeared not to be limited to federal employees.

“The database contains copies of what is known as Standard Form 86, a questionnaire filled out by applicants for national security positions. The 127-page form can include medical data, including information on treatment or hospitalization for ‘an emotional or mental health condition.’

“In addition, the form asks for detailed information on close relatives and ‘people who know you well.’ The form has spaces for each contact’s home or work address, email address, phone number and other information.

“The personnel office has said that the number of federal employees and applicants affected could rise beyond the four million already reported. If the relatives and close contacts are included, the total number of people affected could be several times as high, officials said.” New York Times, June 12^th. Rumors suggest that the 4 million number is exceptionally conservative, “that as many as 14 million current and former civilian U.S. government employees have had their information exposed to hackers…” AOL.com, June 12^th.

How and why did this happen? Why hasn’t the federal government stepped up its overall defense against such attacks? FastCompany.com (June 13^th) attempts to answer these questions: “To their credit, the White House has been trying to introduce information sharing between the private sector and the government on hacker intrusions. However, a bipartisan set of cybersecurity legislation going through the Senate failed to pass this week.

“There’s plenty of blame to go around on both sides for why the cybersecurity legislation failed. It fell victim to the usual Capitol Hill politicking: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) attached the legislation to a much larger defense policy bill, and Democrats objected to portions of the defense policy bill that had nothing to do with cybersecurity. Even though the legislation, which mainly deals with information sharing between the government and the private sector, would not have prevented the OPM hack, it would have been crucial assistance. The reason OPM was hacked had to do with outdated anti-hacker protection, a lack of basic authentication techniques, and a staggering lack of encryption of sensitive data.

“According to Richard Blech of encryption firm Secure Channels, ‘This is a travesty of the first order. The 'Einstein System' that the OPM used to protect all of that critically sensitive data was futile, and the hackers knew it. The hackers knew once they bypassed Einstein, there would be a virtual treasure trove of valuable data that will forever be usable for future exploits. While you can get a new credit card number, you are not going to get a new social security number or some of the other user-identity-sensitive data. This is going to cost the government and—as usual—the taxpayers billions to clean up this mess, and the repercussions of this breach will have effects for many years to come.’…

“As of press time, there are no encryption, security, and mitigation strategy standards for federal government entities. Every agency, department, and bureau has an individual policy, and attempts to introduce systematic best practices have been stymied by the wildly varying IT setups across the federal government. The federal government, which has shown great wisdom when it comes to groundbreaking data science and open government initiatives, now needs to tackle a new challenge: making sure Washington’s defensive cybersecurity game is good as their offensive game.”

Archaic, outdated systems, overall incompatibility, political bickering and out-and-out ignorance from our elected representatives as well as “head in the sand” denials and explanations from government authorities. Sure this stuff happens with corporations all the time, but the government? But think about who’s running the bureaucracies and when they graduated from school. How are these folks – the deciders – able to deal with the technologically massive and rapidly accelerating complexity that threatens them?

It is precisely the size and age of the bureaucracy and the relevant leaders that seem more than anything to allow such malicious malignant malfunctions to multiply. Seem that if they don’t have the skills to understand the issues, they really do need to outsource and accept the solutions! Or sack the fools who can’t! Shields up, Lieutenant Worf!

I’m Peter Dekom, but then there are always those who prefer to focus on intrusive social and moral issues while Rome, er Washington, is burning.

National Rifle Association, a Terrorist Organization?

It’s considered anti-American by too many in the United States to ask for gun control legislation. Assassination attempts in recent memory (Reagan) and successes (Kennedy), mass shootings – well, we get to add the white supremacist hate-crime-church-9-person-hate-murders in Charleston, South Carolina on June 18^th to the very long, long, long list of NRA-legislative-beneficiaries-turned-serial-killers-or-just-plain-murderers.

You may be a part of the growing chorus of anti-Obama constituents on both sides of the aisle, but when the truth of our wayward ways pours out, exactly how much longer can we afford to ignore the obvious? “President Obama on [June 19^th] reiterated his call for new gun controls, speaking at a United States Conference of Mayors meeting in San Francisco, saying that a shift in public opinion was needed to force Congress to act. ‘Every country has unstable, hateful people,’ he said. ‘What’s different is not every country is awash with easily accessible guns.’” New York Times, June 19^th.

And there not the slightest doubt that as gun laws make it easier to access guns; that fact alone is responsible for a serious rise in the raw murder rates in the states where such laws have passed, and virtually all of the rise is by reason of “death by gun.” Need the actual statistics? I refer you to my recent (June 16^th) blog – Giving It Our Best Shot – for irrefutable evidence to such effect, notwithstanding a mostly-successful effort by the NRA (legislation to such effect pushed by that gun-lobbying group) to prevent governments from gathering such gun homicide numbers.

