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After Killings, Homan Says There Will Be ‘More Bloodshed’ Unless Dems ‘Shut Their Mouth’ About ICE
"They are blaming the opposition for people being killed by their police."
Jul 16, 2026
As Democrats demand investigations and accountability after a pair of fatal shootings by immigration agents, the White House border czar, Tom Homan, issued an ominous warning on Wednesday: Shut your mouth or the "bloodshed" will continue.
Since July 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have shot and killed two men—Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Texas and Johan Sebastián Guerrero in Maine.
The killings, which are part of a broader rash of violent behavior by immigration agencies, briefly led DHS to suspend the use of traffic stops by agents, before President Donald Trump ordered them to continue.
Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers have promised to launch investigations and congressional hearings. Some have threatened to withhold funding for the agency unless reforms, like body camera requirements, are enacted, while others have called for the agency to be defunded or abolished.
Homan, a senior adviser to Trump tasked with coordinating immigration enforcement across agencies, took to Fox News on Wednesday night to address this heightened scrutiny.
Just one day before, Homan had defended the decision to temporarily halt vehicle stops, saying there should be a "short-term review to make sure ICE agents are safe and doing the right thing.”
But following Trump's orders, he reversed course entirely the next day and rejected the idea that anything about the agency's tactics needed reevaluation.
He told host Laura Ingraham, "President Trump was clear, this policy is not going away."
Instead of trigger-happy agents, he said that anti-ICE "rhetoric" from Democrats was to blame for the recent killings.
"It all goes back to the Dems who want to continually attack ICE and tell people to evade them and tell people don't comply, tell people to resist, and tell people ICE isn't a real law enforcement agency," Homan said.
"You and I talked about this a year-and-a-half ago, Laura," he continued. "I said, if the hateful rhetoric didn't stop, there would be bloodshed."
"I'm saying it right now," Homan said. "There's still going to be more bloodshed unless they shut their mouth and let ICE enforce the laws that they enacted."
DHS has acknowledged that neither of the men who have been shot in recent weeks was the target of the ICE operations that led to their deaths.
A witness reported that Guerrero shouted, "I tried to stop" after being shot by an agent while his vehicle moved forward slowly.
ICE's use-of-force rules state that agents should only use deadly force if they believe an individual poses an imminent threat to an agent or someone else, not simply because they are fleeing arrest.
DHS claimed that Salgado attempted to "weaponize" his vehicle, but that claim has been undercut by video evidence and eyewitness accounts.
The agency said in a statement that Guerrero "attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon," a justification that has not been used for previous shootings.
Many Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), have provided information about individuals' rights when dealing with immigration agents—including the right not to answer the door without a judicial warrant, the right to decline a search or to sign documents, or the right to record law enforcement.
But Homan did not reference any particular case in which they encouraged those facing detention to "resist" by fleeing or attacking agents.
Several Democratic members of Congress, including Reps. Jimmy Gomez (Calif.), Jason Crow (Colo.), and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), among others, have published "Know Your Rights" documents explicitly warning people not to run away or resist arrest.
Agents have frequently faced criticism that they are not, in fact, "enforcing the law" as Homan claimed, but defying it by conducting indiscriminate arrests without warrants, using excessive violence, detaining legal residents and US citizens, and engaging in racial profiling.
Homan's remarks were widely seen as a deflection of blame from immigration agents and as a way to intimidate critics into silence.
"They are blaming the opposition for people being killed by their police," said Alex Nowrasteh, the senior vice president of policy at the libertarian Cato Institute.
USA Today columnist Chris Brennan said Homan was "threaten[ing] more governmental violence… unless Americans stop engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment."
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) called it "extremely irresponsible and dangerous language from the Trump administration's top immigration official."
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California Public Records Expose Israel Lobby Censorship
History will not look back kindly on those demanding investigations of educators who dare to teach about Palestine during a documented genocide.
Jul 11, 2026
As a long-time anti-Zionist activist and retired teacher, I submitted a Public Records Act request to the California Department of Education for copies of all formal complaints, filed from October 7, 2023 to May 26, 2026, alleging discrimination, harassment, intimidation, and bullying that was so “severe” and “pervasive” as to violate federal or state law in California schools.
