COLUMBIA, S.C. _ The South Carolina House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed an anti-Semitism bill that pro-Palestinian student groups denounced last month as an effort to suppress criticism of Israel on the state's college campuses.
House members voted 103-3 in favor of state Rep. Alan Clemmons' bill. The Horry Republican assured representatives that his proposal addresses an uptick in anti-Semitic activity without censoring free speech on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Jewish community centers across the United States, including one in Columbia, recently have been targeted with bomb threats. Passing the bill, which now heads to the state Senate, sends a message "that South Carolina opposes bigotry," Clemmons said.
The bill would require South Carolina colleges to use a 2010 U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism when investigating alleged civil rights violations on campus.
Free speech advocates and pro-Palestinian groups have noted that definition includes examples of anti-Semitism "relative to Israel." But the bill's supporters say the definition is meant to help colleges determine whether violations of university policy _ such as assaults _ are anti-Semitic in nature.
"This bill will help provide colleges with the proper tools to ascertain the intent of persons engaged in unlawful activity," said state Rep. Beth Bernstein, D-Richland, the only Jewish lawmaker in the South Carolina Legislature.
The bill has 115 co-sponsors in the House. Only six members had not signed on to sponsor the bill or had taken their names off the bill by Thursday.
David Matos, president of Carolina Peace Resource Center, said his group will testify against the bill again when the Senate takes it up.
"It's clearly unconstitutional," Matos said. "The intent is to suppress political speech and smear it as anti-Semitism."
State Reps. Jonathon Hill, R-Anderson; Josiah Magnuson, R-Spartanburg; and Leola Robinson-Simpson, D-Greenville, cast the only votes against the bill in the House.
Hill, a former sponsor who took his name off the bill, told the House he opposed applying a State Department definition of anti-Semitism to U.S. citizens. "It does not necessarily account for the rights of American citizens to free speech. It's designed for application in a geopolitical context."
