#Criticizing

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Criticizing The Illegal Regime of Zionist Terrorist 🐖 Isra-hell? Nonprofit Media Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Without Due Process

A New Anti-Terrorism Bill Would Allow The Government To Take Away Vital Tax Exemptions From Nonprofit News Outlets.

— Seth Stern | May 10, 2024 | The Intercept

“Scrotums Licker of the Illegal Regime of The Terrorist Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas,” speaks during a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on March 21, 2024. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

It Doesn’t Take much to be accused of supporting terrorism these days. And that doesn’t just go for student activists. In recent months, dozens of lawmakers and public officials have, without evidence, insinuated that U.S. news outlets provide material support for Hamas. Some even issued thinly veiled threats to prosecute news organizations over those bogus allegations.

Their letters were political stunts. Prosecutors would never have been able to carry their burden of proof under anti-terrorism laws, and all the pandering politicians who signed the letters knew that. But next time might be different, especially if nonprofit news outlets, such as The Intercept, manage to offend the government.

That’s because a bill that passed the House with broad bipartisan support in April — after which a companion bill was immediately introduced in the Senate — would empower the secretary of the Treasury to revoke the nonprofit status of any organization deemed “terrorist supporting.” This week, the bill’s Senate sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced it as an amendment to must-pass legislation to renew the Federal Aviation Administration’s authorities. While it didn’t make the cut (the Senate didn’t vote on any of the dozens of proposed amendments), it’s likely to make its way to the Senate floor in another form soon.

Funding terrorism is already illegal, but the new bill would let the government avoid the red tape required for criminal prosecutions or official terrorist designations.

You might think actionable support of terrorism is limited to intentional, direct contributions to terror groups. You’d be mistaken. Existing laws on material support for terrorism have long been criticized for their overbreadth and potential for abuse, not only against free speech but also against humanitarian aid providers. A recent letter from 135 rights organizations opposing the bill highlighted efforts to revoke the tax-exempt status of, or otherwise retaliate against, pro-Palestine student groups.

There’s No Reason to believe the press is exempt from overreach. In their recent letters, elected officials called for terrorism investigations of the New York Times, Reuters, CNN, and the Associated Press, relying on allegations that those outlets bought photographs from Palestinian freelancers who covered Hamas’s October 7 attacks.

The feigned outrage originated with a spurious accusation, from an organization ironically calling itself HonestReporting, that those pictures evidenced that the photographers who took them had advance knowledge of the massacre. Otherwise how (other than, say, TV or the internet) would they have known where to go?

HonestReporting then reasoned that the news outlets that bought the pictures may have been in on it as well — because, of course, when an international news giant buys a picture from someone on its vast roster of freelancers, it’s reasonable to impute the freelancer’s alleged sins all the way up the chain.

HonestReporting eventually walked back that convoluted theory, admitting it had no evidence and was merely asking questions. After forcing the news outlets to publicly deny having ties to Hamas, HonestReporting said it believed them.

But that didn’t stop U.S. officials from surmising that the fact some Palestinian freelancers in Gaza had contacts with Hamas officials — which should not be surprising, given that Hamas is the governing authority in the besieged enclave — made anyone who hired them terrorism financiers.

And it gets even worse. One of the letters — signed by over a dozen state attorneys general — floated the theory that the outlets’ reporting could itself evidence support for Hamas. As the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker (another nonprofit news site, operated by Freedom of the Press Foundation, where I work) put it:

The letter also highlighted that “material support” for terrorist groups — both a federal and state crime — can include “writing and distributing publications supporting the organization.” It did not elaborate on what would be considered support, potentially chilling any reporting that does not unequivocally condemn Hamas or unilaterally support Israel.

The attorneys general then warned the outlets that they would “continue to follow your reporting to ensure that your organizations do not violate any federal or State laws by giving material support to terrorists abroad.” The writers continued: “Now your organizations are on notice. Follow the law.”

Many of those same attorneys general recently argued that “First Amendment speech and associational freedoms do not protect persons who provide material support” to terrorism. They failed to mention the Supreme Court’s skepticism that “applications of the material-support statute to speech or advocacy will survive First Amendment scrutiny … even if the Government were to show that such speech benefits foreign terrorist organizations.”

Members Of Congress have set their eyes on news outlets as well. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., parroted HonestReporting’s disinformation in multiple letters, while 15 congressional representatives demanded that the news outlets provide information — potentially including source identities and communications — regarding the freelancers, threatening to issue subpoenas.

If there is any doubt about the nonprofit bill’s backers’ intentions, consider that five of its House sponsors also signed onto a letter to the Internal Revenue Service asking how it defines antisemitism and insinuating that the IRS should deny tax-exempt status to nonprofits that “promote conduct that is counter to public policy,” even if they’re not accused of supporting terrorism at all.

Nonprofit news outlets are already struggling even without government harassment, but revocation of their tax-exempt status would be a death knell for outlets doing the kind of in-depth investigative journalism that is hardly ever profitable these days. The mere prospect would chill reporting, not only on Israel but also on U.S. foreign policy generally. And that’s not to mention the threat to nonprofit press freedom organizations that journalists depend on to protect their rights (including to not get killed in Gaza).

Unfortunately, this is just the latest piece of reckless, unnecessary “national security” legislation that puts the press at risk. Last month, President Joe Biden ignored civil liberties advocates and signed into law a bill that would allow intelligence agencies to enlist any “service provider” to help the U.S. spy on foreigners.

As Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., explained, the law could “forc[e] an employee to insert a USB thumb drive into a server at an office they clean or guard at night.” And that office could easily be a newsroom, where journalists often talk to foreigners whose communications might interest U.S. intelligence agencies.

Is the government going to immediately start conscripting reporters to surveil their sources, or shutting down nonprofit news outlets that stray from the Israeli military’s narrative? Probably not. But history teaches that once officials are given the power to retaliate against journalists they don’t like, they inevitably will. The prospect of the Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act being weaponized against journalism was also once merely hypothetical — until it wasn’t.

And let’s not forget that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee publicly fantasizes about jailing and otherwise retaliating against journalists.

Those who claim a second Donald Trump term would mark the end of democracy need to stop passing overbroad and unnecessary new laws handing him, and future authoritarians, brand new ways to harass and silence journalists who don’t toe the line.

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How “Germany, The Fascist And The Complicit in Gaza Genocide” Lost The Middle East

Berlin’s Unequivocal Support For “The Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Apartheid And The Illegal Regime Of The Zionist 🐖 Isra-hell” Has Eroded Its Soft-Power Footprint In The Region.

— May 24, 2024 | By Ruairí Casey

The Isra-helli flag is projected onto the Brandenburg Gate as part of the Festival of Lights and a show of solidarity in Berlin on October 7, 2023. Fabian Sommer/Picture Alliance Via Getty Images

Last October, Germany’s ambassador to Tunisia, Peter Prügel, sparked controversy while speaking at the opening of a new secondary school in the suburbs of Tunis. After Tunisia’s education minister expressed solidarity with Gaza during the event, Prügel described Israelis as victims of “Palestinian terror,” a reference to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack that killed around 1,200 people in southern Israel.

The education minister angrily objected, asserting that the ambassador’s words ran contrary to Tunisia’s position on the Israel-Hamas war, and Prügel left the event in a hurry. Online, some Tunisians soon claimed that Prügel had justified Israel’s killing of civilians in Gaza. The embassy insisted that Prügel had expressed sympathy for all victims, but said that “we could not ignore that this escalation was caused by Hamas’s barbaric terror attack on Israel.”

Days later, demonstrators gathered outside the German Embassy to demand Prügel’s resignation. Protests against Israel’s war in Gaza had already targeted the U.S. and French embassies in Tunis, but this was the first time they had turned their ire toward Germany. German tabloid Bild described criticism of Prügel as a “hate attack” and reminded its readers that the new school, partly funded by Germany’s development bank, was only opened thanks to the country’s generosity.

For decades, Germany has sought to reconcile a perceived historic responsibility to Israel with a cordial relationship toward the Arab world. Berlin developed a major soft-power footprint and was long seen as an honest broker in trade and economic relations. Organizations financed largely by the German government—such as the Goethe Institute, development agency GIZ, and foundations linked to the country’s main political parties—are major funders of various programs across the Middle East.

Since Oct. 7, this balancing act has faltered. Across the Middle East, there is growing support for Palestinian resistance—and condemnation of what many Arabs consider a genocidal war by Israel. Germany, shocked by the worst single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, initially backed Israel’s assault in Gaza largely without qualification, though some officials have taken a more critical position in recent weeks.

Still, Berlin continues to assert itself as one of Israel’s closest political and military allies, even as—after more than seven months of Israeli bombardment—more than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and the enclave is experiencing widespread famine. Germany’s uncompromising reaction to the war has rapidly tarnished its reputation across the Middle East.

Protesters march past a vandalized campaign banner of the German Social Democratic Party, which shows an image of The Terrorist and The Complicit in Gaza Genocide Chancellor Olaf Scholz and European Parliament candidate Katarina Barley covered with the graffitied word “Warmongers,” seen in Berlin on May 1. Omer Messinger/Getty Images

Germany’s Image Is Suffering Across The Arab World. A 2020 Survey By The Arab Center Washington DC found that a slight majority of the Arab public had positive views of German foreign policy. This January, by contrast, a poll of residents of 16 Arab countries published by the Doha Institute showed that 75 percent of respondents had a negative opinion of the country’s stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

Morocco-based sociologist Amro Ali, who studies the relationship between Germany and the Arab world, described this as a 180-degree turn in public opinion.

Positive impressions of Germany had long dominated in the Middle East: The country was associated with fast cars, high-tech products, and friendly tourists. The German government refused to take part in the Iraq War and welcomed more than 1 million Syrian refugees in 2015 and 2016. Berlin, home to Europe’s largest Palestinian diaspora, has become a hub for Arab culture and intellectual life. Germany also lacks the direct colonial legacy in the Middle East that still feeds regional distrust of powers such as France and the United Kingdom.