If a local education agency (LEA), a school district or county office of education, receives a complaint—a Uniform Complaint Procedure (UCP)—the LEA must, within 60 days, conduct an investigation, interview parties involved, and decide whether to order “corrective action.” Sometimes the UCP ends there. If, however, the complainants are dissatisfied with the LEA ruling, they may appeal to the California Department of Education (CDE).
I reviewed the appeals.
The CDE lacks authority to discipline school personnel, and the appeals I reviewed did not recommend teacher discipline. Teachers, however, have been told by their school districts to remove their keffiyehs and steer clear of stating as fact that Israel exemplifies “settler colonialism.” If an LEA or CDE finds a complaint has merit, it may order school districts to implement teacher training in antisemitism in consultation with a Jewish or Israeli organization. These orders open the door for Zionist organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to teach teachers that criticism of Israel is antisemitic and discriminates on the basis of national origin.
Teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the district’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination in employment, education, and public accommodations based on someone’s birthplace or ancestry—but does not prohibit criticism of a sovereign state, which is protected speech according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The CDE’s release of files reflects the department and school districts’ tendency to conflate anti-Zionism (opposition to Israel) with antisemitism (bigotry toward Jews for being Jewish). Under AB 715 (D-Zbur) legislation that establishes an antisemitism coordinator to police instruction and teacher training, this confusion could get a lot worse because AB 715 incorporates the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which promotes the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition and examples that conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Teachers and their allies can, however, revolt: March on Sacramento, challenge Zionist teacher training, file their own complaints, and collectively teach Palestine across school departments and districts.
The following is a review of some of the CDE’s cases addressing allegations of antisemitism or discrimination against Jews or Israelis.
Banned!
Sammy Obeid speaks on "The Abortion Joke That Got Me Banned From High School" (Image via Comedy Calculus)
In 2025, the principal of Mountain View Los Altos High School banned popular Lebanese-Palestinian American comedian Sammy Obeid after he cracked jokes about Israel at an after-school on-campus event in 2025 hosted by the Muslim Student Association (MSA). The school investigation report (IR) read, "During the event, the comedian made antisemitic remarks: about the Israeli Prime Minister getting cancer, calling the Prime Minister a supervillain, and how Israel does not believe in abortion so it can bomb more Palestinians.”
Months earlier, on November 21, 2024, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity in Gaza, including “starvation as a method of warfare, murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”
Nevertheless, the district concluded, after berating the Muslim students for inviting Obeid—that the comedian’s performance was antisemitic. The CDE agreed and ordered the district to further revise its guest speaker policies to include strict vetting and get-off-the-stage intervention should an administrator believe the speaker’s conduct discriminated against a protected group on the basis of ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, and physical or mental disabilities.
P.S. For the record, abortion is legal in Israel as long as women obtain approval from the Israeli Pregnancy Termination Board.
San Ramon Valley HS
In another example of conflation, the CDE ordered (11/24/25) San Ramon Valley High School to deliver teacher training on antisemitism to all social studies teachers after the department ruled a teacher’s class statements were proof of discriminatory bias against Jewish and Israeli students. The department’s fact finding said the teacher told students that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza. Hardly breaking news. Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Doctors without Borders, and the United Nations International Commission of Inquiry had all determined Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Nonetheless, the CDE said the appeal had merit because the teacher did not cite sources and present an opposing viewpoint. The Department ordered San Ramon Valley High School to provide the CDE with evidence by January 30, 2026 that the school had delivered training from someone not affiliated with the school district to ensure that classroom instruction “does not promote a discriminatory bias.”
Anti-Palestinian Racism
The Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism (IUAPR) defines anti-Palestinian racism as a form of racism that “silences, excludes, erases, stereotypes, defames, or dehumanizes Palestinians or their narratives.”
A CDE ruling involving New Haven Unified School District might serve as an example of erasing the human rights and worth of Palestinians. After teachers in the summer 2025 Ethnic Studies Social Justice Academy (ESSJA) presented a slide deck describing actions by Israelis against Palestinians as potentially constituting “genocide, ethnic cleansing, and settler colonialism,’ the department said instruction lacked adequate balance and historical context, and cast Israel in a negative light. The department acknowledged that the slides for students also discussed the horrific impact of the Holocaust, the ancient connection of Jews to the land also claimed by Palestinians, and how “the Israeli government is separate from innocent Israeli/Jewish people who stand for justice,” but still...
