by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
A children's speech pathologist who has worked for the last nine years with developmentally disabled,
autistic, and speech-impaired elementary school students in Austin,
Texas, has been told that she can no longer work with the public school
district, after she refused to sign an oath vowing that she “does not”
and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel or “otherwise tak[e] any
action that is intended to inflict economic harm” on that foreign
nation. A lawsuit on her behalf was
filed early Monday morning in a federal court in the Western District
of Texas, alleging a violation of her First Amendment right of free
speech.
The child language specialist, Bahia Amawi, is a U.S. citizen who
received a master’s degree in speech pathology in 1999 and, since then,
has specialized in evaluations for young children with language
difficulties (see video below). Amawi was born in Austria and has lived
in the U.S. for the last 30 years, fluently speaks three languages
(English, German, and Arabic), and has four U.S.-born American children
of her own.
...Whatever one’s own views are, boycotting Israel to stop its occupation is a global political movement modeled on the 1980s boycott aimed at South Africa
that helped end that country’s system of racial apartheid. It has
become so mainstream that two newly elected members of the U.S. Congress
explicitly support it, while boycotting Israeli companies in the occupied territories has long been advocated in mainstream venues by Jewish Zionist groups such as Peace Now and the Jewish-American Zionist writer Peter Beinart.
This required certification about Israel was the only one in the
contract sent to Amawi that pertained to political opinions and
activism. There were no similar clauses relating to children (such as a
vow not to advocate for pedophiles or child abusers), nor were there any
required political oaths that pertained to the country of which she is a
citizen and where she lives and works: the United States...
[read more here]
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