Friday, January 17, 2025
The Village of Lawrence has joined Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead in adopting an anti-BDS resolution, prohibiting vendors who participate in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel from conducting business in the municipality.
Lawrence Mayor Samuel Nahmias announced the measure at a Nov. 14 village meeting, citing residents’ ties to Israel as the reason.
“What prompted us to enact it was the fact that this community has a very strong connection to Israel — they have a lot of family there, and what happened on Oct. 7 was a tragedy,” Nahmias said after the meeting, referring to the Hamas attacks on Israel last year.
The resolution, which the village board passed unanimously, requires vendors to certify that they do not participate in the BDS movement, a Palestinian-led initiative launched in 2005 that seeks to apply non-violent economic pressure on Israel, according to BDSMovement.net.
“Essentially, the BDS is a discriminatory and damaging policy,” Nahmias said. “It’s intended to cause economic damage to Israel, and that’s the reality.”
He added that any partners of the village must follow suit. “What we do by enacting this policy is tell any vendor that wants to work with the village of Lawrence, whether it’s a contractor that we’re retaining, whether its someone who’s changing the lights for us, that you cannot work with the village of Lawrence if you boycott Israel,” Nahmias explained. “It’s that simple. And it’s an acknowledgement on their part that this has to be done as part of working for the village as a vendor.”
The move follows similar actions by Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead, which have long opposed the BDS movement. Both enacted anti-BDS regulations in 2017, under then County Executive Ed Mangano and then Town Supervisor Anthony Santino.
Months after the resolutions passed, legislators were calling for the cancellation of a performance by rock star Roger Waters, set to take place at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in September 2017, because of his leadership in the BDS movement, Howard Kopel, the County Legislature’s presiding officer, recalled.
Waters ultimately took the stage.
“The Town of Hempstead has long supported its growing Jewish population, becoming the first municipality in our region to adopt legislation against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement,” a statement on the Town of Hempstead website reads. “Additionally, the Town of Hempstead adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which boosts the Town’s ability to educate the community and take action on acts of antisemitism.”
In September, the town created an Antisemitism Task Force to proactively address emerging trends and combat hate through community education.
“We refuse to do business with companies that openly and brazenly boycott an entire group of people based on their religious and cultural background,” Town Supervisor Don Clavin wrote in a statement.
Clavin praised Lawrence’s decision to double down on the stipulation for village vendors.
“The disturbing rise in antisemitism in recent history hit home earlier this year,” he wrote, “when a sickening display of hateful graffiti — including a defacing of a memorial wall for victims of the October 7th attack on Israel — was found in an East Meadow suburb, reaffirming our government’s commitment to anti-BDS practices throughout America’s largest township. We are pleased to learn that the Village of Lawrence, which tragically has seen many instances of antisemitism in recent years, has adopted similar legislation to stand up for our community.”
County Executive Bruce Blakeman, who championed the town’s anti-BDS rule as a councilman at the time, also commended Lawrence’s actions.
“I applaud the Village of Lawrence for taking affirmative action to ensure that Antisemitism is not institutionalized and encourage other governmental entities to follow suit,” Blakeman wrote in a statement.