The NRA tells you that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Get real! Using a gun is a really efficient way of killing. It is quick, allows you a distance from your victim and avoids the messy and bloody alternatives like stabbing, bludgeoning or the inglorious writhing around of a poison victim. And it usually results in death versus recovery from a beating or even a stabbing. It’s the killing “easy button,” allowing rage to be instantly gratified. Of course having pervasive availability of guns increases the murder rates as the hard numbers conclusively prove! Duh-oh!

“The FBI defines terrorism as: The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.” About.com. Charleston shooter, Dylann Roof, would seem to fall squarely within this definition; he openly advocated beginning a race war against African-Americans based on his attack. An accessory to a crime, also having criminal responsibility, falls into the following categories (according to The Free Dictionary): “The prosecution must establish that the accessory in some way instigated, furthered, or concealed the crime. Typically, punishment for a convicted accessory is not as severe as that for the perpetrators…

“An accessory must knowingly promote or contribute to the crime. In other words, she or he must aid or encourage the offense deliberately, not accidentally. The accessory may withdraw from thecrime by denouncing the plans, refusing to assist with the crime, contacting the police, or trying to stop the crime from occurring.” The NRA knows statistically that their efforts increase the probability of guns being used for the wrong purpose. 

Given these definitions, the NRA would seem to be a legally and criminally responsible accessory of terrorist activities as responsible for the death and destruction of gun-infused criminality across the land as if they handed the bomb to Oklahoma federal building bomber, Timothy McVeigh.

Likewise, it would seem under the laws of most jurisdictions,  it is hard to find that the NRA cannot be added as an accessory to most gun crimes, no matter where the gun came from, and since the crime here is easily labeled terrorism, that would, in my opinion, make the NRA an accessory to actual acts of terrorism. Throw in the all-encompassing federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (R.I.C.O.) Act into the mix, add up all the assault weapons they have pushed into our country, and you can take the NRA and their entire senior management, try and convict them… and throw away the key.

That their primary motivation is to sell more guns to a country that already has almost one gun for every man, woman and child in the United States is not exculpatory. That’s the “capitalism/First Amendment” excuse that doesn’t excuse drug dealers either. The NRA absolutely knows what its policies have caused. Their lobbying efforts to prevent governmental agencies from generating gun homicide statistics are a tacit admission of their guilt. They have successfully championed easier access to guns as well as statutes that permit gun owners to kill without consequences (under so-called “castle” and “stand your ground” statutes that have been adopted by a majority of states). They have stopped all attempts to limit large magazines and assault rifles that have no purpose other than to maximize the number of human being that can be killed in a short burst. That AR-15 pictured above is one such weapon.

The litany of accessory/RICO crimes that should, in my opinion, be charged against the NRA could begin with the list of school and college killings I provided back on November 9, 2014 in my Americans Love Guns So Much More than Their Children blog. But Americans are so callous, so enamored of own gun ownership, that any politician who dares suggest that we insert reasonable gun control into our daily lives usually loses their next election. In my view, the NRA management are old world crime bosses, thugs bought and paid for by U.S. gun-makers, who have intimidated the American political scene to allow the United States to be viewed by every developed nation on earth as a rogue nation awash in guns and laws that excuse using them in the killing of human beings.

The NRA is a despicable and heartless organization. Their initial reaction to the Charleston shootings say it all, and even this cowardly organization was forced to back off: “Faced with an online backlash, a member of the National Rifle Association’s board deleted comments Friday [June 19^th] criticizing the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, a South Carolina lawmaker who was one of the nine people shot and killed in the attack on his church in Charleston on Wednesday night.

“The N.R.A. official, Charles L. Cotton, argued in an online discussion that Mr. Pinckney, a state senator, bore some responsibility for the other deaths because he had opposed a change to South Carolina’s gun laws that would have made it legal to carry a concealed weapon into a church.” New York Times (First Draft, June 19^th). Yeah, a parishioner could have pulled his or her concealed weapon and saved the day. Disgusting distortion! For an organization that was originally created to teach gun safety, the NRA has gone terribly, terribly wrong. But note that however the NRA may have twisted and squirmed to provide legal justification for their support of this killing machine, our highly misinterpreted Constitutional “gun rights” provision does not require such flagrantly open use of guns.

You hear very few gun-advocates ever mention the first phrase of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution – the motivation for citizen soldiers to clamber for the right to own the weapons they need to defend their nation: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The right to bear arms is not exempted from regulation and control, and access truly needs to be reconfigured to comport with that phase in red above. It’s time to hold people who have made killing so easy, so pervasive, all in the pursuit of the almighty dollar – just like a cartel leader – criminally responsible for what they have wrought.

I’m Peter Dekom, and let me answer my own question posited in the title above: hell yes!

They’re Called anti-Boycott, Divest & Sanction Laws

The battle over Palestinian independence has played out on the international stage resulting in a very powerful global rejection of the tough Israeli position. As the world seems pretty much to ignore Palestinian Hamas’ horrors, its occasional rain of Gaza-launched rockets against Israel (indiscriminate targets resisted by a very effective Iron Dome defense), Israel has been strongly isolated by most countries on earth. Israel has not helped its case as it continues to build West Bank settlements and as senior government officials pledge that they will not surrender claims to the lands that would otherwise be the designated future Palestinian state. The U.N. is also investigating “human rights” violations based on Israel’s perceived “excessive” retaliation against Hamas attacks.