The department then ordered the school district to train ESSJA teachers and administrators in the “obligation to comply with Education Code 51500, which states that a teacher shall not deliver instruction, and a school district shall not sponsor any activity that promotes a discriminatory bias.”
Points for the MAGA team.
Teacher and Community Resistance
Oakland rank and file teachers included P Is for Palestine on their recommended list of resources at a December 2023 teach-in on Gaza; the Brandeis Center for Human Rights objected in a lawsuit against California.
Rank and file Oakland educators circulated an Open Letter in spring 2026 calling on the district “to resist the concerted attacks by political groups who slander as 'antisemitic' anyone who criticizes Israeli apartheid and genocide or Zionism.” Yet, the Oakland Unified School District, facing a lawsuit from the CDE, still mandated teachers watch and interact with an Anti-Defamation League 20-minute video “Antisemitism: What Do Educators Need to Know,” which defines antisemitism as “marginalization and/or oppression of people who are Jewish based on the belief in stereotypes and myths about Jewish people, Judaism, and Israel.”
The ADL training stands in dramatic contrast to a teach-in rank-and-file Oakland teachers organized in December 2023, two months after October 7, as Israel dropped 2,000-pound bombs on Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. Objecting to district resources from Zionist-funded organizations, the teachers provided workshop participants with a recommended list of books, films, and lessons.
Across the bay, in San Francisco, in the fall of 2024, a dozen teachers declined to participate in district antisemitism training with the American Jewish Committee, a Zionist organization that boasts on its website, “We stand up for Israel.” Teachers instead chose to attend professional development with PARCEO, a non-Zionist organization anchored in the belief that ending antisemitism is part of an intersectional fight for collective liberation of all people.
Down in Los Angeles, teachers and community members rallied (5/16/26) in front of the Downtown Business Magnet to protest the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) decree that ethnic studies and social studies teachers remove “Stop Genocide” posters and Palestinian and Black Lives Matter flags, as well as undergo teacher training on the use of “neutral terms” to describe sensitive topics, including Israel’s slaughter and starvation of Gaza.
Teacher and Union del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said the district’s edict that teachers remain silent in the face of a US-subsidized genocide was like telling teachers in Nazi Germany to take a neutral stance on the Holocaust.
In another act of resistance, K-12 Legal Defense, led by attorney Liz Jackson, and San Francisco law firm Leonard Carder, LLP, filed a motion (5/11/16) to intervene in Brandeis v California on behalf of a group of 10 California families—Jewish and Palestinian parents and students enrolled in public schools.
For teachers walking a tightrope under the watchful eye of an AB 715 enforcer, there are some lessons that lend themselves to a “both sides” debate: South Africa vs. Israel at the International Court of Justice or Zionists vs. non-Zionists on school board adoption of the IHRA definition and examples of antisemitism. In many instances, however, the “both sides” approach fails to acknowledge the power imbalance between Israel and Palestine to leave students confused.
History will not look back kindly on those demanding investigations of educators who dare to teach about Palestine during a documented genocide. Nor will history applaud those who conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism in lawsuits against states and school districts.
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'Feels Very 1984': ICE Agents Push Poll Worker to Delete Post Calling for Charges Against Renee Good Killer
"ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts," said a civil liberties advocate.
Jun 25, 2026
A poll worker in Syracuse, New York said she was left unsettled after a pair of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at her polling place to tell her to delete Instagram content calling for the indictment of the agent who shot Renee Good in January.
The worker, Paigelynne Gonyea, was in the middle of her shift during Tuesday's elections in New York when she received a phone message from someone who identified himself as Dave Brody, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.
He said agents "were just by" her apartment and had spoken to her husband about a post in which she "doxxed an ICE agent back in January."
Gonyea said the agents were referring to a post she made on January 8, 2026, the day after an ICE agent shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old mother and US citizen, in Minneapolis. The post contained an image of the masked agent, who had at that point been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune.
"The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune," the post read. "I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!"
Gonyea said she could not leave her job working the polls to speak with the agents, so she told them to come to her polling place. "They knew I was a poll site worker and still came in," she said.
Referencing what happened to Good, she said she refused to meet with the agents outside alone.
“I’ve seen the news, especially in Minnesota,” she said. “And I didn’t want anything to happen to me at all.”
Video of the encounter, shot by another employee, shows the two agents entering the polling site at Central Library on Salina Street.
The agents handed Gonyea a form letter that read, "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW."
