The Illinois House passed a bill today that would prevent the state's pension fund from investing in companies that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign known as BDS, which is a global movement to put economic pressure on Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. This is one of the more recent pieces of legislation in the past few years that have been introduced to crack down on BDS activities. For example, in Canada there has been a similar development to where the public safety ministry talked about using hate speech laws against Israel boycott advocates.

Here to discuss this is Ali Abunimah. He's joining us from Chicago. He's the co-founder of the Electronic Intifada. Thank you so much for joining us, Ali.

ALI ABUNIMAH, CO-FOUNDER, ELECTRONIC INTIFADA: Thank you, it's my pleasure.

PERIES: So Ali, this BDS counter-strategy, if I may, can you speak to the legality of the bill that was passed in Illinois today?

ABUNIMAH: Well, that's not clear yet. There was an earlier version which contained clearly unconstitutional provisions that would've prohibited the state from doing business with companies that had freely chosen to support Palestinian rights. And the ACLU had made some noise about that, and that was taken out. But what this current bill does, and it passed with 102 votes in favor, no votes against and no abstentions. So you know, unanimity in the Illinois General Assembly. What it does is it forces the state pension fund to investigate companies that are suspected of supporting boycott or divestment from Israel or from companies that are aiding and abetting Israeli occupation and human rights abuses, and to divest state funds from those companies.

Now, what's interesting is that this bill, like other legislative efforts around the country, even includes efforts to divest from Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Now, remember that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law, and illegitimate and illegal according to longstanding U.S. government policy. So this Illinois law aims to deter civil society action even to hold Israel accountable for what the U.S. government considers to be violations of international law.

PERIES: It seems a really obscure way to counter the BDS campaign. What

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