Five days after Oct. 7, in a speech that established Germany’s tone toward the nascent Israel-Hamas war, Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag that “[in] this moment, there is only one place for Germany: the place by Israel’s side.” By November 2023, Germany had licensed a nearly tenfold increase in arms exports to Israel, becoming the second-biggest arms supplier to the country since the war’s start, after the United States.

The World’s Most Wanted War Criminal, Terrorist, Liar, Conspirator and The Zionist Satan 🐖 Isra-helli Prime Minister Benjamin Satan-Yahu (left) speaks during a joint press conference with The Fascist and The Complicit in Genocide in Gaza German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Jerusalem on March 17, 2024. Leo Correa/AFP Via Getty Images

As public figures in Germany expressed solidarity with Israel, police cracked down on pro-Palestinian demonstrations, violently dispersing them or banning them on grounds of antisemitism. Artists and intellectuals who are critical of Israel, including Jews and Arabs, have warned of a wave of silencing across German society; many have seen awards and funding revoked or events canceled. Among them are Palestinian author Adania Shibli, whose award ceremony was called off by the Frankfurt Book Fair in October, and Lebanese-Egyptian anthropologist Ghassan Hage, who was fired in February by the prestigious Max Planck Institute, which said views that Hage had shared on social media were “incompatible” with its values.

On social media, Ali noticed something he had never seen before: Young people across the Arab world were posting daily about Germany—and none of their impressions were positive. He links the changing perceptions of the country to a reorientation of global politics, in which Western support for Israel has become a source of unbearable hypocrisy for many in the global south.

“We really see some big shifts happening, and one of the key players that’s contributing to this is Germany,” Ali said.

This change in public opinion is unlikely to affect Germany’s political or economic relations with Arab states. Yet it has the potential to undercut Berlin’s soft power in the region.

Foreign Policy spoke with nine current and former staff of six German institutions that do work across five Middle Eastern countries. They said that Germany’s hard-line position on the Israel-Hamas war has jeopardized their work with local partners and communities—damaging trust and credibility that have taken years or decades to develop. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their careers.

Then-Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (Now Rotting and Burning 🔥 in Hell Forever, left) and then-West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer meet in New York in 1960. Bettmann Archive/Via Getty Images

The West German government first sought to build relations with Israel when it agreed to pay Holocaust reparations to the young state in 1952. Then-Chancellor Konrad Adenauer saw reparations as a means to restore Germany’s reputation and reintegrate itself with Western powers. The Arab League objected to Adenauer’s plan, arguing that Germany should not financially support a state that was at war with its Arab neighbors and had refused to take responsibility for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948.

The Arab League “stated that Germany should not solve its problem on the backs of Arabs or Palestinians,” said Daniel Marwecki, a historian of Germany’s relations with Israel and lecturer at the University of Hong Kong. “That has been the issue ever since.”

The two-state solution set out in the 1994 Oslo Accords offered Berlin a chance to clear the slate. Germany became a key supporter of negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In 2023, Germany, directly and via the European Union, was the second-largest national donor in the Palestinian territories and to the United Nations Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), behind only the United States in the latter ranking.

“The idea was: If you just throw money at the process, things are going to get resolved,” Marwecki said. “The U.S. will take the political leadership—we’re just going to follow checkbook diplomacy.”

In the 2000s, as the Oslo process failed, Germany drew closer to Israel on matters of security. Berlin’s foreign policy became increasingly tied up with domestic anxieties about antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment among Muslims in Germany, which some politicians said obstructed the country’s attempts to overcome its history. Longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel summed up Germany’s position during a speech to the Knesset in 2008, when she said that Israel’s security was Germany’s Staatsraison, or reason of state—a term repeated by Scholz and others after Oct 7.

When Merkel put the blame for the 2006 Lebanon War and 2008 Gaza War entirely on Hezbollah and Hamas respectively, there was still occasional opposition to the Israeli military’s operations expressed by officials within the German government; in 2008, a leading Social Democratic politician accused the then-chancellor of “taking the side of permanent Israeli bombardment.”

But Israel’s military conduct in wars in Gaza in 2014 and 2021 earned relatively little criticism from German politicians of any party. Although Germany continued to oppose the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and expressed alarm at the anti-democratic tendencies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition, these policy differences did not substantively alter the Germany-Israel relationship.

In the months after Oct. 7, German leaders fixated on the victims of Hamas’s attack, the fate of hostages in Gaza, rising antisemitism, and what they perceived to be Hamas’s existential threat to Israel’s security. The welfare of Palestinian civilians received notably less attention than in previous conflicts, even amid historic levels of death and destruction in Gaza.

Last October, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Hamas had taken the entirety of Gaza hostage and repeated Israel’s claims that the militant group was using civilians as human shields. Germany continued to reject calls for a cease-fire, which Scholz said would allow Hamas to rearm, and abstained from a December 2023 United Nations vote calling for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

As Palestinian deaths in Gaza climbed to more than 20,000 in January, German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck denied that Israel was targeting civilians; while some may object to the Israeli military’s “harsh measures,” he said, accusations of genocide against Israel were false. Germany labeled South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice as “political instrumentalization” and froze its funding for UNRWA after Israel alleged that some of its staff participated in the Oct. 7 attack. (Germany has since reinstated its UNRWA funding after an independent review found that Israel provided insufficient evidence for its claims.)

A protester issurrounded by police during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Berlin on May 18, 2024. Ralf Hirschberger/AFP Via Getty Images

The Government’s Views Are Rarely Shared By Staff Of German Institutions With Experience In The Middle East. They have long admitted in private what cannot be said publicly in Germany, sources told Foreign Policy: The two-state solution is dead, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank amounts to apartheid, and German foreign policy is unmoored from the realities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The divide between German organizations’ headquarters and their outposts in the Middle East has only grown starker since Oct 7. Staff across institutions in several countries say that using terms such as “apartheid” and “genocide” in reference to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians—phrasing rejected and considered antisemitic by the German government—is common among immediate colleagues. They say their work has been impaired by Germany’s support for the war, their own organizations’ silence or support for Israel, and blowback related to the repression of pro-Palestinian voices in Germany.

Several weeks after the protests against Prügel in Tunis, a swastika was painted on the walls of the city’s local branch of the Goethe Institute, the German government’s flagship global cultural institution. The organization canceled a series of school visits and a film screening in the capital and made a planned public exhibition invite-only. It has also canceled events in Beirut and Ramallah due to security concerns. In March, the Egyptian artist Mohamed Abla returned an award from the institute to protest Germany’s support for Israel; the organization had faced backlash in 2022 for canceling a talk with Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd.

Three current and former staff members at GIZ told Foreign Policy that Germany’s complicity in the war has caused outrage within the development agency. GIZ has not taken a public stance on the conflict, even after one of its own Palestinian employees was put in administrative detention—without a trial or charges—by Israel in March. (This differs from GIZ’s strong position against Russia’s war in Ukraine.) At least two Palestinian nongovernmental organizations that GIZ worked with are now boycotting the agency, the sources said.

One described an “authoritarian” atmosphere that has led some staff to fear speaking out and others to quit. “You fund the bombing on one side, and you throw a little bit of aid to show you’re a humanitarian,” the source said of Germany’s actions.

To keep a low profile and protect their local staff and partners, many German organizations doing work in the Middle East have quietly canceled public events, postponed the publication of reports, or removed their logos from the projects they support. Several sources said they fear that the German media or government could accuse their organizations or their local partners of antisemitism if anyone affiliated with them supports the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement or criticizes Israel on social media.

The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, which funds GIZ and the party foundations’ work abroad, has said partner organizations are subject to “close scrutiny” and checked for any statements that are antisemitic, deny Israel’s right to exist, or support BDS. The ministry and foreign office are currently implementing cuts of nearly 1.5 billion euros as Germany slashes its international aid and development budget.

Last December, Germany removed funding for a project to support victims of trafficking aided by the Centre for Egyptian Women’s Legal Assistance after its leader signed a letter condemning the war and supporting BDS. During a post-Oct. 7 review, Germany defunded three Palestinian human rights organizations that Israel had labeled as terrorist organizations in 2021. (These designations had been denounced by the United Nations.) The ministry told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in February that it regularly discussed this review with Israel.

The Isra-helli flag flies between the flags of the European Union and Germany outside the Reichstag in Berlin on April 9, 2024. Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Some regional partners have issued their own boycotts against Germany. The Lebanon-based Haven for Artists collective rejected a $35,000 grant from the socialist Left Party’s Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in January after a board member criticized Egypt for not admitting Palestinians fleeing Gaza, which the Lebanese group said amounted to support for ethnic cleansing.

“People within the [cultural] scene right now don’t want to be associated with the German foundations,” said a staffer at a German organization in Lebanon. The same source believes that more culture workers would join a boycott if they could afford to do so; many people who once saw Berlin as a hub of Arab culture, they added, have become disillusioned.

In recent weeks, Germany, like the United States, has taken a harsher tone toward Israel. Scholz and Baerbock have now repeatedly called for a more permanent cease-fire and an increase in the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza to alleviate the risk of famine. They have also warned Netanyahu to cease Israel’s planned full-scale invasion of Rafah. During a visit to Israel in mid-March, Scholz spoke not of Staatsraison, but of the suffering of Palestinians and the impossibility of fighting terrorism through military means alone.

Still, in a scene unthinkable just months ago, Germany’s chief representative in the Palestinian territories was chased out of Ramallah’s Birzeit University in late April. Videos show Palestinian students heckling him, kicking his car, and hurling stones as it sped away. Germany’s rhetoric and actions since Oct. 7 “destroyed the dream and an idea of Germany,” the staffer in Lebanon said.

As one of the biggest Western funders of civil society in the Arab world, Germany will continue to be a major influence in the region. Its less political work, such as supporting infrastructure programs and providing language classes, has largely been unaffected by the Israel-Hamas war.

But the government’s moral advantage on many issues—and Germany’s image as a liberal, welcoming society—may prove hard to rehabilitate.