The form, which Gonyea posted, said ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) had identified a post on Gonyea's account that it believed "may constitute a violation" of federal law.
The notice informed her that "it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official" and that "knowingly making restricted personal information about a covered person, or their immediate family member, publicly available with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime" was also illegal. It said violating these laws could subject her to state and federal prosecution.
The letter directed her to "promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior." It warned her that receipt of the notice "will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above."
Gonyea told Syracuse.com that the agents presented her with copies of her social media posts and her driver's license and that "they tried to scare me into signing" the document "while I was working."
She refused to sign the notice despite continued pressure from the agents.
Gonyea was emphatic that her post—which only repeated publicly reported information—did not violate the law.
“I didn’t dox his personal information, such as address, phone number,” she said, adding that she would not remove the post.
Gonyea has discussed the case with the New York Board of Elections and the attorney general’s civil rights office, and she said she has contacted US Rep. John Mannion (D-NY), Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
She has created a GoFundMe page to pay for potential legal expenses.
“For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me,” Gonyea said. “They definitely should have known better to not go into a polling place, even if I said it was OK.”
In a post on her GoFundMe page, Gonyea described the incident as a "pretty unsettling run-in."
"It’s the kind of situation that makes you stop and think about free speech and how far government authority can go. Honestly, it shook me, and I don’t think it’s something that should just be brushed off," she said. "It just doesn’t sit right with me."
Dustin Czarny, the election commissioner for Onondaga County, emphasized that federal law only allows specific people to enter polling places during elections—including poll workers, elections inspectors, voters eligible to vote at the site, and someone a voter brought to assist them in voting
Federal law specifies that it is unlawful for anyone in federal service to send “troops or armed men” to places where elections are held.
“There’s no role for law enforcement officials to be inside a polling place unless they are responding to an emergency of some kind,” Czarny said. “There is no indication of that here.”
Despite this, Trump administration officials have indicated a desire to send ICE agents to polling places on election day during the 2026 midterms.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in February that her department had been "proactive to make sure we have the right people voting" in elections. In March, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asked at a conservative political conference, "Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” adding, "Illegals can't vote. It doesn't make any sense."
Trump refused to rule out the possibility when asked about it by reporters in May, saying he'd "do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections."
Critics of ICE have described agents' demands for Gonyea to remove political speech as a worrying new frontier for the agency's encroachments on civil liberties.
"ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts," said David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. "Wouldn't you quit before you carried out an order to do this?"
"Americans refuse to be intimidated by these government criminals who hate the Constitution," he added. "Normal people want accountability, not impunity for killing Americans unnecessarily."
"But it’s not enough for ICE to disagree; they need to stamp out dissent," he said. "I know they monitor my social media. You should know that they’re monitoring yours too."
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'Travesty of Justice': UK Appeals Court Slammed for Upholding Ban on Palestine Action
"Classifying protest through direct action as terrorism brings Parliament and our judicial system into disrepute," said one Labour MP.
Jun 15, 2026
A UK appeals court is being accused of flouting the law to allow the government to suppress free speech after it upheld a ban on the direct action group Palestine Action.
Just days after four young activists with the group were hit with unprecedented “terrorism” sentences over their 2024 vandalism of an Israeli-owned weapons facility that was being used to supply the genocidal assault on Gaza, the Court of Appeal in London on Monday upheld the Labour government’s proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act of 2000.
The ban was approved in Parliament in July 2025 and outlawed expressions of support for the group. According to Amnesty International, more than 3,300 people have been arrested across Britain since last July "simply for their engagement in acts of peaceful protest opposing the proscription"—including more than 2,000 who have been arrested simply for holding signs that read "I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.”
Outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, where the decision was handed down, hundreds more Britons rallied in opposition.
“We acknowledge the Court of Appeal’s judgment that the home secretary’s decision to proscribe Palestine Action was lawful,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement shortly after. “This means that expressing support for the organization remains a criminal offense, and officers will arrest those who break the law.”
“Officers are policing a protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice today where a number of people are displaying placards in support of Palestine Action," it continued. "Arrests are underway.”
Protesters were carried away, while onlookers shouted, “Shame” and “You’re complicit” at officers.
Arrests continue outside the Royal Courts of Justice after Court of Appeal find proscription of Palestine Action to be lawful.
