NJN Opposes H.R. 4795: A Settlement Promotion Bill Masquerading as a BDS Bill
August 31, 2026 — As the House is poised to consider H.R. 4795, the so-called "Protect Economic and Academic Freedom Act of 2026," New Jewish Narrative urges members of Congress to reject it. The bill is being sold as a response to BDS on campus. Read it, and you’ll find something else: a bill that withholds federal funding from universities unless they maintain commercial ties to Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
The bill’s language sets up this shell game. The operative language never uses the words "Israel" or “settlements.” Instead it refers to "an entity licensed or regulated by, or organized under the laws of" a "major strategic partner" as designated in other legislation. Because settler businesses and educational institutions are licensed and regulated under Israeli law, the bill’s language effectively erases the Green Line that distinguishes Israel from the Occupied Territories.
Rep. Virginia Foxx's press materials call this a "critical new tool to combat the dangerous, hate-fueled, antisemitic BDS movement on college campuses." In reality, it is a bill that shields settlements – not Israel, and not Jewish students – from pressure. By writing into U.S. law the claim that Israel and the settlements are one and the same, Rep. Foxx is effectively doing what the BDS movement does: refusing to distinguish between Israel and the Occupied Territories.
H.R. 4795 must also be viewed in the current political context. It is the latest in a run of federal and state measures that single out Israeli settlements for protection, and it arrives in the middle of an administration campaign against American universities carried out under the false pretense of fighting antisemitism. Americans – and American Jews in particular – deserve a government that upholds civil liberties and does not exploit our very real concerns about antisemitism or Israel as a cudgel to pursue their own agenda against universities.
"Rep. Foxx is invoking Jewish students as a pretext for something they never asked for: a federal rule that punishes universities if they don’t do business in West Bank settlements,” said Hadar Susskind, President and CEO of New Jewish Narrative. “Congress must not tell an American university that its access to student aid depends on its commercial relationship with the occupation.
“This bill doesn’t defend Israel from BDS. It defends the settlements by pretending they are Israel. And wrapping that agenda in the language of fighting antisemitism makes it no more defensible. Antisemitism is real, and all of us must play a role in confronting it. But protecting settlements and punishing political expression are not solutions to antisemitism. Americans aren’t falling for this cynical bait-and-switch. Congress needs to reject it.”
Photo by Justin McIntosh, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1156296