— Ruairí Casey is a Freelance Writer based in Berlin who reports on Politics, Housing, and Migration.

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Spain Has Refused Permission For a Ship Carrying Arms To “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” To Dock at a Spanish Port, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares Has Said.

The ship, which had requested permission to call at the Southeastern Port of Cartagena on May 21, is reportedly loaded with 27 Tonnes of Explosive Material From India and may have avoided entering “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” through the Red Sea where Yemen's Houthis hold sway.

Albares said refusing permission to dock in Spanish Ports was consistent with Spain's policy to ban the exports of all arms to “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” since the outbreak of the war on Gaza in October.

"This will be a consistent policy with any ship carrying arms to “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” that wants to call at Spanish ports. The foreign ministry will systematically reject such stopovers for one obvious reason. The Middle East Does Not Need More Weapons, It Needs More Peace," he added.

Spain has been one of Europe's most critical voices about Israel's Gaza offensive and is working to rally other European capitals behind the idea of recognising a Palestinian State. Spain halted arms sales to “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator and The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” after it launched a military onslaught against besieged Gaza.

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Pro-Palestine 🇵🇸 demonstrators gathered to protest Google's Project Nimbus, blocking an entrance to the Google 1/0 conference in Mountain View in the US State of California on May 14. Conference attendees were redirected to a different entrance while the protest continued. Project Nimbus is a controversial $1.2 Billion Al and Cloud computing contract between Google, Amazon and “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli” Government.

The system can collect all data sources provided by “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” and Its War Criminal Military, including databases, resources, and even live observation sources such as street and drone cameras. Critics argue that the project could help “The Terrorist , Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, Genocidal and the Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” continue its occupation of Palestinian territories and segregation of the Palestinian people.

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Police tear down tents on UCLA’s Campus, Los Angeles, CA, on May 2, 2024. Photo: Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty

They Used to Say Arabs Can’t Have Democracy Because It’d Be Bad For “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell.” Now “The War Criminal, Complicit in Genocide in Gaza, The U.S. Can’t Have It Either.”

On Campus, Inside the Capitol, and in Court, There’s an All-out Assault on American Democracy in the Name of “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell.”.

— Murtaza Hussain | May 8 2024 | The Intercept

There’s An Adage among observers of American Middle East policy that suggests the Arab world can’t have democracy because it would be bad for Israel. Arab publics favor the Palestinians, the thinking goes, and will vote in governments that act accordingly — and that is a no-go zone.

Now, with discontent in the U.S. boiling over amid Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, the framing might need a small update: The U.S., it seems, can’t have democracy either, lest an American democracy end its support for everything and anything Israel wants to do to the Palestinians.

Recent weeks saw violent crackdowns on protests, the passage of bills severely curtailing American free speech rights, and lawsuits seeking to effectively outlaw student groups hostile to Israel.

A serious red line has been crossed: America’s democratic freedoms, expansive on paper, will simply not tolerate serious dissent on the U.S.–Israel relationship. As criticisms of Israel have become more mainstream, the attempt to shut them down entirely has become more extreme.

“Pro-The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Liar, Conspirator, The Illegal Regime of The Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell Forces” in the U.S. are attacking our own democratic freedoms in order to suppress public outcry about apartheid and potential genocide 6,000 miles away.

In pursuit of this blank-check relationship with an Israeli government that is becoming ever-more intransigent with each passing year, pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are attacking our own democratic freedoms in order to suppress public outcry about apartheid and potential genocide 6,000 miles away. And, if the recent campus crackdowns are any indication, these forces are winning their battle.

With tens of thousands of Palestinians left dead and the Israeli assault on Gaza ongoing, the U.S. protests targeting university ties with Israel over the last month — voluble and outspoken — have been overwhelmingly nonviolent.

Yet these nonviolent protests have met with the full brutal force of the U.S. security state. Dispersing the protest encampments, police have viciously beaten protesters, fired rubber bullets, and enveloped students in dense clouds of tear gas.

Much of the focus has been on the crackdown in New York City, where Columbia University students established the first major encampment the day its president testified at a House antisemitism hearing — but these incredible scenes of police attacking students have played out across the country. By recent count, over 2,300 people have been arrested on campuses in the U.S. since April 18.

It’s not the Middle East, but it is the same anti-democratic suppression of dissent. And one could be forgiven for noting that the crackdown sometimes resembles the suppression in dictatorships like Egypt, Jordan, and Bahrain.

In one stateside case, the squashing of a campus protest even involved what could be called “baltagiya”: the signature Egyptian tactic where unofficial state-aligned militias armed with clubs attack demonstrators before the police swoop in.

This wasn’t, however, Cairo in 2011. It was Los Angeles. At the University of California, Los Angeles, a pro-Israel mob videotaped itself descending on a protest camp and brutally beating protesters, including journalists.

The violence at the UCLA raged on for three hours before police intervened to restore order. Roughly two dozen people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries. It is not clear whether the gangs that attacked the encampment were students of the school.

The following day, police came to tear down the protest camp, firing rubber bullets and arresting some of the same demonstrators who had been attacked by thugs the night before.

Anti-Democracy in D.C.

While brutal suppression is being carried out on the street level, the ground is being prepared for even more disfiguring restrictions on democratic freedoms in Washington.

Last week, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill called the Antisemitism Awareness Act. While on its face the bill simply seeks to express Congress’s view in favor of tackling anti-Jewish bigotry, in reality its provisions would encode a controversial definition of antisemitism geared at inoculating Israel from criticism.

Drawing from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, the bill would categorize acts of speech as antisemitism. The IHRA definition states that “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” are all prima facie antisemitic speech.

The vague nature of these IHRA standards, including inevitable ambiguity about the definition of “double standards” regarding the state of Israel, has led the definition to be widely condemned as a Trojan horse for defining any criticism of Israel as antisemitism.

In Europe, where there is no First Amendment, the IHRA definition of antisemitism has already been widely used to criminalize speech that is critical of Israel.

The Antisemitism Awareness Act doesn’t quite go so far as to challenge the First Amendment. Instead, the bill gives the “sense of Congress” about the IHRA language. On Capitol Hill, it is a familiar technique: Resolutions that carry no criminal weight are used to mainstream language and ideas that are later used to enact more stringent statutes.

The purveyors of the Washington IHRA bill have already suggested that the legislation is, indeed, a first step toward something more concrete. “This bill has broad, bipartisan support and will begin the process of cracking down on the antisemitism we’ve seen run rampant on college campuses across America,” the lead sponsor, Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., boasted on X.

Lawler’s legislation is only one of a number of other proposed bills that would create a new congressional body to subpoena individuals over ill-defined allegations of antisemitism, criminalize and increase punishment guidelines for engaging in nonviolent protest, force federal agencies to submit lists of employees allegedly supportive of Hamas, force colleges to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism to receive federal funding, and bar entry or deport individuals who are even charged in connection with demonstrations deemed by authorities to be antisemitic.

Attacks on Dissent

The efforts to crush dissent on Israel aren’t limited to campuses or the halls of power in Washington. The multipronged approach is playing out everywhere: in courts, in state legislatures, and elsewhere.

In state houses, measures taken by Republican officials in states like Florida, Indiana, and Arizona have already aimed to ban the activities of pro-Palestinian activist groups on college campuses. Many of these proposals employ language that would ban funding for groups accused of antisemitism or “supporting the activities of a foreign terrorist organization,” despite criticism from educators and activists that their ambiguous language could simply outlaw any pro-Palestinian activism.

Finally, survivors and families of those slain in the October 7 attack in Israel are now filing lawsuits against the pro-Palestine activist groups.

Backed by the Big Law firm Greenberg Traurig, the plaintiffs are suing Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine, accusing the groups of acting as “as collaborators and propagandists for Hamas,” demanding they pay damages to compensate for the October 7 attacks in Israel.

This sweeping crackdown on the basic rights of Americans would effectively declare public discussion of a core area of U.S. foreign policy off-limits.

SJP is one of the largest pro-Palestinian student organizations involved in the recent protests, and the lawsuit says the group is “operating and managing Hamas’s mouthpiece for North America, dedicated to sanitizing Hamas’s atrocities and normalizing its terrorism.”

Put all together, this sweeping crackdown on the basic rights of Americans to speak, organize, and freely debate would effectively declare public discussion of a core area of U.S. foreign policy off-limits.

The scenes of crackdowns on U.S. campuses have already prompted statements of concern from international human rights and civil liberties organizations that are more accustomed to condemning suppression of civil society activism in places like China and Russia.

It’s an approach that will likely become even more stringent if, as likely, and in defiance of international opinion, the Israeli government continues with its policy of annexing the West Bank or expands the present war to Lebanon.

A free and frank debate about U.S. ties with Israel in such a context is more necessary than ever. But armed with political and legal support, along with street pressure from the police and even armed agitators, it seems that holding such a debate in the U.S. may soon no longer be possible.

[xtruss]

Judith Butler Will Not Co-Sign “The Terrorist, War Criminal, Genocidal, Illegal Occupier of Palestine, The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell’s Alibi For Genocide”

The famed scholar on why reducing Hamas to a terroristLlabel Sanctions “The Terrorist, War Criminal, Genocidal, Illegal Occupier of Palestine, The Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell’s” War on Palestinians.

— Intercepted | May 1, 2024

Photo Illustration: The Intercept — Photo By Stefan Gutermuth

Last Month, The Famed American Philosopher And Gender Studies Scholar Judith Butler was thrust into the center of a controversy after remarks Butler made about the October 7 attacks in Israel. A longtime critic of Zionism and Israel’s war against the Palestinians, Butler had condemned the attacks in the immediate aftermath. But at a March roundtable in France, Butler offered a historical context for the Hamas-led operations and stated that the attacks constituted armed resistance. The blowback was swift, and Butler was criticized in media outlets across Europe and in Israel. This week on Intercepted, Butler discusses the controversy and their position on Hamas, Israel, and crackdowns on student protests.

Butler is currently a Distinguished Professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School. They are the author of several books, including “The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind,” “Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism,” and most recently, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

Jeremy Scahill: Welcome to Intercepted. I’m Jeremy Scahill.

