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The state of Arkansas has paid $500 it had promised to a Jewish doctor, after withholding the payment for months because of the doctor’s refusal to sign a pledge promising not to boycott Israel, JTA reported on Thursday.

The payment came after public pressure on the state to process the payment. The doctor, Steve Feldman, a longtime pro-Palestinian Arab activist, plans to donate the money to the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, according to the report.

Feldman was entitled to the honorarium from the state after delivering a Zoom lecture in February to the University of Arkansas, Little Rock medical school. However, Arkansas state law requires all public contractors to sign a pledge acknowledging they will not boycott Israel, which Feldman said conflicted with his religious and moral values.

The Arkansas law applies only to public contractors earning more than $1,000 in payments from the state, but officials had initially told Feldman that the mere act of adding him to the state’s vendor system would make him eligible for possible future payments that could bring his total beyond that number.

In May, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said he believed Feldman was entitled to the payment.

The execution of Feldman’s payment was announced June 1 in a joint press release by Jewish Voice for Peace and the Council on American Islamic Relations, according to JTA.

Arkansas is one of a host of US states that have approved legislation against BDS in recent years. In June of 2022, a federal appeals court upheld the Arkansas state law which seeks to fight the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, overturning an earlier ruling that the contract violated the First Amendment.

Several months later, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) appealed to the Supreme Court over the law. In February, the US Supreme Court refused to hear the challenge against the Arkansas law.

Other US states that have approved anti-BDS legislation include: New York, California, New Jersey, Indiana, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Kansas, Texas and Virginia.

The anti-BDS laws have been challenged in other states as well. In 2018, a federal judge temporarily blocked the anti-BDS law in Kansas following a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Also that year, a federal judge blocked Arizona from enforcing a similar measure.