Media Roundup: Palestine Legal on unprecedented surge in anti-Palestinian repression since October 7th

As the US-backed Israeli bombardment of Gaza has reached unfathomable proportions, so has the war of repression here: since Oct. 7th we’ve received an unprecedented 1300+ reports from people targeted for Palestine advocacy across cities and industries—but it’s not stopping the upsurge in solidarity. 

Below is a media roundup of 10 key articles written by staff and reporters highlighting the wave of anti-Palestinian repression and the resistance to it in both mainstream and progressive outlets such as: Democracy Now!, The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Al Jazeera, and others. 

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A Surge in Suppression

“Across the US, people speaking out on behalf of Palestinian human rights and against Israeli war crimes, apartheid policies, and settler-colonial expansion that have been unfolding over nearly eight decades are facing a wave of McCarthyite backlash directly targeting their future careers and livelihoods.

In the vast majority of instances, the individuals targeted are Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, or Black, and many have faced racist and dehumanizing harassment as a result of the smears. Since 2014, we’ve handled thousands of such incidents—suppression of speech supporting Palestinian rights is nothing new—but it’s never been this bad.

While the backlash we have seen is different in nature and degree to anything we have witnessed in recent years, activists—particularly of the youngest generations—also seem more resilient than ever and more willing to speak against injustice in Palestine despite the personal risks. Some, such as Ryna Workman, have used the spotlight thrust on them to continue to support Palestinian rights and oppose genocide.”

Boston Review

The Free Speech Exception

“The climate of censorship, suppression, and intimidation resembles the aftermath of 9/11; it is what the CCR and we at Palestine Legal have called the Palestine exception to free speech—the real cancel culture, or whatever you want to call it—in action.

If we had truly open and informed debate, where journalists were able to accurately report this issue—where students, professors, and artists could write articles and publish freely without fear of employer retaliation—how might U.S. policy change? Would our elected officials stay Israeli airstrikes? Might we be able to stop the ongoing killing and prevent the mass tragedy unfolding before us? 

Every writer who is canceled should not have to sue for breach of contract; student groups should not need a team of attorneys just to hold a talk, and professors should not need to retain counsel before posting to Instagram. Even if we had an army of lawyers to represent each individual who is targeted, the chilling effect is real: people will self-censor.

Combating this injustice requires social change. That means everyone—journalists, artists, students, teachers, professors, anyone with a social media account or the ability to take to the streets—using the tools at their disposal to stop the censorship campaign and the ethnic cleansing that is taking place."

The Daily Beast

The Silencing of Pro-Palestinian Voices Is Proof That Israel Is Losing the War

“The architects of this machine of repression—hawkish pro-Israel interest groups like the ADL, Brandeis Center, AIPAC, and their billionaire donors—have spent decades lobbying universities, corporations, government actors, and other institutional leaders to enforce coercive economic and political sanctions against supporters of Palestinian rights.

Yet, even while the ferocity of this repression and the severity of consequences is unparalleled—it is failing, for the same reason that over 75 years of brutal Israeli military rule and a 16-year suffocating blockade of Gaza has unequivocally failed to break the spirit of Palestinian dignity, hope, and popular resistance on the ground.

The logic that turns the gears of the anti-Palestinian repression machine is that people of conscience can be blacklisted, bought, or bullied into tacit approval of the U.S.-supported Israeli onslaught.

The reality is 180 degrees from that logic: despite the unprecedented wave of repression, the tide of public opinion continues to rapidly shift in favor Palestinian rights, as organizers have continued to mobilize radical political actions in historic numbers reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s, with no evidence of slowing down.”

Democracy Now!

The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: Censorship, Harassment Intensifies on Campus Amid Gaza War

“Palestine Legal has been documenting for years what we call a Palestine exception to free speech, so it certainly didn’t start on October 7th. We’ve seen these same kinds of tactics, severe doxing, attempts to get people fired and investigated, to punish boycotts for Palestinian rights and other advocacy through legislation, and an attempt to purge academia of voices that support Palestinian rights.”

The New York Times

Campus Crackdowns Have Chilling Effect on Pro-Palestinian Speech

“Radhika Sainath, an attorney with Palestine Legal, a civil rights group, said her organization has received more than 450 requests for help for campus-related cases since the Hamas attack, more than a tenfold increase from the same period last year. The cases include students who have had scholarships revoked or been doxxed, professors who have been disciplined, and administrators who have gotten pressured by trustees.

‘It’s truly like nothing else we’ve ever seen before,’ Ms. Sainath said. ‘We’re having a ’60s-level moment here, both as far as the repression but also the mass student mobilization.’”

The Nation

The ADL Is Defaming Palestinian Students as Terrorist Supporters

"An 'urgent' open letter issued last Thursday by the ADL—which, lest we forget, promotes itself as one of America’s leading defenders of civil rights—and the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law urged college and university administrators to 'immediately investigate' their campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) for 'potential violations of the prohibition against materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.' They claim to have sent the letter to nearly 200 schools.

The ADL provided not a shred of evidence for that incendiary, potentially life-ruining accusation. It interpreted references to 'resistance' to the siege, bombardment, and invasion of Gaza exclusively as support for terrorism—not, say, as a rejection of the Israeli stranglehold around a densely packed area of 2.3 million people.”

CNN

For Palestinian Americans and activists, doxxing is nothing new

“'Doxxing and blacklists have for years now been a major tactic of Israel advocacy groups to suppress pro-Palestine political expression and raise the stakes of engaging in Palestine organizing and advocacy,' Dylan Saba, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal, an organization that provides legal aid to those who support Palestinian rights, said."

The Electronic Intifada

Podcast Ep 84: Students fight smears as universities back Israel’s genocidal attacks

"On episode 84, we speak with Palestine Legal’s senior staff attorney Radhika Sainath, who lays out the current repressive atmosphere on campuses across the US and gives advice to students who can protect themselves from these attacks.

'It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before – we’ve been working around the clock,' she says.

'This surge for requests for legal help is in part due to the outpouring of support for Palestinian freedom that we’ve been seeing, and against Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.'"

Al Jazeera UpFront

The double standards of free speech on Palestine

"We are seeing a crackdown on dissent on Palestine, we’re seeing across the board, not only government action to surveil and investigate activists for Palestinian rights, but also in the private sector, a purging - a very McCarthyist type of purging of any support for Palestinian rights, even as people are mobilizing right now to stop what international experts have called an unfolding genocide. This is so dangerous, and certainly hypocritical.”

AJ+

The more of us who speak out, the more power and influence we have

“We spoke to Jinan Chehade, a recent Georgetown Law School graduate, who was fired from a prominent law firm for her pro-Palestinian solidarity. She said she went through a lengthy interrogation before she was let go.

But her story is not new. Between 2014 and 2022, [Palestine Legal] responded to over 2,200 incidents of suppression of U.S.-based pro-Palestinian advocacy.

The U.S.’ unequivocal support for Israel for decades has also fortified the suppression of Palestinian support. U.S. lawmakers have passed dozens of resolutions that target advocacy for Palestinian rights.”