Murtaza Hussain: And I’m Murtaza Hussain.

JS: Well, Maz, there’s a lot to talk about this week. In a few minutes, we’re going to be talking with the great Judith Butler. But before we get to that interview, I want to ask you your sense of where things are right now with the Netanyahu government appearing to be ready for a full-scale invasion of Rafah.

Of course, Rafah has been attacked repeatedly, but this presumably would be a much more intense, full-scale ground operation, even as there’s reports that the Biden administration is trying to push for some form of a deal where Hamas would release 33 of the Israelis that they’re holding in return for some, as of now, undefined pause in the Israeli attacks.

But your thoughts on this moment, the political situation, and the threats coming out of Tel Aviv.

MH: Well, it’s been a very eventful few days. We had the reports suggesting that a peace deal could be imminent, in fact, that would end the conflict for a predetermined period of time. But on Tuesday, Netanyahu indicated that whether there is a deal for hostages or not, the war will continue and the attack on Rafah will continue.

And he said explicitly that we’re going to enter Rafah “with or without a deal.” So what it indicates to me, and most observers, I would say too, is that this war was not really about the hostages. It’s not currently about the hostages either, because Netanyahu’s had many opportunities to free the hostages in a peace agreement for a ceasefire or a permanent peace agreement.

And reportedly, even from the first days of the war, it came out recently that Hamas apparently had offered full release of hostages in exchange for the IDF not coming into Gaza on the ground. So it seems that Netanyahu is very, very committed to continuing the war as long as possible; the hostages are not a priority.

It seems like his statement on Tuesday was specifically geared to sabotage the current ongoing negotiations, which by all accounts, we’re almost reaching success. So it seems very, very obvious that Netanyahu is invested in continuing the war. And it could not just be for political reasons, in terms of Israel’s position, but his own political future inside Israel, because the second the war ends, he’s going to be in serious political and legal trouble with Israelis and continuing [the war] longer prevents that.

JS: There’s also this strange micro-mystery that’s been playing out. Some days ago, there were reports that started emerging in the Israeli press, indicating that Netanyahu and some of his senior officials in his government were very concerned that the International Criminal Court was going to be handing down indictments, including indictments of Netanyahu himself and Yoav Gallant, the defense minister.

And the initial reporting in the Israeli media was citing sources in The Hague, but it seems pretty clear from other reporting that has now taken place in Israel and elsewhere, that this was kind of rumor intelligence and that it was being floated to the Israeli press. For what reason would Netanyahu and his government want to float the notion that the International Criminal Court was potentially going to be issuing indictments?

It could be that that is true — that there is a contemplation at play at the Hague where the prosecutor, Karim Khan, is actually considering or has sealed indictments of Netanyahu or others. Though it would be a really swift course of action, if you look at the history of how the ICC proceeds, but it does seem as though there’s a political agenda at play that isn’t exactly clear right now.

Netanyahu reportedly also spoke directly to Joe Biden saying that he wants the United States to block any effort by the International Criminal Court to issue indictments against Netanyahu or other officials. But it’s something to sort of keep an eye on and flag. And just one thing I want to mention for people — we’ve talked about this on the show before, whether it’s true or not, the reports about potential International Criminal Court indictments of the Israelis — it’s important to remember this, that there is a law on the books in the United States that’s been in place since 2002, and it was a bipartisan bill that was signed into law by George Bush. And it’s known in the human rights community as the Hague Invasion Act.

And basically what it says is that if any American personnel — military elected officials, appointed officials — are ever indicted or brought to The Hague on war crimes charges or as part of a war crimes investigation, that the president of the United States can use military force to liberate them from the Netherlands.

But also buried within the language that the framers of that law employed was that it’s not just American officials that could be liberated, but also those working for governments of a NATO member country or major non-NATO allies — and among them is the state of Israel.

So, I just want to put that out there for people. Imagine if China or Russia had a law on the books that said if any of their personnel were ever taken to The Hague, that China or Russia could invade the Netherlands. But the final thing I want to say on this is that just the mere rumors that there may be an attempt by the International Criminal Court to indict the Israelis has caused a panic in Washington, particularly among Republican lawmakers and Speaker Mike Johnson, where they are now drafting legislation to directly retaliate against the International Criminal Court if they indict any Israeli officials on war crimes charges. The White House, Maz, is saying for now, we don’t support an investigation. The position is the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel. And then Speaker Mike Johnson saying that if the Biden administration doesn’t stop this, if it is in fact even true, that it would create a precedent that would allow American diplomats, political leaders, and American military personnel to be indicted on war crimes charges at The Hague as well.

MH: Well, the whole thing is making such a spectacle out of the supposed rules-based liberal order, because these are institutions that the United States has patronized or supported in various ways in the past and used, specifically, endorsed their use against their own enemies. Vladimir Putin is indicted by the ICC. He has a warrant for him.

No one claimed they didn’t have jurisdiction over that. So, to so brazenly view it as valid in one circumstance and ignore it and even attack the institution in others, I think this is not going to be sustainable in the long term, because the whole world sees this hypocrisy, sees the lack of substance behind these very lofty words and institutions.

So I think that if they attack the ICC in various ways, attack its personnel, threaten even to attack it physically, if it puts warrants for Israelis, I think it only further along the process of a decay and dissolution of these very, very flawed ideas, institutions that the U.S. built at the end of the Cold War.

JS: Yeah. And just a final note on this: I still think that there are political reasons why Netanyahu’s government wanted to push this story, whether it’s true or not. And let’s also remember that there have been credible reports that Israel has spied on lawyers working for the state of Palestine in proceedings at the International Criminal Court. These have been going on for many years, so it’s possible that the Israelis heard something and they wanted to front-run it and make a big racket about it. It’s also possible that it’s part of a broader distraction operation or an attempt to get the United States to come out on record and attack the International Criminal Court — knowing that Israel is committing war crime after war crime.

Well, we’re going to speak to somebody who also has been really outspoken about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza, as well as the events of October 7, and also the events taking place on American college campuses and universities, [and] around the world increasingly. I’m referring to Judith Butler, the U.S. philosopher, currently a distinguished professor at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School.

Judith Butler is the author of several books, including “The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethico-Political Bind,” “Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism,” and most recently, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

Professor Judith Butler joins us now from Paris. Thank you so much for being with us here on Intercepted.

Judith Butler: I’m glad to be here.

JS: Judith, I want to start by asking you about the protests, the encampments that we’re seeing pop up, not just across the United States at universities and colleges, but now increasingly we’re seeing this happening at universities internationally.

And at some of the campuses, particularly in the United States, there’s been a violent crackdown — not only targeting students, but also targeting professors at universities like Emory and others. And I’m curious to get your analysis of the situation as we understand it right now on these campuses, the way that the university administrations have responded, and the role of law enforcement agencies in coming onto the campuses to arrest students and faculty.

JB: Well, certainly I have been following the student encampments and protests, and the way that some university presidents have called in police to break apart the encampments, but also physically to confront and hurt students and faculty protesting and to suppress, in general, their rights of assembly and their rights of free speech. I would say as well their academic freedom — although those three are not the same.

I think we all saw the footage from Emory University, and the calm and principled head of the philosophy department [Noëlle McAfee] who had the perspicacity to persist and to communicate about her situation. I have to say that I have seen police incursions on campuses for many years.

It is important to see that some university presidents are not calling in the police. So we need to remember that some of them do still hold to principles of freedom of expression and are not enacting violence against students. That said, it is a quite phenomenal movement.

I’m in France right now, where the students at Sciences Po have been erecting an encampment. I saw an astonishing number of police surrounding the Sorbonne the other morning. Paddy wagons waiting for student protesters and other protesters are seen every weekend in the streets of Paris. Whenever there is a demonstration, there are huge numbers of police who bear their automatics in public as ways of intimidating people and keeping them from expressing their solidarity with Palestine, and of course, their principled opposition to a continuing genocidal attack on Gaza, now focusing, as we know, on and near the Rafah gate.

I think that there are spurious and completely objectionable grounds that universities have given for unleashing police on students. One of them has to do with security. One has to ask security for whom or for what — certainly not security for protesters. They’re not interested in protesters being secure, secure enough, to exercise their rights of expression, their rights of protest. It seems like that would be good if we wanted to guarantee rights of protest on campus, since that would be a defense of freedom of expression and what we call “extramural speech” in the academy.

But also it becomes clear that the security at issue is twofold. One: security for the campus, its own property — security of the entrance, allowing students to come and leave as they wish, imagining that those protests, those encampments, are somehow keeping people from moving on and off campus.

But also, as we know, there is a security concern raised by some Jewish students — and here, it’s really important to say some Jewish students, because not all Jewish students agree — those Jewish students who claim that they are unsafe on campus or feel that they need security, telling us that certain utterances make them feel unsafe.

Now, utterances that truly jeopardize another person’s safety are those that threaten them with harm. And what we’re seeing in some of the justifications that are used by college and university presidents to bring police onto campus is an equivocation between utterances that may be objectionable and hurtful or disturbing, and utterances that are threats, literally threats to the physical safety of a student.

So I think that the blurring of that distinction has quite frankly become nefarious because any student who says “I feel unsafe by what I hear another student say” is saying that “My security and safety is more important than that person’s freedom of expression.” And if we countenance that, if we give too much leeway to that claim that a student feels unsafe because, say, an anti-Zionist — or a statement in support of Palestine, or a statement opposing genocide makes that Jewish student feel unsafe, we are saying that that student is perceiving a personal threat or is threatened by the discourse itself — even when the discourse is expressive rather than portending physical harm.

Now, if somebody does say, listen, if somebody uses a deeply antisemitic slur, any kind of antisemitic slur, or addresses a Jewish student in an antisemitic way, and then says, “And because you’re Jewish,” or “Because I feel the following way about Jews, I’m also going to do physical damage to you. I’m going to harm you.” — that is not acceptable speech. That is not protected speech. There’s nothing about that speech that is protected.

