Maroon said:

The executive order requires the New York State Office of General Services to create a blacklist of institutions and companies involved in the BDS movement “using credible information available to the public” and make that list available to everyone online. All state agencies will be required to divest from such companies, which will have to submit written evidence to appeal to be removed from the list.

Regardless of one’s position on BDS, the order could be concerning because it ultimately requires the blacklisted institutions to prove their own innocence – the burden of proof will be on them to prove they are not BDS supporters – or else face repercussions, and it punishes companies on the basis of their political beliefs. This is an effort that could seriously threaten free speech.

This clearly violates constitutional rights to free enterprise as well as speech

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The state cannot penalize individuals or entities on the basis of their free expression, and political boycotts are a form of free expression

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Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said “Governor Cuomo’s measure is illegitimate and an obvious pander. Procedurally, he sought to avoid any transparent debate about the centuries-old validity of boycott as a means of protest in this country.”

“On substance his ‘enemies list’ approach to suffocate opinions he and his financial supporters disapprove of is plainly unconstitutional in its McCarthyist vision,” Azmy added.

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New York stands with Israel because we are Israel and Israel is us

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Speaking at a last minute campaign stop at Beth Jacob of Borough Park–one of the city’s most well-known Orthodox Jewish enclaves–Mr. Cuomo reminisced about the trip he made to the Jewish State this summer during the country’s battle against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

(...)

Mr. Cuomo complained of media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and said he would fight to help the Middle Eastern nation improve its international image. Like his Republican rival, Rob Astorino, Mr. Cuomo has assiduously courted the city’s Orthodox Jewish community.

“Israel has to do a better job making its case here. Because when you read the newspapers, all you hear is one side of the story. And it’s unfavorable to Israel. And you don’t get the other side of the story. And we have to be better at telling the other side of the story, and I want to be part of telling the other side of the story. And that is what I’m going to continue, and that is going to be my pleasure, on a personal level,” he said.

“When you grow up in New York, you grow up as a member of the Jewish community, and that’s how I grew up. And that’s the relationship that I feel in my essence.

(...)

One of the event’s organizers, Jewish philanthropist Sol Werdiger, announced that he intended to usher Mr. Cuomo into even higher office.

“I can only promise that in four years we’ll be doing this again, only it’ll be ‘Cuomo for President,” Mr. Werdiger said

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Cuomo credited his sensitivity to the needs of the Orthodox to his childhood in Queens, where he served as a “Shabbos goy” for a synagogue up the street

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In his first reelection bid in 1986, Cuomo received 80 percent of the Jewish vote, relatively similar to the 70+ percent his son Andrew Cuomo got in his 2014 reelection campaign.

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