{"id":106301,"date":"2016-03-10T00:12:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/state-moves-toward-opposing-boycott-of-israel\/"},"modified":"2016-03-10T00:12:03","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:12:03","slug":"state-moves-toward-opposing-boycott-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/state-moves-toward-opposing-boycott-of-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"State moves toward opposing boycott of Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A bill before the state Senate directs Colorado\u2019s public employee pension fund to divest from foreign companies participating in a boycott of the country of Israel.<\/span>Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Colorado lawmakers are considering whether to join several other states that oppose a boycott seeking to punish Israel for its treatment of Palestinians.<\/p>\n

The bill before the state Senate directs Colorado\u2019s public employee pension fund to divest from foreign companies participating in the boycott.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Public Employees Retirement Association has $46 billion in assets, but the bill under consideration would affect a minimal amount of those holdings.<\/p>\n

Only two Senate votes are needed to send the measure to Gov. John Hickenlooper. A scheduled vote on Monday was postponed. The House already passed the bill.<\/p>\n

Backers of the movement claim responsibility for pressuring some large companies such as carbonated drink maker Soda Stream to stop or change operations in Israel or the West Bank.<\/p>\n

The layoffs of about 500 workers after the closure of Israeli company SodaStream\u2019s West Bank factory has even some Palestinians questioning the wisdom of the anti-Israel boycott movement. The fundamental contradiction: while Palestinians support the international outcry against the occupation of the West Bank, businesses attached to Israel\u2019s far richer economy nonetheless offer much-needed jobs.<\/p>\n

Supporters say the boycott seeks to advance Palestinian independence and end the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Critics, however, accuse the movement of promoting anti-Semitism for singling out Israel while ignoring countries with poor human rights records.<\/p>\n

California, Florida, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Tennessee are other states that have passed or are considering bills or resolutions against the movement.<\/p>\n

Some witnesses testified last week before the Legislature that the bill would restrict their First Amendment rights by directing how their money should be invested.<\/p>\n

The pension fund\u2019s board of directors decided to oppose the bill because it didn\u2019t want politics to have influence over investment decisions.<\/p>\n

The pension fund did divest from companies doing business in Sudan and Iran in 2007 and 2008, respectively, after the U.S. government imposed sanctions on those countries for sponsoring terrorism.<\/p>\n

The bill does not affect U.S. companies since this country doesn\u2019t have an active sanctions policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a situation like the Palestinian-Israeli situation, we need two partners to work to create peace,\u201d Sen. Tim Neville, a co-sponsor, said last week.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pensions would divest from firms participating in boycott<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[120,15,13,4336],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-106301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-colorado","tag-colorado-state-senate","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-international-relations"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106301"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=106301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}