But if calling for an end of genocide against Palestine is understood as making a Jewish student feel unsafe, then we see that the safety of the situation has been oddly co-opted by that particular Jewish student. It’s as if they are being threatened with harm when, in fact, the opposition to the genocide in Gaza is quite explicitly an opposition to doing harm and killing numerous people who are huddled in Rafah looking for safety.

So I call it nefarious because it’s so clear that Palestinians — who are under bombardment and will now, or have undergone, unfathomable loss, who are living through a spree of killing and genocide that stretches the human imagination and appalls anybody whose heart is open to the reality before them — that they are the ones in need of safety. And the international community has failed to provide that safety. They are in need of safety from harm, like real physical harm. They need to be safe from killing, from being killed. They need to be protected against being killed. They need to protect their families, what’s left of their families.

So for an utterance that opposes the genocide in Gaza to suddenly make a Jewish student feel unsafe — because that Jewish student identifies with Zionism or with the state of Israel — is a grotesque claim in the sense that that student is safe.

That student is having to hear something that might be deeply disturbing and sometimes antisemitic — and I think we must all agree that antisemitic speech, narrowly, clearly, lucidly defined, is radically objectionable under all circumstances. But we can talk about that as well, since what counts as antisemitic has so expanded beyond the limits of its established definitions that, unfortunately, the call for justice in Palestine is registered by some as nothing more than antisemitism.

“If calling for an end of genocide against Palestine is understood as making a Jewish student feel unsafe, then we see that the safety of the situation has been oddly co-opted by that particular Jewish student.”

MH: Judith, I wanted to get your perspective also on what these protests are indicative of — in the sense that, obviously, you’ve seen previous generations of protests by students and others about Palestine before, but it seems the scale and scope today is quite unlike what we’ve seen in the past. What do you think that this reflects in terms of public opinion and particularly generational change of how younger people view this subject, as opposed to how it appears to older generations?

JB: I think that it’s obviously not everyone in the younger generation. So we have to be careful in our generational generalizations. And, you know, we see people like Ros Petchesky in New York, a Jewish Voice for Peace advocate, getting arrested, I think, several times now. She’s older than I am, I believe. So there’s a cross-generational solidarity, as well as a specific form of mobilization that is now focusing on college campuses.

But let’s remember that the mobilization on college campuses was preceded by a number of very public actions jointly waged by Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, disrupting bridges in New York or the federal building in Oakland, the ports of Oakland, the Statue of Liberty, we could go on and on. Some very high-profile protests. And of course, Biden himself has discovered that there are — that there’s no event he can go to right now without major protest outside. Now, a lot of times that is young people. I guess I want to point out that a lot depends on whether you’re able-bodied, like able-bodied young people are able to encamp and protest in ways that other folks maybe can’t.

But the current mobilization on college campuses is being watched nationwide and globally. So a number of Palestinians have commented to me from different parts of the world that it is enormously heartening, that it lifts them to see this great solidarity and this great clarity. Very often when it comes to Israel–Palestine, we hear people say, “Well, it’s so complex.” I think for many of the young people, it’s not that complex. This is a genocidal violence being enacted against the Palestinian people in Gaza. And it is obvious and it is clear, and they have the footage and they circulate the footage and they know it.

They’re also reading: They’re getting the history of Zionism. They’re getting the history of occupation. They’re getting the history of Gaza. They’re learning online and in seminars and in their own colleges. And the mobilization is born of an unequivocal conviction — not just that the bombardments and killings, the loss now of over 34,000 Palestinian lives is horrific. Not just that, but the history of Zionism, the history of occupation, the structure of apartheid within the state of Israel, the fact that Palestinians remain stateless or living within administrative authorities that do not have full state powers and do not represent full political self-determination. And that even now, Palestinians who live within the state of Israel, within its current boundaries, they also are suffering harassment, violence, and second-class citizenship in many different ways.

I think that there is a broad educational effort happening here. And I like the fact that education is being mixed with activism because activism should be informed. And sometimes we see ill-informed instances, like somebody yelling, “Jews go back to Poland.” No, that’s not acceptable.

What does the liberation of Palestine mean? What does it look like? Well, in my view, it means that Palestinians and Jews and other inhabitants of that land will find a way to live together. Either next to each other or with one another, under conditions of radical equality, where occupation is dismantled and all the colonial structures associated with occupation is dismantled.

It doesn’t mean pushing Jews off the land. It does mean, in my mind and in many people’s minds, the taking down of settlements and the redistribution of that land to Palestinians who lived there. And it does mean, in my mind and in the mind of many others, a just way of thinking about the right of return for Palestinians who have suffered forcible exile and who wish to return to the lands or at least to the region, or to have compensation or acknowledgment for what they have suffered.

I wish I saw more on campus. Like, what’s behind the slogan? Like, yes, I want to free Palestine from colonization, from bombardment violence, from settlements, from military and police detention. I want to see freedom from all of those things. But then we also have to ask: Freedom to do what? What will freedom look like? How will it be organized? How will people live together in a free Palestine, or in a free Palestine–Israel, whatever it may be called, or in two states who will have to have a negotiated agreement or a federated model?

A lot of people have been thinking about this for a long time, so I think I would like to see more seminars in the street, seminars on college campuses that try to take apart the slogans — distinguish the hateful slogans, the ignorant ones, the antisemitic ones from those that are actually helping to realize justice and freedom and equality in that land.

So if we were to have another public seminar on these campuses where everybody is assembled, it should surely be on academic freedom as well. Academic freedom means that educators have a right to teach what they want, to build their own curriculum, to express their ideas without the interference of state and without the interference of donors.

But I think that’s also collapsing right now as donors, we see at Columbia University, are making threats to withdraw funds, that also happened at Harvard and elsewhere. Also state powers, governments pressuring universities to suppress the rights of speech and assembly that their students have. These are forms of interference in university and college environments that ought properly to be protected from that interference. That is what academic freedom is.

JS: Judith, I wanted to ask you about the events of the last few months and how they’ve impacted you and your public profile. On March 3, you made remarks at a gathering in France. And for people that have really followed the history of Hamas as an organization, of the armed struggle of the Palestinian people, of the actions of the Israeli state over the decades — the remarks that you made were, in my assessment, a quite factual rendering of the events, and embedded within them was historical context. You used a phrase, though, that was then cherry-picked, and much ado was made about it in the international press, and certainly in the Israeli press, but also in Le Monde, in American newspapers, and other papers in Europe, et cetera.

You described the attacks of October 7 as “an act of armed resistance.” And again, I emphasize, if people listen to the full context of your remarks, it was quite clear, I think, to intellectually honest people, what you were saying. But then you had just this avalanche of attacks against you publicly. And, from what I understand, also privately, you received hostile communications or hateful communications from people.

But I wanted you to walk us through how you experienced that. What was the point that you were making that then became the subject of controversy? Because I think it’s important to hear it in your own words.

JB: Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. I should preface my answer with this comment. Because the violence is so acute and people are taking up sides in very emotionally invested ways, they’re not hearing very well. They don’t always have the time or patience to read or listen to a complex point. And I am somebody who does speak in complex sentences, and I make a claim, and then I qualify it, and then I contextualize it. There’s several steps. And as a teacher, I have the time to do that. As a public figure, I’m learning, one doesn’t always have the time to do that.

The question that was posed to me in Pantin was, first of all, whether Hamas was a terrorist organization, and then whether I thought as well that it was possible to distinguish the actions of Hamas from an antisemitic attack.

I made clear in that context that I, as a Jewish person, quite frankly, was anguished on October 7, and I wrote about that, and a lot of my friends on the left were very angry with me for writing about that. I was supposed to keep that to myself. We can see that the grief over Jewish lives lost is very often humanized and memorialized in ways that Palestinian deaths are not.

And we have only to look at the U.S. press and Le Monde as well to see that enormous inequality.

“We can see that the grief over Jewish lives lost is very often humanized and memorialized in ways that Palestinian deaths are not.”

But I did feel that way. And I wrote against Hamas, in fact, hoping that it would disappear as a movement on October 7. And then as I thought about it, and I saw the genocidal actions of the Israeli state against the Palestinian people of Gaza, and I think we have to say Palestinian people, because it’s not just those who voted for Hamas, or those who are actively part of Hamas. They [Israel] weren’t like asking people, “How did you vote?” or “How do you feel about Hamas?” before they killed them. They did not do that. And indeed, children, older people, as we know, aid workers — I mean, the killing has been monstrous and largely indiscriminate.

And I did think that it was then more important to come out against genocide and to call it that. I did some work, some reading, as I think we probably all did, to figure out, well, how is genocide defined, and who are the jurists who agree. And now, as we know, there are several hundred, if not thousands, who do agree that what is happening is genocide, and the International Court of Justice has also said, plausibly, yes, it is. Wish they would say something stronger.

By the time I got to Pantin, and people asked me about Hamas — I still don’t like Hamas. I don’t endorse Hamas. I have never applauded or rejoiced in the military tactics of Hamas. I have written extensively on nonviolence, and I often presume people know that I am actually committed to nonviolent means of overthrowing unjust regimes. This is what I teach, and it’s what I believe, and it is what I also have written about at length.

So I wasn’t romanticizing Hamas, but I was saying they come from somewhere. Hamas emerged as a significant political organization in the wake of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords turned out to be an enormous betrayal of the Palestinian people. The transfer of political authority that was going to take place, that was promised, never took place. And in fact, it was undercut: More land was taken, fewer rights were given, and it was considered by most Palestinians to be a massive betrayal.

Hamas emerged then, as we know, within Palestinian politics. There are several political parties. There’s Fatah, there’s the Palestinian Liberation Organization, there’s the Palestinian Administration and its complex relationship to that, and also the Palestinian National Unity Party, which is extremely interesting to me. I’m probably following that more closely than anything else.

In short, I thought it was important not to just see the atrocities committed by Hamas — and they were atrocities — on October 7 as random acts of violence. They were horrific. I’ve condemned them many times, and I continue to condemn them. But they come from somewhere.