We will continue to protest this Government’s embarrassing attempts to cover up its crimes with intimidation tactics.
Join us: https://t.co/XhFvPsZC3U pic.twitter.com/9okcFkVVtf
— Defend Our Juries (@DefendOurJuries) June 15, 2026
As The New York Times pointed out:
Palestine Action, which no longer exists in its original form, did not promote violence against individuals. But its members damaged sites linked to Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer, and last June broke into [Royal Air Force] Brize Norton, Britain’s largest air force base, in Oxfordshire, vandalizing two aircraft.
The activists who were given hefty sentences on Friday have argued that “innocent lives were saved” by their destruction of military equipment in the Elbit facility. Drones manufactured by the company have been documented in use during attacks on civilians, including the April 2024 strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers.
But although members of the group have never been accused of any premeditated act of violence against other human beings, the British government’s terror designation puts it on the same level, legally speaking, as al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division, and expressions of support can carry maximum sentences of 14 years in prison.
In February, the High Court sided with Palestine Action, ruling that the ban on support breached the rights to free expression and assembly under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
However, a five-judge appeals court panel overruled this decision on Monday, with Chief Justice Sue Carr writing that while the ban was “highly controversial,” and that the group “was supported by many otherwise law-abiding citizens,” it was a “fundamental mistake to overlook the fact that Palestine Action overtly promoted unlawful violence amounting to terrorism.”
Pointing to its sabotage of Elbit, she said the group's actions were “intended to close down lawful businesses” and said that "future threats and risks posed to third-party individuals and property by Palestine Action were perhaps the most important factors to weigh in the balance.”
Carr said that the ban would "not prevent public expressions of support for the Palestinian cause or opposition to Israel and to the Israel Defense Forces, or demonstrations targeted at Elbit."
But in the process, even she acknowledged that such a severe restriction on peaceful assembly in support of Palestine Action could indeed have a "chilling effect" on otherwise law-abiding citizens and cause them to be "deterred from assembling lawfully or making their strongly held anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian views public for fear of their actions being construed as support for Palestine Action."
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori, who challenged the ban in court, said her group would "fight this all the way" and planned to appeal to the UK Supreme Court and potentially even the European Court of Human Rights.
"We will not stop fighting to overturn one of the most extreme attacks on free speech and the right to protest in modern British history," she said. "This unprecedented abuse of power has devastated the lives of thousands of people while silencing dissent over Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people during the genocide, when that dissent could not be more urgent.”
Today's ruling by the Court of Appeal is deeply disappointing.
This case remains about much more than one group.
What’s important for all of us to understand is that proscription is one of the strongest powers the government has.
Treating protest as terrorism leaves the… pic.twitter.com/WI3O05LYEn
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) June 15, 2026
The ruling was met with outrage from supporters of Palestinian rights and human rights groups.
Ammar Kazmi, the senior legal coordinator for the Derby-based Left Legal Fighting Fund, said that with this ruling, the judges allowed the political objective of criminalizing pro-Palestine speech to take precedence over the law.
"The judges allowed policy reasons to override strictly legal arguments, and they showed deference to ‘national security’ questions," he wrote on social media. "They also said that proscription is a ‘proportionate’ interference with free speech rights. In other words, they allowed the government to ride roughshod over the law."
Amnesty UK called the ruling "deeply disappointing," adding that the case "remains about much more than one group."
"What’s important for all of us to understand is that proscribing a group as a terrorist organization is one of the strongest powers the government has," the human rights group said. "The banning of Palestine Action as a terrorist organization is a grave misuse of counterterrorism powers with serious consequences for human rights."
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn—whose successor, Prime Minister Keir Starmer—enacted the ban, said, "Today’s ruling to uphold the UK government's proscription of Palestine Action is a travesty of justice."
"One by one, the very foundations of our democracy are being destroyed—all to oil the wheels of British complicity in genocide," said Corbyn, who is leading an unofficial "tribunal" that presented evidence of UK participation in Israel's assault on Gaza to the International Criminal Court in March.
Noting the large number of pensioners who have been hauled off by police for holding protest signs opposing the ban—including dozens arrested on Friday for opposing the sentencing of those involved in the Elbit raid—Labour MP John McDonnell said, "Parliament should reverse the decision to proscribe Palestine Action urgently before we see large numbers of elderly people in particular being dragged before our courts."
He added that "classifying protest through direct action as terrorism brings Parliament and our judicial system into disrepute."
