WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, joined Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), along with 13 other Senate Republican colleagues, in sending a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on him to rescind discriminatory guidance issued by the State Department halting bilateral scientific and technological cooperation in certain Israeli-held territories.
“The guidance does something America has never done before: unilaterally impose territorial restrictions on U.S. scientific research aid to Israel. Decades ago, the U.S. and Israel bilaterally agreed to such limits against the backdrop of unique regional conditions, but in 2020 both sides rescinded and rejected them as discriminatory,” the Senators wrote.
“The new guidance as written constitutes an antisemitic boycott of Israel. The American people and Congress broadly and deeply oppose boycott efforts against Israel, which have been repeatedly defined in U.S. law as efforts to limit commercial with persons doing business in any territories controlled by Israel…The State Department’s own Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was excluded from deliberations over this guidance and did not clear it. This guidance in particular puts Americans’ safety, security, and prosperity at risk because it politicizes and undermines cooperation on science and technology, including in areas such as defense and medicine where also our Israeli allies have proven themselves critical partners,” the Senators continued.
A copy of the letter can be found here and below.
Dear President Biden and Secretary Blinken,
The Department of State is distributing guidance to relevant U.S. Government agencies and officials terminating American support for bilateral scientific and technological cooperation in the Golan Heights and Judea and Samaria, including parts of Jerusalem. Administration officials did not formally notify Congress or make the policy public, until journalists did it for them.
We write to call on you to rescind this discriminatory guidance. We also write to emphasize that any effort to deepen American policies that discriminate between territories Israel controlled before and after June 1967 will risk a full rupture in my/our ability to engage the Department of State on these issues. Candidly, it is untenable for State Department officials to continue testifying to Congress that they support the U.S.-Israel relationship and then – once out of view – to push policies designed to undermine that relationship. Without a reversal in these trends Congressional oversight and the expeditious vetting of nominees would become intractable.
It is no wonder that the Biden administration sought to shield this new guidance from Congressional and public scrutiny. The guidance does something America has never done before: unilaterally impose territorial restrictions on U.S. scientific research aid to Israel. Decades ago, the U.S. and Israel bilaterally agreed to such limits against the backdrop of unique regional conditions, but in 2020 both sides rescinded and rejected them as discriminatory.
The new guidance as written constitutes an antisemitic boycott of Israel. The American people and Congress broadly and deeply oppose boycott efforts against Israel, which have been repeatedly defined in U.S. law as efforts to limit commercial with persons doing business in any territories controlled by Israel (see, e.g., 19 USC § 4452(f)(1) and 19 USC § 4201(b)(20)). Additionally, the United States has embraced the working definition of antisemitism of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which includes double standards targeting Israel or Israeli Jews. The State Department’s own Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Antisemitism was excluded from deliberations over this guidance and did not clear it.
This guidance in particular puts Americans’ safety, security, and prosperity at risk because it politicizes and undermines cooperation on science and technology, including in areas such as defense and medicine where also our Israeli allies have proven themselves critical partners. It vitiates the neutral, objective criteria that relevant organizations are required by their charters and the law to use when evaluating grants, and potentially forces them to act illegally – broadly endangering their ability to continue funding such research on behalf of Americans and Israelis.
The Department of State should immediately rescind this guidance. As always, we stand ready to discuss these issues with you and to provide you with whatever resources you need to implement policies that enhance the safety and security of Americans.
Sincerely,
###