“Can we take the time to understand what drives people to that? Where does that come from? What conditions are they living under?”

Can we take the time to understand what drives people to that? Where does that come from? What conditions are they living under? What conditions are they objecting to? Can we discuss those who object to those conditions through military means and those who object to those conditions through other means available to them? Just as a matter of understanding.

But in certain contexts, to try to understand something like this means that you endorse it. Or if you fail immediately to call it “terrorist,” that means you think it is acceptable. Well, no, there are various unacceptable crimes against humanity, many of which are inflicted by states. We don’t call all crimes against humanity “terrorist” crimes.

I was trying to contextualize. I was trying to understand why people would be moved to take up arms and be part of a combat struggle. Now, the problem in France is, if you say “resistance movement,” you’re saying résistance. And if you say résistance, you are recalling the liberation from the Nazis, you are recalling the triumphant win of the resistance movement against fascism in France.

So résistance is always an idealization. Résistance is always what you want. You want to be part of it. You want to be in the wake of it. You want to tell that story. You want to applaud it. So to say something is résistance is to applaud it. And I was foolish because I know enough French and French culture to know that you can’t use the word résistance without invoking that particular legacy.

So, people immediately thought that meant, if I call this violent resistance — and then even say, “And I object to its tactics,” which I did say — by using the word résistance, I am applauding, I am endorsing.

I never was. I never will. I never have. But I am interested in why people pick up arms, and I’m interested in when they lay them down. So why can’t we be thinking about the Irish Republican Army, or why can’t we be thinking about other places where there’s been violent conflict — where different groups have agreed to lay their arms down when a legitimate political negotiation seems plausible? I’m interested in that, because I am interested in nonviolent modes of resolution. But we have to understand why people take up arms.

“I am interested in why people pick up arms, and I’m interested in when they lay them down … because I am interested in nonviolent modes of resolution.”

And I suppose also, I want to distinguish between being against occupation or against the Israeli siege of Gaza, and antisemitism. Now, yes, some Hamas members said hideous antisemitic remarks. And, of course, we must object to every and all antisemitic remarks. And those were hideous, clear, and explicit. There’s no equivocation.

But to say that their struggle for justice, freedom, or equality is, at core, just antisemitism, or mainly antisemitism, is to assume that they would be happier if they were colonized by some other group of people. They’re only objecting to being colonized by the Jews because they’re the Jews.Well, no, that’s not right.

They’re objecting to colonization. And if and when antisemitism gets confused with an anti-colonial rhetoric or an anti-occupation rhetoric, then we need to disentangle it. We need to do that on college campuses, we need to do it with our Palestinian allies if that ever happens — in my experience, it happens very, very rarely.

In any case, I guess I was taken to endorse Hamas, which I do not do, that I refused to call it “terrorist,” but I feel like once you call it “terrorist” and you just put it in that box, then it’s random violence that justifies any and all efforts to wipe it out.

If Hamas is only terrorist and not a military group that is trying to achieve some kind of political aim that other people are also trying to achieve through nonmilitary means, if it’s only terrorist, then the alibi for genocide is right there. Because if all of these people are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers who are living in Gaza, then the entire population is painted as terrorist, at which point, there’s only one thing that the Israelis and many of its U.S. supporters think is possible: which is the obliteration of those people.

So I think we have to think critically about how and when we call people terrorists. There’s a jurist here who’s defending people’s free speech on Palestine, and she’s called a terrorist sympathizer, and she’s now under scrutiny by a legal investigation. So before we bandy about this term “terrorist” — and I’m sure there are legitimate uses of it, and we can even describe some actions of Hamas as terroristic, terrorizing, terroristic — we can certainly also talk about whether Israel is an example of state terrorism. When do we talk about that?

I think it’s not the case that terrorism only belongs to nonstate actors. We also have states that act through terrorization and terroristic tactics and who would comply with such a definition. But yes, for many people, at least in the media, it seemed that I had either contradicted myself, that I had criticized Hamas and now I was elevating it and even identifying with it — but that’s not the case. I continue to deplore their tactics.

I am interested in why they took up arms after Oslo. I wonder what it would take to get them to put down arms. What am I for? I’m for significant, substantial political negotiations that would produce a nonviolent future for Palestine. But, I don’t know if anybody can really hear that, because at this point, the smallest word reduces the person.

Like, “Oh, you said that word,” or “You failed to say that word, so this is who you are, and this is where you belong, and you’re on that side.” “You’re pro-Hamas.” Or even in my early one, “You’re pro-Israel.” It’s like, no. No. People are jumping, and they see words and they grab them, and they try to capture people and reduce them without listening, reading, contextualizing. I hope, really, that we get slower, more careful educational efforts happening on campuses and elsewhere, so that our reporting and our speaking can be as precise and thoughtful as possible.

MH: Judith, one thing you alluded to — and we’ve discussed on the show in the past as well too — is the difficulty of discussing the subject not just among peers, but also due to state pressure. In the United States certainly we’re seeing now with the campus protests, but also in Europe, perhaps even more strenuously.

You’re based in Paris, and you’ve had some incidents in the last few months where events you’re speaking at or taking part in came under some sort of pressure or participation had to be withdrawn. And things like this are happening across Europe and quite extensively. Can you talk a bit about the climate there for discussing Israel–Palestine and the challenge in raising these perspectives that you’re discussing with us today?

JB: I mean, I think what’s going on in Germany is quite distinct, and people here in France I know keep asking themselves, “Are we becoming Germany?” And I don’t know whether France is becoming Germany. I think there is in fact an internal debate about that. The police were brought in to confront the students at Sciences Po, and many people who may have very different views on Palestine and Israel objected to the suppression of the freedom of protest and the freedom of speech at Sciences Po. But it’s true that, I mean, obviously in places like Germany, anybody who’s invited there will first be investigated by their hosts to see whether they support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions, which I have since 2009. I wouldn’t go to Germany because I know what the attacks would be like against me.

I’m glad [Yanis] Varoufakis did. I think that was brave and important and drew attention to it. I’m glad Masha Gessen survived that trial. I’m glad that Nancy Fraser is speaking out strongly against her cancellation. It was, and remains, a complete scandal that someone as smart and important as she is, is denied the freedom to speak because she signed a perfectly legitimate philosophers’ letter objecting to the genocidal attacks on Gaza.

So I’ve been rescheduled. One of that was canceled in a convoluted way, but then I’ve been twice rescheduled. So we will see whether that rescheduling is fulfilled. I think it probably will be, but it is not comfortable to speak freely in public about matters such as these

JS: Just to follow up on that: I’ve been in touch with lawyers in Germany who are representing ordinary citizens, not prominent academics, not famous people, but ordinary residents of Germany.

Some of them are Arabs, Palestinians, others are Jewish residents of Germany, who have been charged under antisemitic speech laws because they’ve used terms at demonstrations to describe what the Israeli state is currently doing to Gaza that were historically applied to the actions of the Third Reich.

And there was a rather senior woman who is an Israeli living in Germany who was twice arrested within I believe a week period, a one-week period, for simply holding a sign. But many of the most vicious attacks against people on these grounds in Germany are aimed at Arab residents, unfamous Arab residents of Germany, some of whom are even being threatened with deportation.

And what I wanted to zero in on is, I’m constantly having arguments with people in Germany and elsewhere in Europe about these kinds of laws. As you see the rise of the AfD in Germany, the far right-wing party, the re-rise of the the far right, — and we’re seeing this in other European countries as well, and you’re certainly experiencing that in France. If right now Germans, ordinary Germans, don’t recognize that the weaponization of these laws against residents or citizens of Germany — because the German state has this “reason of state” that “we must defend Israel at all costs,” that’s the mentality here, and it in and of itself conflates Israel as a state with Judaism as a whole.

But if you justify criminalizing this speech, right now, that is aimed at protesting against Israel’s actions in Gaza. And then if you have a far-right party take over, it’s so easy for that party to say, “Well, hey, that’s the standard. You’ve set the standard. We’re allowed to criminalize speech that we don’t like.” I think that’s extremely dangerous. You know, I can levy a million criticisms toward the United States, but at least we have a fundamental basis to argue about these issues from, and it’s the First Amendment. In Germany, and it’s leading the way, and in other European countries, they also have speech laws heading in this direction, or they’re contemplating them — these are extraordinarily dangerous laws. Extraordinarily dangerous.

JB: I am following that, and I certainly didn’t mean to imply that people who are famous should not be canceled or criminalized, but maybe other people can be. No, no, no. I’m quite aware — in fact, when I used to go to Germany, I visited many Israelis in exile who live in Berlin and who were working closely with Palestinians and were anti-Zionists, quite frankly, who thought that they would be able to live in Germany more easily than they could in Israel because of the cultural activities.

But those people, including, as you say, Jewish people of conscience, the Jüdische Stimme people, the Jewish voices people — they are being arrested, and we’re seeing German police arresting Jewish people in the name of defending against antisemitism. And of course, we’re also seeing German politicians and their apologists deciding whether or not a Jewish person’s critique of Zionism or critique of the Israeli state or the Israeli policy in Gaza amounts to antisemitism.

So Germans are brokering whether or not Jews are antisemitic or not, which I find appalling. And there’s no shame in that. You’re right about the raison d’état the reason of state in Germany, the unconditional support for the Jewish state of Israel. But, you know, they claim that the Jewish state of Israel is a democracy, and yet, if it were, which I don’t think it is, it would also accommodate free speech or robust criticism of the state’s actions. But it does not do that.

We’ve seeing that now in the sporadic persecution of Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, professor at Hebrew University, who was arrested in her bed just the other morning. Released now, but possibly facing new arrests as we speak. But in Germany as well, the suppression of criticism, of public criticism, is also an attack on democracy. So as they cancel and annul and criminalize all kinds of young people, including, as you say, Palestinians, people from Turkey, North Africa, Syria, you don’t have full citizenship or full residency or complete papers or are particularly vulnerable — we see a crackdown on the stateless or the precarious that suggests that police powers are legitimately being used to suppress open public criticism. What we associate with flourishing democracies.

