Like Israel Or No Job.

[BIAD]

The quiet Contract.

A Texas Elementary School Speech Pathologist Refused to Sign a Pro-Israel Oath, Now Mandatory in
Many States -so She Lost Her Job

'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.
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.

Amawi began working in 2009 on a contract basis with the Pflugerville Independent School District, which
includes Austin, to provide assessments and support for school children from the county’s growing Arabic
-speaking immigrant community.

The children with whom she has worked span the ages of 3 to 11. Ever since her work for the school district
began in 2009, her contract was renewed each year with no controversy or problem.

But this year, all of that changed. On August 13, the school district once again offered to extend her contract
for another year by sending her essentially the same contract and set of certifications she has received and
signed at the end of each year since 2009.

She was prepared to sign her contract renewal until she noticed one new, and extremely significant, addition:
a certification she was required to sign pledging that she “does not currently boycott Israel,” that she “will not
boycott Israel during the term of the contract,” and that she shall refrain from any action “that is intended to
penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel, or with a person or entity doing
business in Israeli or in an Israel-controlled territory.”

The language of the affirmation Amawi was told she must sign reads like Orwellian -or McCarthyite -self-parody,
the classic political loyalty oath that every American should instinctively shudder upon reading:



That language would bar Amawi not only from refraining from buying goods from companies located within Israel,
but also from any Israeli companies operating in the occupied West Bank (“an Israeli-controlled territory”).
The oath given to Amawi would also likely prohibit her even from advocating such a boycott given that such speech
could be seen as “intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or limit commercial relations with Israel.”

'...At the time that Texas enacted the law barring contractors from supporting a boycott of Israel, it was

the 17th state in the country to do so. As of now, 26 states have enacted such laws -including blue states
run by Democrats such as New York, California, and New Jersey -while similar bills are pending in
another 13 states.

This map compiled by Palestine Legal shows how pervasive various forms of Israel loyalty oath
requirements have become in the U.S.; the states in red are ones where such laws are already enacted,
while the states in the darker shade are ones where such bills are pending:



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