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UK Palestine Action Activists Hit With ‘Completely Disproportionate’ Terrorism Sentences for Israeli Weapons Sabotage
Amnesty UK said the defendants "were sentenced as terrorists because prosecutors want to make an example of them."
Jun 12, 2026
In a decision that Amnesty International described as "completely disproportionate," four demonstrators with the outlawed group Palestine Action were sentenced as terrorists in the UK on Friday after being convicted for causing damage at an Israeli weapons factory in 2024 to protest the genocide in Gaza.
Supporters of the so-called "Filton 4" were filmed crying and embracing outside Woolwich Crown Court in London as the judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Johnson, handed down sentences ranging from four years and eight months to seven years and eight months to the four young defendants.
Charlotte Head, 30; Leona Kamio, 30; and Fatema Rajwani, 21, were convicted of criminal damage last month after a break-in at a factory in Bristol owned by the Israeli company Elbit Systems, where they smashed up over a dozen drones and other military equipment, causing around £1.2 million, or $1.6 million, of damage.
A fourth defendant, 23-year-old Samuel Corner, was also convicted for the damage, as well as grievous bodily harm without intent for striking a policewoman on the scene with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine.
🇬🇧 🇵🇸 Four Palestine Action Activists Sentenced as ‘Terrorists’ in UK Legal First
Four activists who raided an Elbit Systems arms factory near Bristol in 2024 were sentenced as “terrorists” Friday at Woolwich Crown Court, in what supporters said is the first time UK protesters… pic.twitter.com/gC4MvAXfz4
— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) June 12, 2026
In what has been described as a legal first for Britain, Johnson sentenced the four defendants as terrorists, although three had only been convicted of property damage. He did so under the Sentencing Act of 2020, which allows nonterrorism crimes to be treated as terrorism if they meet certain criteria.
Elbit's drones have been documented in use during attacks on civilians, including the April 2024 strike on a World Central Kitchen convoy that killed seven aid workers.
Last month, 22-year-old Zoe Rogers, another activist who took part in the Elbit raid but was acquitted, said she believed that because of their sabotage of the drones, "innocent lives were saved" in Gaza.
However, Johnson did not allow the defendants to explain the reason for their actions as part of the trial, nor were jurors informed that the defendants could later receive sentences for terrorism.
Because the protesters had caused “serious damage to property” for the purpose of “advancing a political or ideological cause,” Johnson determined that the protesters could be sentenced as terrorists using the broad definition from the Terrorism Act 2000.
The terrorism designation means that defendants will have to serve a minimum of two-thirds of their sentences in prison and will be required to register as terrorists with the police for the next 15 years.
Attorneys for the defendants said they were not informed that their clients were at risk of being sentenced for terrorism and accused the prosecution of submitting key evidence, including a report on the cost of damage to the factory, “at the 59th minute of the eleventh hour," giving them little time to form a rebuttal.
The defendants’ attorneys described the precedent that someone could be sentenced for terrorism after being convicted of a nonviolent offense as unprecedented and dangerous to speech.
“It’s wrong for someone to be sentenced for a more serious offense of which they have not been convicted,” said Corner's attorney, Tom Wainwright, who noted that similar measures could have been used to sentence earlier protest movements, like the suffragettes or other anti-war demonstrators who sabotaged military equipment, for terrorism simply because their actions had a political motivation.
Head's attorney, Rajiv Menon, described the attempt to sentence his client as unprecedented, and warned that it was “an invitation to chilling, creeping authoritarianism that undermines the very fabric of our society."
After their conviction, Wainwright hailed the protesters as people of conscience: "[The drones] may have been involved in taking the lives of men, women, and children in Gaza. That is why they acted. That’s something that—in a sane world—would be commended.”
In a post to social media following news of the conviction, Amnesty UK condemned the use of terrorism powers in this case.
"It is completely disproportionate to punish protesters for criminal damage as if they were terrorists, a sentence which stays with you for life," the human rights group said.
More than 70 people were arrested for supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action outside Woolwich Crown Court.
The arrests happened as four members of Palestine Action were sentenced over a separate incident. pic.twitter.com/kRkXEjbPFm
— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) June 12, 2026
The sentencing comes amid a broader crackdown in the UK against pro-Palestine speech and protest that has ramped up even under a Labour government, which has sought to label even peaceful demonstrations as terrorism.