So you’re right. The AFD, which according to the latest reports is gaining greater and greater support among German people, including German youth, is able to flourish in an environment in which state powers and police powers are being unleashed against people who are trying to express basic democratic rights: the rights to speak, to criticize, to assemble, to protest, to give names to what we see, to give the true name for what we see, to say the word “genocide.”

We could have a longer conversation about the spurious argument that is sometimes used against protesters, namely that the Jews are those who suffered genocide, therefore they cannot be enacting a genocide, and it is obscene to say that they are, and they use that word “obscene.” There is nothing that keeps a people who have suffered massively in life from afflicting massive suffering on others, even though the sufferings are different. There is nothing in the history of the world that precludes that.

There are no pure angels in the situation, but there is obviously an effort to control language and to suppress analogies and to keep the exceptional character of the Nazi genocide in place so that we cannot use the word “genocide” to name what very clearly complies with the legal definition of genocide. So I just think it is going to be a massive struggle in Germany to open up the critique of Israel, to accept the nonconsensus on Israel.

“What if we imagined a transformation of that state, so that it was a state that represented all the inhabitants there, regardless of religion, regardless of race, national origin?”

I want to say one last thing about it, and here’s a kind of bad argument: If you say you’re an anti-Zionist in Israel, in Germany, and sometimes here in France as well, people think it means that you believe that Israel has no right to exist. They actually think that’s all it means. When you say you’re an anti-Zionist, they hear you saying, “I want the destruction of the state of Israel.” Now, you could be an anti-Zionist like I am, clearly, and wish for a state formation in which Palestinians and Jews live together and inhabit that earth together equally and without violence, supported by constitutional protections, by economic equality, the end to colonial structures, the end to occupation.

That’s not the death of the state of Israel, but it might involve a transformation of that state. And it’s that last point, like, what if we imagined a transformation of that state, so that it was a state that represented all the inhabitants there, regardless of religion, regardless of race, national origin?

We would just sound like old-style liberals, right? We would be like boring old-style liberals. Constitutional democracy. If you called for that, for a one-state solution, would you be calling for the end of the Jewish people or the death of the Jewish people or the destruction of the state? You would be calling for a transformation of the state that would be in the service of all the inhabitants, because living on conditions of equality, living equally free, living under justice is the end to a violent struggle for freedom, because freedom is there.

It’s the end of the violent struggle against the Palestinians because they are your neighbors and your equal citizens. I mean, it’s a vision of cohabitation. It’s not a violent act. So, you know, the state of Israel was founded one way; it could have been founded another way. There were bi-nationalists who wanted the state of Israel not to be founded on the basis of Jewish sovereignty. They lost that. And there have always been Jewish Israeli critics of the Jewish sovereignty principle who wanted Israel to be a democracy worthy of the name. Those are positive values, and at least they should be debated. And they could be debated in Germany because a lot of the people who held to this view were German Jews or German-speaking Czech Jews like Hans Kohn.

I mean, it’s just nonsense. Anyway, this is the nonsense that we’re left with in this world right now.

JS: Well, Judith Butler, you leave us with a lot to contemplate, and I know you have to go right now, but we’re so grateful for you, for taking the time to be with us here on Intercepted. Thank you so much.

JB: OK. Thank you very much.

MH: Judith Butler’s latest book is out now and called “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

JS: And that does it for this episode of Intercepted.

Intercepted is a production of The Intercept. Laura Flynn produced this episode. Rick Kwan mixed our show. Legal review by Shawn Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Fireman. Our theme music, as always, was composed by DJ Spooky.

MH: If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the size, makes a real difference. And, if you haven’t already, please subscribe to Intercepted and our other podcast, Deconstructed. Also leave us a rating and review whenever you find our podcasts. It helps other listeners to find us as well.

If you want to give us additional feedback, email us at podcasts@theintercept.com

JS: Thank you so much for joining us, I’m Jeremy Scahill.

MH: And I’m Murtaza Hussain.

[xtruss]

Colombian President Gustavo Petro has announced that his Government will Sever Diplomatic Ties with “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell”. Speaking at a May Day rally in Bogotá on Wednesday, Petro described Israel's war on Gaza as "genocidal" and said the world must not accept the "extermination of an entire people".

"Tomorrow [Thursday], diplomatic relations with the state of Israel will be severed, because of them having a government, for having a president that is genocidal," said the Colombian president, a fierce critic of Israel's war. It is thought that Petro was referring to “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-helli Prime Minister Benjamin Natan-Yahu,” rather than President Isaac Herzog.

"I believe that today all of humanity in the streets, by the millions, agrees with us and we agree with them," Petro, Colombia's first left-wing president, told the crowd. "If Palestine dies, humanity dies, and we will not let it die, as we will not let humanity die," he said, to cheers and applause from the rally. According to AFP, “The Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, War Criminal, Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” responded by describing Petro as "antisemitic and hateful", saying his stance amounted to a reward to Hamas.

"The Colombian president has promised to reward Hamas murderers and rapists - and today he delivered," Foreign Minister “Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, war Criminal, Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” Katz said in a social media post. "History will remember that Gustavo Petro decided to stand by the most despicable monsters humanity has known, who burned babies, murdered children, raped women and kidnapped innocent civilians," Katz added. Bolivia, Belize and South Africa have severed or suspended ties with “Terrorist, Fascist, Apartheid, war Criminal, Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐖 🐗 Isra-hell” over the war in Gaza, while several other countries have recalled their diplomats.

[xtruss]

Terrorist, Fascist, Genocidal, War Criminal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-helli Real Estate Firm Used Genocidal Rhetoric — Then Politico’s Parent Company Put Them In A Trade Fair

The Confab Put On By Real Estate Site Yad2, A Subsidiary of Publishing Giant Axel Springer, Includes Numerous Companies Doing Business In The West Bank (Occupied Palestine 🇵🇸).

— Hanno Hauenstein | April 6, 2024

A view from the Palestinian West Bank village of Rafat shows the Israeli Jewish settlement of Leshem on Jan. 23, 2017. Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images

Yad2, The Largest Classifieds Site in Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-hell and a subsidiary of German publishing giant Axel Springer, is hosting a real estate fair in Tel Aviv this weekend. The proceedings, which got underway Friday, were slated to showcase Israeli real estate firms, including both those that list properties within Israel’s internationally recognized borders and those that offer listings for Jewish-only settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank.

The website for the Yad2 fair features a host of Israeli real estate firms doing business in the West Bank, including Tanya Israel, currently marketing 32 housing units in Efrat; Ram Aderet, which is advertising a construction project in Ariel; and Oron, with its “expansion project” of 40 villas in Eshkolot.

Also being promoted by Yad2 for its involvement in the fair is the firm Harey Zahav, which was recently at the center of two international controversies linked to Israel’s war in Gaza. Harey Zahav operated a large booth at Yad2’s confab, complete with exposed wood rafters that resembled a real house under construction.

Deir Al-Balah, Gaza — November 7: Civil defense teams and citizens continue search and rescue operations after an airstrike hits the building belonging to the Maslah family during the 32nd day of Israeli attacks in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Critics have accused Harey Zahav of stoking some of the genocidal sentiments that landed Israel in the Hague’s International Court of Justice. In October, the firm shared an image on Instagram depicting a tank, alongside a quote from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Your God will deliver them up to you, throwing them into utter panic until they are wiped out” — from a chapter of Scripture widely interpreted to be God calling for the genocide of the pre-Israelite inhabitants of the Holy Land.

Harey Zahav also recently caused international uproar for publishing an ad, titled “A House on the Beach is not a Dream,” that photoshopped transparent housing units into a picture of war-ravaged homes in Gaza. “We at Harey Zahav are working to prepare the ground for a return to Gush Katif,” the ad said, referring to a cluster of settlements in southern Gaza dismantled during Israel’s evacuation in 2005. Another ad from the company listed “presale prices” on a map of lots in Gaza.

After widespread condemnation of the ads, Harey Zahav’s CEO Zeev Epshtein told Haaretz that the company’s ads were “a sort of satirical idea.” He did not offer any remarks about the ad with the genocidal Bible reference. (Harey Zahav did not respond to a request for comment.)

“It’s An Apartheid Culture. Nearly Everything Here Is Accepted These Days.”

Dror Etkes, an expert on settlements, said the notion of rebuilding settlements in Gaza is far from mainstream political, though, in Israel. Nonetheless, the lack of attention paid to a large company like Yad2’s willingness to host Harey Zahav and companies doing business in West Bank settlements speaks to acceptance of radical politics in Israel.

“It’s an apartheid culture,” he said. “Nearly everything here is accepted these days.”

In a statement, Julia Sommerfeld, a spokesperson for Axel Springer, said, “Yad2 is organizing a trade fair at which more than 40 companies are represented, including all of Israel’s major real estate companies. As a direct competitor, our goal is not to promote the work of other companies, but to promote exchange within the industry.”

Terrorist, Fascist, War Criminal, Genocidal Zionist 🐖 🐷 🐗 Isra-helli Far Right Empowered

Axel Springer, which also owns American media brands like Politico and Business Insider, makes money from the Yad2 classified site’s home sales and rentals in Jewish-only West Bank settlements, The Intercept previously reported. Yad2 publishes listings in the settlements as well as so-called settlement outposts, unauthorized even by Israeli legal standards. Yad2 lists over 1,000 paid ads from brokerage firms for settlement homes — which means revenue for its parent, Axel Springer.

“Yad2 operates fully in accordance with Israeli law,” said Sommerfeld, the Springer spokesperson. “Discrimination of any kind is strictly prohibited on the Yad2 platform. If users encounter individual ads that conflict with Yad2’s policies or applicable Israeli law, they are encouraged to report them. The relevant advertisements will then be checked and removed in the event of a violation.”

Satire or not on home listings in Gaza — “We want it to happen,” Epshtein, the CEO, said in an interview, “but it’s the state’s decision” — the website of Harey Zahav’s real estate business focuses on projects in Jewish-only West Bank settlements. Etkes pointed to the company’s proximity to the Israeli settler movement and the blessing it receives from the state.

