Dr. Steven Feldman is an advocate for peace and understanding among Jewish, Christian and Muslim residents of Israel and the West Bank. He's not signing Arkansas's pledge to not boycott Israel.

A Jewish dermatologist from North Carolina with family ties to Israel fell victim to Arkansas’s anti-boycott requirement this year, and now he’s out $500.

An expert in getting patients to take their medications and improving patient-physician relationships, Dr. Steve Feldman Zoomed in from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to meet with Little Rock medical students in February. He gave his lecture and afterwards got a nice thank-you note from the department.

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The UAMS dermatology department sent a nice note to Dr. Feldman.

Then he got an electronic notification showing that his decision to skip checking the box agreeing to not boycott Israel was going to be a real problem.

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Arkansas lawmakers passed a law in 2017 requiring individuals or companies to pledge not to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if they want to do business with the state. Other states have passed similar pro-Israel/anti-Palestine laws requiring specific conservative/religious proclamations from anyone wanting to score state contracts.

These pro-Israel laws served as the model for a recent spate of legislation passed in multiple states to penalize woke investors in service of protecting the fossil fuel and firearms industries. Arkansas passed two laws in 2023 that prioritize the economic well-being of these deadly but lucrative industries over the economic well-being of pretty much everyone else. One prohibits all state entities from working with financial firms that discriminate “without a reasonable business purpose” against energy, fossil fuel, firearms or ammunition businesses or make investments based on E.S.G. factors. The other, even more extreme one, forces state contractors to pledge not to boycott energy, fossil fuel, firearms or ammunition businesses.

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Dr. Steve Feldman’s paperwork to be paid for his session at UAMS did not go through.

Feldman’s decision to forego the pledge to not boycott Israel was gumming up his billing process with the state of Arkansas, putting his $500 honorarium on hold. Suddenly, this devout Jewish man with multiple trips to Israel under his belt found himself in a strange spot.

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Feldman’s refusal to sign a pledge to not boycott Israel got flagged.

Feldman said that during his multiple trips to Israel, he’s seen Palestinians suffer at Israeli hands. Arkansas’s law requiring anyone who does business with the state to sign a pledge not to boycott Israel clashes with his religious and moral views, he said. 

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“What’s nuts is they’re asking a newspaper to say they won’t boycott Israel, they’re asking Americans who have a conscience, who know Israel is keeping Palestinians from their homes,” he said.

The Arkansas Times also declined to sign on to the pledge, and even went to court over it. The legal battle, which ended recently when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case and left a lower court ruling upholding the requirement stand, is the subject of “Boycott,” an award-winning documentary. Arkansas Times Publisher Alan Leveritt explains the genesis of the whole anti-boycott requirement this way:

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“In the film, Senator Hester explains that his religious belief motivates everything he does as a government official, including writing Arkansas’s anti-boycott law. He also explains his eschatological beliefs: There is going to be certain things that happen in Israel before Christ returns. There will be famines and disease and war. And the Jewish people are going to go back to their homeland. At that point Jesus Christ will come back to the earth.” He added, “Anybody, Jewish or not Jewish, that doesn’t accept Christ, in my opinion, will end up going to hell.” Senator Hester and his coreligionists may see the anti-boycott law as a way to support Israel, whose return to its biblical borders, according to their reading of scripture, is one of the precursors to the Second Coming and Armageddon.

In other words, Senator Hester and other supporters of the law entwine religion and public life in a manner that we believe intrudes on our First Amendment rights.”

Besides Leveritt and Feldman, though, how many others absorbed a financial hit to protect their first amendment rights and fend off the intermingling of church and state? There’s no way to know. Shannon Halijan, chief legal counsel for the Arkansas Department of Transformation and Shared Services, said the state doesn’t keep track.

While Feldman probably isn’t on board with Hester’s view that anyone who doesn’t accept Christ is going to hell, the concept of Israel as an unimpeachable state resonates with his upbringing. Feldman said he was taught that upon their arrival en masse in Israel, Jewish people took over a land of deserts and swamps and made it bloom. But as he grew older and paid more attention on his visits overseas, he started to question this backstory.

“If this was deserts and swamps before Jews got there, where were all the Palestinians living?” he said. So Feldman delved in and discovered instances of Jewish forces committing atrocities and expelling entire Palestinian villages to make room for a Jewish state.

“We were told Palestinians fled their homes to make it easier for them to kill Jews,” he said. So he was frustrated to find out there was far more to the story. “That just doesn’t sit with my Jewish morality,” he said.

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As a way to de-escalate tension in the region and build understanding, Feldman led efforts to put together the Jewish Museum of the Palestinian Experience, a virtual museum that fleshes out the full history of the Israel-Palestine conflict. 

His own travels inform the online exhibits. On a two-week trip to Israel led by a Quaker friend, Feldman noted all the big red signs warning of danger at the entrances to the West Bank. He went anyway and got a haircut and a shave in a Palestinian barber shop. Feldman said he dodged the sweets shops that would have been marginally dangerous to his high cholesterol levels, but for the most part felt welcome and safe.

Steve Feldman got his hair cut in the West Bank, and survived.

“I certainly, absolutely do not support violence from Israel. If one side has a moral high ground for committing violence, it’s not the people who keep these men, women and children who are refugees from their homes,” he said. 

This is a brazen statement, and it’s nerve-racking to even repeat it here. Conservative politicians have tricked us into considering any ill words against Israel a sacrilege, and it’s a foregone conclusion that emails and phone calls will roll in from people outraged at the smallest hint that Israel bears some blame for violence in the region. 

Feldman isn’t at all shy about calling Israel out, though. He equates the separation of Jews and Palestinians to the separate entrances and facilities for white and Black people in the American South. He said he’s happy to boycott such things. “I support boycotts for ending the mistreatment of the Palestinian people,” he said.

Arkansas’s vendor form requiring anyone doing contract work with the state of Arkansas to pledge to not boycott Israel was a first for Feldman. Arkansas’s unusual requirement compelling a political pro-Israel statement from vendors is a terrible idea, he said, and he encourages anyone to feel free to use him as an example of why: “Here’s a Jewish American doctor with family in Israel and he won’t sign it!”

While the Arkansas anti-boycott pledge law only applies to contracts over $1,000, Feldman said he was told he could not be added in the system as a vendor because then he would be eligible to get more assignments from the state and be in danger of breaching the $1,000 threshold, thus breaking the law. So he’s out the cash. The honorarium he earned for beaming in to lecture Little Rock medical students will go unclaimed, but Feldman said that’s no big deal.

“If that $500 helps a Palestinian family then that’s OK by me.”

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