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The Palestine-Israel Conflict in the U.S. Courtroom
This Orwellian legal feat was achieved through a narrow construction of the Massachusetts civil rights act. The judge demanded that the jury declare BSO had violated Redgrave’s civil rights if it first found that the symphony had rescinded Redgrave’s contract because it disagreed with her political views. This the jury could not do because the evidence clearly showed that BSO management was responding to outside, third party pressure when it cancelled the contract. The judge refused to find that discrimination induced by third party threats or disapproval was actionable under Massachusetts law. “Although cancellation because of acquiescence when confronted with the public pressure of a vocal minority may be a breach of contract,” Judge Keeton wrote, “it is not a violation of the Massachusetts Civil Rights Act.”31 The court further turned civil rights ideals on their heads when he reduced the jury’s award from $100,000 to the mere contract damage award of $27,500, reasoning that it was the symphony’s free speech that was at stake! This intellectual legal somersault was performed by construing BSO’s announcement rescinding Redgrave’s invitation as a form of protected free speech. Redgrave, along with civil rights and liberties organizations in Boston, are appealing the court’s decision. On July 1, 1985, Attorney Daniel Kornstein, Redgrave’s lawyer, in a brief submitted to U.S. District Court in Boston, argued for reversal of the federal court finding that the BSO had not violated her civil rights. He said that, without the reversal, the case “expressly encourages political coercion.”32 Dual Citizens/Split Allegiances: Afroyim v. Rusk Fanny Weisblatt, of Silver Springs, Maryland, was fixing the engine of an Israeli tank; Shirley Benson, of Fresno, California, was washing dishes in the mess hall of the Emanuel Israeli Army base; Monty Crisp, of Mountiville, South Carolina, was working with an Israeli team reconditioning a captured Soviet-made tank. They were not getting paid for their labors. Instead, they were part of the Volunteers for Israel program, which has allowed in the past two years some 3,600 foreigners—mostly Americans from 18 to 65 years old—to spend at least a month working on an Israeli Army base.33 Each volunteer, after paying his or her way to Israel, is given an Israeli Army uniform, boots, hat, field jacket and socks, then assigned to live in one of 20 army bases in either Israel or the occupied West Bank or Golan Heights. To avoid questions of dual citizenship, each must sign a release form saying they have no intention of serving in the actual combat army or of pledging allegiance to it. That release form may be sufficient to keep such individuals out of trouble with the U.S. citizenship laws. But what about the countless Americans who permanently reside in Israel, especially those violence-prone religious extremists settling in the West Bank? What about individuals such as Harry Goodman, of Baltimore, Maryland, who joined the Israeli Army and was arrested for attempting to blow up the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem? Or about James Mahon, a Vietnam vet, who converted to Judaism, became an Israeli citizen, and was killed while reportedly on a secret mission to kill Yasser Arafat? Earlier the Israelis had jailed him for breaking into Palestinian homes, smashing furniture and clubbing men, women and children. Finally, the most unnerving example is Rabbi Meir Kahane. Born in Brooklyn, New York, and founder of the militant Jewish Defense League, Kahane took Israeli citizenship, moved to Israel, started “Kach,” the political party that calls for the expulsion of the Palestinians from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. In 1984 he won a seat in the Israeli parliament. He has been arrested at least 62 times for violent attacks on Palestinians, while some of his followers have been arrested for planning to blow up mosques, churches and Arab-owned businesses. Yet Kahane maintains his American passport and U.S. citizenship. Why Kahane and other Americans living and working in Israel have not lost their U.S. citizenship stems from a 1967 Supreme Court case dealing with another American-Israeli that fundamentally changed U.S. expatriation law.34 Prior to 1967, U.S. law did not permit U.S. citizens to vote in foreign elections under the penalty of loss of citizenship. The controlling case was Perez v. Brown, decided by the Supreme Court in 1958, which upheld a federal statute permitting the U.S. State Department to revoke the citizenship of a Mexican-American who had voted in a political election in Mexico. Judge Frankfurter reasoned that the State Department had such power pursuant to the necessity to conduct U.S. foreign policy.35 But nine years later, in Afroyim v. Rusk, a new majority in the Court expressed a different view.36 Beys Afroyim, born in Poland in 1895, immigrated to the United States in 1912 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1926. In 1950, at age 55, he went to Israel and under the Law of Return became an Israeli citizen. He voted in the Israeli election of 1951. After ten years, Afroyim decided to visit the United States, but upon asking the U.S. consulate in Haifa for a new passport, found that the State Department had revoked his citizenship. The Department cited his voting in the 1951 election and relied on Perez v. Brown to defend their decision.
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