{"id":45973,"date":"2018-11-28T05:00:47","date_gmt":"2018-11-28T10:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45973"},"modified":"2018-11-27T12:25:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T17:25:21","slug":"airbnb-virtue-signals-its-anti-semitic-street-cred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/11\/28\/airbnb-virtue-signals-its-anti-semitic-street-cred\/","title":{"rendered":"AirBnB virtue signals its … anti-semitic street cred?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the National Post<\/em>, Barbara Kay<\/a> discusses the odd business choices of AirBnB in cutting off rentals to only certain locations that just happen to be in Israel:<\/p>\n

Planning a group holiday in Kashmir? Airbnb is there to serve you. Likewise in Tibet, northern Cyprus and Georgia\u2019s separatist republic of Abkhazia, all occupied or disputed territories. Airbnb\u2019s political neutrality in these hot spots therefore quite rightly casts suspicion, to put it mildly, on its recent decision to delist some 200 Jewish homes in West Bank communities.<\/p>\n

Airbnb stated, \u201cWe know that people will disagree with this decision and appreciate their perspective. This is a controversial issue.\u201d No kidding. An Israeli class-action lawsuit has been filed against Airbnb, seeking US$4,000 in damages for every affected host.<\/p>\n

Indignation has been running high outside of Israel as well, in statements both spontaneous \u2014 disgusted blog, Twitter and Facebook posts \u2014 and considered. The Beverly Hills city council, for example, passed a unanimous condemnatory resolution, calling Airbnb out for anti-Semitism and stating, in part: \u201cThe City of Beverly Hills hereby calls upon Airbnb to correct this act of disrespect to the land of Israel and restore its original services immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting aside the anti-Semitic optics, is it legal for Airbnb to do this?<\/p>\n

The U.S. Constitution, as well as various state laws and acts of Congress, prohibits both American individuals and corporations from participating in boycotts against other nations. A corporate boycott against a foreign government does not fall under the \u201cfree speech\u201d rubric,\u201d but is considered a \u201ctool of statecraft\u201d reserved for the federal government in such situations as war. The office of Rob Portman of Ohio (R), an author of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act in the Senate, told The Jerusalem Post<\/em> last Tuesday that it wants to hear from Airbnb. The Illinois state legislature \u2014 which passed the nation\u2019s first local anti-BDS law in 2015 \u2014 will reportedly meet in mid-December, when it anticipates debating whether Airbnb violated its statute.<\/p>\n

Establishing illegality pivots on whether the move is deemed as \u201cpolitically\u201d inspired. It certainly seems to be. As noted by Kohelet Forum legal expert Eugene Kontorovich in a recent Wall Street Journal<\/em> oped, \u201cAn American Jew with a rental property in the West Bank is barred from listing it for rent on the website. But an American Arab is welcome to list his home a few hundred metres away, even though the Palestinian law forbidding real-estate deals with Jews carries a maximum penalty of death. That openly racist policy doesn\u2019t trigger Airbnb\u2019s delisting policy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the National Post, Barbara Kay discusses the odd business choices of AirBnB in cutting off rentals to only certain locations that just happen to be in Israel: Planning a group holiday in Kashmir? Airbnb is there to serve you. Likewise in Tibet, northern Cyprus and Georgia\u2019s separatist republic of Abkhazia, all occupied or disputed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,9,53,13],"tags":[304,291,292],"class_list":["post-45973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-law","category-politics","category-usa","tag-antisemitism","tag-israel","tag-palestine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bXv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45973"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45973\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45976,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45973\/revisions\/45976"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}