“They require state authorization to build,” he said. “Even more so in the West Bank, where the vast majority of land has been expropriated from Palestinians and is controlled by Israel’s civil administration.”

The Gaza “satire” underscores the political empowerment of Israel’s right wing, and particularly the settler movement, after the October 7 attack by Hamas. Political radicals have been blocking aid convoys into Gaza and erecting symbolic outposts along the Gaza border. Meanwhile, high-ranking figures in the Israeli government have openly articulated their ambitions for Israeli control and a renewed Israeli civilian presence in Gaza.

[xtruss]

French Fashion House Louis Vuitton Faces Criticism From Both “Forever Palestine 🇵🇸” and “The Illegal Regime of Zionist, Terrorist and Fascist 🐖 🐷 🐗: Isra-hell” Supporters Over a USD $820 T-shirt That is Part of Its Spring-Summer 2024 Collection.

The shirt, featuring LV initials in pink, green, and black, has sparked controversy, with some likening it to a Watermelon Slice 🍉 — a symbol of Palestinian resistance.

Pro-Palestine supporters on social media say that Louis Vuitton is guilty of opportunistic marketing.

It already faced backlash related to Palestinian symbols as back in 2021, the fashion house came under fire for marketing a USD $700 scarf heavily influenced by the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh.

Critics slammed the monogrammed keffiyeh for appropriating Palestinian culture for profit, highlighting its failure to acknowledge the symbolic significance in the product description.

Meanwhile, supporters of Isra-hell label the shirt as 'ANTISEMITIC 😂😂😂' and accused the luxury giant of Anti-Isra-hell bias, even calling the logo design as an "ODE TO HANAS, The Freedom Fighters Against Illegal Occupation".

HAMAS, The Freedom Fighters Against Illegal Occupation, used the red triangle to indicate Isra-helli targets in videos of its fighters released online.

[xtruss]

“Terrorist 🐖 🐗 🐷 AIPAC Ally” Slams “Uncommitted” Voters Warning Biden To Change Course On Gaza

The Pro-Isra-hell Group DMFI Wants to Undermine a Michigan Protest Vote Against Biden’s Support For the “Illegal Regime of the Zionist 🐖 🐗 🐷 Cunts: Isra-hell’s” War on Gaza.

— Akela Lacy, Prem Thakker | February 23 2024 | The Intercept

Michigan State University Student Saba Saed Speaks at a Rally in Lansing, Michigan on February 16, 2024. Photo: Andrew Roth/Sipa Via AP Images

Anti-War Michiganders Are banding together in the crucial swing state to urge fellow voters to choose the “uncommitted” slot on their Democratic Party primary ballots next week, with the aim of getting President Joe Biden to shift his stance of unwavering support for Israel’s deadly assault on the Gaza Strip.

Now, a centrist Democratic pro-Israel group is running an ad campaign in the state to persuade Michiganders to be vocal in their support of Biden — and tick the box next to his name on the primary ballot.

The ad campaign is the latest effort in the primaries mounted by Democratic Majority for Israel, which is closely aligned with the right-leaning American Israel Public Affairs Committee and fellow centrists of the Mainstream Democrats PAC.

“Voting uncommitted hurts Biden, which helps Donald Trump and his hateful agenda,” says the DMFI ad, which ran on YouTube.

DMFI’s attempt to bolster support for Biden’s campaign comes as the group and its allies are also spending millions of dollars to attack members of Biden’s party. The group’s political action committee, DMFI PAC, has also run ads attacking progressives in the 2024 primary races and spent millions against progressive candidates in recent years.

The moves are a Democrat-focused version of the wider pro-Israel push to unseat members of Congress who criticize Israel’s rights abuses against Palestinians, call for a ceasefire in the war on Gaza, and move to limit or restrict arms sales to Israel. The attacks have targeted progressives, particularly members of the Squad.

AIPAC, which shares donors and other connections to DMFI, plans to spend at least $100 million this cycle, making it one of the largest players in Democratic primaries. The group has also run an intensive effort to recruit challengers to run against several Squad members.

The DMFI ad comes just days before Michigan’s Democratic primaries, set to take place next Tuesday. DMFI, whose disclosures about the campaign have not yet been filed, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about how much it spent on the ads.

Organizers of the campaign to select “uncommitted” say they intend the protest vote as a vote of no confidence on Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza — and a warning that having voters dissatisfied with his position could come back to bite the president in the general election.

“We, The Terrorist War Criminal 🐖 🐗 🐷, Are Sending The Warning Sign To President Biden And The Democratic Party Now In February, Before It’s Too Late In November.”

“This is not an endorsement of Trump or a desire to see him return to power,” they wrote on their website. “We are sending the warning sign to President Biden and the Democratic Party now in February, before it’s too late in November.”

The state boasts more than a quarter million Middle Eastern and North African residents, according to the latest census estimates, a community that includes many Palestinians and is in general more critical of blind support for Israel.

Michigan’s 15 electoral votes are key to Biden’s reelection chances. In 2016, Trump won the state by 10,000 votes, while in 2020 Biden took the state by around 150,000 votes. Moreover, Michigan had the highest young voter turnout in the 2022 midterm election, a benchmark that could be undercut this year as young voters overwhelmingly disapprove of Biden’s handling of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Polls conducted since October 7 indicate a tight race in the state, with Trump winning in several tests. A poll conducted this week that had Biden trailing by 4 percentage points to Trump also showed 74 percent percent of Democrats and 64 percent of independents in favor of a ceasefire accompanied by the release of hostages and provision of aid to Gaza.

The “vote uncommitted” push has the backing of an array of state officials, including Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of Dearborn, Michigan, which has the largest per capita Muslim population in the country, and state House Majority Leader Rep. Abraham Aiyash, among numerous other state and local officials throughout Michigan. (The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

“I’m trying to scream from the rooftops,” said former Rep. Andy Levin, D-Mich., who was previously targeted by DMFI and supports the uncommitted effort. “You’re not going to win unless you change course.”

In October, DMFI PAC ran ads attacking Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., for calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and voting against a congressional resolution in support of Israel that did not mention Palestinians killed. Mainstream Democrats PAC, run by billionaire Democratic donor Reid Hoffman, also considered funding primary challenges against squad members including Tlaib and Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo.

[xtruss]

Half of US Adults Say “Apartheid, Illegal and Terrorist Regime of Zionist Cunt 🐖 🐖 🐷 Isra-hell, The Bastard Child of the US, UK, France, Germany and the West,” Has 'Gone Too Far' in Its War on Gaza

Recent poll indicates a growing disapproval of Israel's 15-week brutal attack in Palestinian enclave, with half of US adults viewing it as excessive, while support for the Biden administration's approach also diminishes.

— TRT World | February 02, 2024

Photo: Associated Press

The poll also shows about half of US adults are extremely or very concerned that Israel's war on Gaza will lead to a broader conflict in the Middle East. / Photo: AP

Half of US adults say Israel's 15-week-old aggression in Gaza has “gone too far,” a finding driven mainly by growing disapproval among Republicans and political independents, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Broadly, the poll shows support for Israel and the Biden administration's handling of the situation ebbing slightly further across the board. The poll shows 31% of US adults approve of Biden's handling of the conflict, including just 46% of Democrats. That's as an earlier spike in support for Israel following the resistance group Hamas attacks on October 7.

Melissa Morales, a 36-year-old political independent in Runnemede, New Jersey, says she finds herself watching videos and news from Gaza daily. Images of Palestinian children wounded, orphaned or unhoused by the fighting in Gaza make her mind go to her own 3-year-old boy.

“I just can't even imagine, like, my son roaming the streets, wanting to be safe. Wanting his mom. Or just wanting someone to get him,” she said.

Israel’s offensive has gone too far, Morales says, and so has the Biden administration’s support for it.

Criticism Mounts Over Apartheid Illegal Isra-hell's Onslaught

The US has become increasingly isolated in its support of Israel as the Palestinian death toll rises past 27,000, with two-thirds of the victims women and children. Yet the Biden administration says it is pressing Israel to reduce its killing of civilians and allow in more humanitarian aid.

John Milor, a cybersecurity expert in Clovis, California, who describes himself as a Republican-voting independent, says he remains “100%” behind Israel.

But Milor notices more young people in his circle speaking out against Israel. A visit to a family friend led to Milor being aghast when the man's stepson denounced Israelis as “warmongers.”

‘’It's not like they asked to be attacked, you know," Milor said by phone this week. "And they still have hostages over there."

In all, 50% of US adults now believe Israel's aggression has gone beyond what it should have, the poll found. That ’s up from 40% in an AP-NORC poll conducted in November.

The new poll was conducted from Jan. 25 to 28. The new findings include more worrying news for President Joe Biden when it comes to support from his own political party.

Fracture lines are growing in his Democratic base, with some key Democratic blocs that Biden will likely need if he's going to win a second term unhappy with his handling of the conflict.

About 6 in 10 non-white Democrats disapprove of how Biden is approaching the war, while about half of white Democrats approve.

Sarah Jackson, a 31-year-old professional closet designer in Chicago, is a Democrat. She says Biden has been about right in his level of support for both Israel and the Palestinians.

But as Israel's air and ground offensive goes on, Jackson's thoughts turn to finding the best way to phase down US support for it, she says.

“But yes, as it goes on, I do become more worried," she said. That includes worrying a new leader will take office here, and phase down support for Israel too abruptly, she says.

'Palestinians Should Have a Safe State'

The poll also shows about half of US adults are extremely or very concerned that the Israel's war on Gaza may cause broader conflict in the Middle East.

The poll shows 35% of US adults now describe Israel as an ally that shares US interests and values. And thirty-six percent of US adults say the US is not supportive enough of the Palestinians, up slightly from 31% December.

A similar share of US adults say that about negotiating the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

Morales, the woman from northwest New Jersey, said Palestinians should have a safe state, or at least a safe community.

“Everyone deserves a safe space where they can just be. Without interference because of who they are,” she said.