As Israel expands the genocide, repression mounts in the U.S.
As Israel prepares plans for a full-scale ground
invasion and occupation of Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians in the week
since it unilaterally shattered the ceasefire agreement, its backers in the
U.S. are escalating their crackdown on opposition to the U.S.-backed genocide.
That’s because they’re desperate to regain control of
a narrative that slipped out of their grasp, as American
support for Israel has fallen to a 25-year low.
Columbia University has totally capitulated to the
Trump administration’s demands.
Former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil
continues to be held in ICE custody in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from
his home.
The Trump regime continues to direct ICE to harass and
detain other students and academics for exercising their right to free speech.
And now the Anti-Defamation League has launched a new
campaign… against Wikipedia. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt went on MSNBC to
accuse Wikipedia editors of antisemitism.
These may be strongman tactics — but they are a
reflection of real political weakness.
Hundreds killed as Israel prepares plan to occupy
Gaza.
In the nine days since Israel’s government
unilaterally shattered the temporary ceasefire agreement, it has killed over
700 Palestinians — including at least 270 children. That makes the last days
among the deadliest for
Palestinian children since
Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza over 16 months ago.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians are being forced to
flee for their lives once again as the Israeli military expands its attacks
across Gaza. Many of them had only recently been able to return to their homes
during the month and a half that the ceasefire agreement was in effect.
Israel is still fully blockading Gaza, and the few
hospitals that have managed to withstand Israeli attacks are barely
functioning. Palestinians in Gaza City described fending off stray dogs as they waited for a
single ambulance to arrive to retrieve the dozens of corpses littering the
streets.
On Monday, Palestinians mourned the murder of two
beloved journalists, Hossam Shabbat and Mohammed Mansour, in separate, targeted
Israeli strikes. Hossam and Mohammed are among the over 200 Palestinian
journalists that Israel has murdered in Gaza since the genocide began.
As the Israeli military pushes further into Gaza, the
Israeli government is reportedly readying plans for a full-scale ground
invasion that would require the deployment of some 50,000 Israeli troops — with
the ultimate aim of occupying huge
swathes of Gaza for
months or even years.
The plan would see over two million Palestinians
forcibly relocated to al-Mawasi, an already overcrowded 10-mile strip on Gaza’s
coast. Though the plan has yet to be approved by Israel’s security cabinet, it
was drafted by Israel’s new Defense Forces chief of staff and reportedly has
the support of far-right ministers in Israel’s government — as well as Trump’s
greenlight.
Co-director of Oscar-winning film beaten and detained
in West Bank.
Meanwhile, in the Occupied West Bank Jewish Israeli
settlers attacked Hamdan Ballal, the Oscar-winning co-director of
the documentary “No other Land.” Hamdan was subsequently abducted by the
Israeli military and held in an Israeli military base — handcuffed and
blindfolded for over 20 hours — before finally being released, bruised and
bloodied.
On Monday night, armed Israeli settlers descended on
the Palestinian village of Susiya. As is so often the case, they were flanked
by Israeli soldiers, who immediately turned their guns on the Palestinians
being attacked. According to Hamdan, an Israeli settler he recognized and two
Israeli soldiers followed him to his home and beat him bloody. All the while,
his wife hid inside with their three children, powerless to help her husband as
he screamed out in pain.
“I felt they were going to kill me, not just to punish
me. … I felt I would die,” Hamdan told Al Jazeera.
Settler attacks like these are a daily reality for
Palestinians across the Occupied West Bank. But this violence has only
escalated since the Israeli military launched a large-scale military operation
in the West Bank in January, just days after the now-shattered Gaza ceasefire
went into effect.
Since then, the Israeli military has ethnically
cleansed entire Palestinians towns, forcing over 40,000 Palestinians to flee
their homes, accelerated illegal settlement expansion, and further empowered
settler mobs to attack Palestinians with impunity.
In the U.S., Israel’s backers are escalating their
crackdown on dissent…
Repression is mounting stateside as the Trump regime
and the pro-Israel lobby team up to silence anyone who speaks out against these
atrocities.
Columbia University has totally capitulated to the
Trump administration’s demands, agreeing to implement draconian measures in the
hopes of regaining $400 million in federal funding. Those changes include
banning face masks, hiring dozens of new security officers with the power to
arrest students, and putting the Palestine studies and Middle East, South
Asian, and African studies departments under academic receivership.
Former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil
continues to be held in ICE custody in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from
his home, though a federal judge ruled last week that his trial would proceed
in New Jersey. Mahmoud was abducted from his New York apartment by ICE earlier
this month in a transparent act of retaliation against him for his
pro-Palestine speech.
The Trump regime continues to direct ICE to harass and
detain other students for exercising their right to free speech. On March
17, ICE detained
Dr. Badar Khan Suri, a
postdoctoral fellow in peace and conflict studies at Georgetown University,
before transferring him to a detention
facility in Texas. Last
week, DHS issued a deportation
order against Cornell University PhD student Momodou Taal, a day before he was set to appear in court for a
lawsuit he filed against the U.S. government to stop the deportation of student
activists. Columbia undergraduate
student Yunseo Chung, a
green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since she was a child, is being
hunted by ICE. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled to stop her deportation.
…but only because they’re losing control of the
narrative.
Last week, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan
Grenblatt went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to accuse Wikipedia of antisemitism, after the ADL published an outrageous report
claiming that Wikipedia editors conspired together to push content critical of
Israel. It’s a transparent attempt to shut down criticism of Israel and
retaliate against Wikipedia for pointing out the ADL’s anti-Palestinian bias.
If it sounds like the ADL is getting desperate, it’s
because they are. Today, American support for Israel has fallen to a 25-year
low. Pro-Israel groups and their right-wing backers know they’re losing the
narrative war.
Our movements are cracking open the central claim of
anti-Palestinian groups like the ADL — that Jewish safety could ever come at
the expense of Palestinian freedom — and exposing it for the racist lie that it
is. We are disrupting business as usual at every turn, refusing to allow mass
slaughter to become the new normal.
We are building an alternative vision of Jewish
safety: one that acknowledges that none of us is free until all of us are free.
That has become even clearer as Israel’s backers team up with Trump’s regime of
white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers to crush dissent under the guise of
combating antisemitism. All the while, everyday Americans struggling to pay
their bills and put food on the table are being inundated with daily media
coverage of U.S.-funded atrocities.
Our movements are successfully shifting the narrative,
moving more people than ever to question why their government is funneling
billions in resources out of their communities and into genocide abroad. That’s
why fascists are trying to silence us: They know we have real power, and they
know the people are on our side. It’s up to our movements to stand resolute in
the face of this mounting repression. And as the Trump regime hurls false
accusations of antisemitism at student activists, using Jewish pain and fear as
a cudgel to silence dissent, it’s up to us as anti-Zionist Jews to continue
crying out with everything we have.
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