Israel has courted the world with its position – from PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s presentations to both the UN and the assembled U.S. Congress to use of the Jewish diaspora to pressure regional politicians – and with the exception of the United States, the Jewish state’s pleas have pretty much fallen on deaf ears. Israel has been arrogant and awkward in her global public relations efforts, further exacerbating her isolation, with most nations finding Hamas’ atrocities to be somehow justified in their quest for independence, more acceptable, perhaps, because Israeli casualties were a small fraction of Palestinian fatalities and injuries. For additional details, see my “Arrogant Isolationism” (March 19^th) and “The Palestinian ‘Side Show’” (June 3^rd) blogs.

Let me be clear. There is no justification for Hamas’ indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israel, particularly since there has been very little attempt by Hamas to direct such efforts against military targets. The fact that Israel’s Iron Dome defense was effective, saving Israeli lives, does not make Hamas rocket attacks any less offensive. Likewise, Israel’s seeming commitment to avoid a bona fide peace agreement with Palestine is also offensive, very much contrary to U.S. polices set during the Clinton administration and never altered by any subsequent presidency.

But right now, folks aren’t addressing Palestinian excess. Israel’s extreme reactions and positions have pretty much relegated its political position to support from the United States, the only major nation on earth still willing to back Israel with very few strings. Overall Republican support, clearly, is “Israel no matter what” while many Dems want Israel to start making bona fide moves towards a peaceful settlement of the issues surrounding Palestine’s quest for autonomy. Virtually the rest of the world is ready to recognize the entire Palestinian state now, the “occupied territories” of the West Bank (with Jerusalem as a divided city) and Gaza.

We’ve seen waves of anti-Semitism rising in Europe, and as Israel refuses to budge in its opposition to Palestinian autonomy, there are nascent parallel movements here in here the United States. People are seemingly unable to differentiate between Zionism and Judaism. Too many have crossed the line on anti-Semitism based on their opposition to Israeli policies. We need to be very, very clear. These are two completely different notions and need to be looked at that way. Ant-Semitism is just plain ugly.

There are a number of American investment funds, including several university endowments, which have come to divest themselves of stocks from companies that are connected with or are in support of Israel and its current policies toward Palestine. And since the United States appears to be Israel’s only significant friend in the world (although France has openly opposed anti-Israel boycotts), politicos in this country are beginning to mount a counter-campaign against such efforts.

“South Carolina has become the first state to enact legislation aimed at thwarting an international pro-Palestinian economic and disinvestment campaign intended to penalize Israel. Illinois will soon become the second, and advocates say plans are underway for similar laws in 18 more states.

“In Washington, Congress could vote this month on trade legislation with language that would encourage the blacklisting of foreign companies that support the pro-Palestinian campaign, known as Boycott, Divest and Sanction, or B.D.S. The trade legislation is notable in part because the scope of its blacklisting could include companies that refuse to do business with Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, even though they are widely considered illegal.

“And in Las Vegas [over the first weekend in June], Sheldon Adelson, the multibillionaire casino owner who is one of the Israeli government’s most important American supporters, is convening a private meeting of pro-Israel donors to devise new strategies for countering B.D.S., particularly on American college campuses, where it has gained some support since the Gaza war last summer.

“Alarmed over what they see as the growing influence of B.D.S., Israel’s advocates in the United States, mirroring the reaction among many in Israel, are scrambling to respond. Some have embraced a call by the new Israeli justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, to ‘boycott the boycotters.’

“The extent of B.D.S.’s popularity is hard to assess in the United States, where support for Israel remains overwhelmingly strong — something that boycott organizers concede. Still, the campaign’s effort to isolate Israel economically — even if it has yet to show any practical impact — has struck a nerve among many American Jews. They see the effort as a form of anti-Semitism, an accusation that B.D.S. supporters call a false, cynical and divisive scare tactic.” New York Times, June 5^th.

However sincere the effort and however effective the potential to stop the B.D.S. effort, even with public universities or schools that receive federal aid, there is a very big First Amendment issue with these laws, and courts are likely immediately to be drawn into the controversy. Our leaders know that the U.S. pro-Israel position on Palestine is widely out-of-step with most nations on earth (the U.N. General Assembly vote on Palestine, 138 favoring the Palestinian state, 9 favoring hold to Israel’s vision and 41 abstentions, pretty much says it all), but conservative America (particularly the Evangelical movement bent on fomenting Armageddon in the Middle East) is committed to support Netanyahu’s position at all costs. What do you think the United States should do on these B.D.S. practices… if anything?

I’m Peter Dekom, and indeed the muck and mire in the highly unstable Middle East seems hopelessly tangled in toxic barbed wire at every level.