Following another case in which Palestine Action protesters vandalized military equipment—this time on a UK Royal Air Force base—the government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer in 2025 used the same terrorism law cited by Johnson to label the group as proscribed, effectively making it illegal to belong to it or publicly support it.
Police have arrested numerous peaceful protesters for no other crime than holding signs that read: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."
Amnesty said in May that more than 3,300 people had been arrested across the UK since the proscription took effect and that more than 1,200 protesters had been charged with terrorism-related offenses.
Eight other Palestine Action activists, including four others who have been accused of involvement with the Elbit break-in, went on a lengthy hunger strike this past winter to protest their confinement in prison for more than a year without trial, during which time they alleged that they were denied needed medical care and had their communication with the outside world censored.
Amnesty said the Filton 4 "were sentenced as terrorists because prosecutors want to make an example of them."
On Friday, as hundreds rallied outside the court against the terrorism sentence, more than 100 peaceful protesters were also arrested for allegedly supporting Palestine Action.
Video of one of the arrests, published by Channel 4 News, shows police officers lifting an elderly woman by her arms and legs and dragging her away from a larger group of people holding signs.
"You're under arrest under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act," one officer is heard saying.
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'Bureaucratic Temper Tantrum': Trump White House Pilloried Over Reported Effort to Deport Iran War Critic Trita Parsi
"Irony is if the Trump admin had listened to Parsi, they'd be in much better shape now," said a fellow anti-war writer.
Jun 11, 2026
The Trump administration is once again being accused of using immigration enforcement to silence speech after it reportedly launched an investigation into one of the most prominent critics of the president's war in Iran, Trita Parsi, as part of an effort to deport him.
Parsi, an Iranian-Swedish citizen who holds a green card in the US, is the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and co-founded the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
Since February, when the US and Israel launched a war against Iran that has killed more than 1,700 civilians, wracked the global economy, and spiraled out across the Middle East, Parsi has been a highly cited anti-war voice in the media.
But according to an exclusive report from The Free Press published on Thursday, which quotes senior Trump administration officials, the State Department views Parsi, who has lived in the US for 25 years, not as "another Washington pundit eager to share his point of view," but as someone seeking to nefariously spread "Iranian influence."
“The secretary has been very clear,” an unnamed Trump administration official said, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “Anyone who seeks to undermine the US, we’re taking a hard look at.” That includes “people who support adversaries of ours and whose work furthers their agenda and undermines our security.”
Since attacking Iran, the Trump administration has brought the hammer down on other Iranians living legally in the US due to their alleged sympathies with their nation of origin.
In April, the State Department arrested two women alleged to be the niece and grandniece of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who was extrajudicially assassinated in an airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump in 2020. Rubio accused the two women of promoting "regime propaganda," revoking their green cards, though documents later revealed that the women had no connection to the slain general.
The administration also canceled the visa belonging to the daughter of Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, who was assassinated in March.
The administration has similarly wielded its powers against foreign-born critics of Israel, including Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was snatched off the street by immigration agents and detained for weeks over an opinion piece she co-wrote calling on her school to divest from Israel. The White House's deportation effort against her was thrown out by an immigration judge in February.
Documents unsealed in January showed that five pro-Palestine student activists singled out by the State Department, including Öztürk and Khalil, were targeted for deportation for no other reason than their speech and were not accused of any wrongdoing.
Relying on a previously rarely used provision in the McCarthy era Immigration and Nationality Act, the administration has defended its right to strip legal residents of their status on the grounds of speech alone that was adverse to a "compelling United States foreign policy interest.”
In the case of Khalil, Rubio acknowledged in a memo that his speech was “otherwise lawful,” but claimed that allowing him to remain in the country would undermine the Trump administration's foreign policy goals of supporting Israel and "combating antisemitism."
A similar justification appears to be undergirding the administration's attacks on Parsi. According to The Free Press, the administration has highlighted his and his organization's public warnings against escalation against Iran, his role as an informal adviser to negotiations for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, opposition to US sanctions against the country, and correspondence with Iranian officials as evidence that he is working to further Tehran's influence.
While Parsi has not yet publicly confirmed that an investigation is underway, The Free Press reported that the Quincy Institute has prepared for legal action if the government attempts to have him detained or deported.
The outlet cited a memo from Quincy CEO Lora Lumpe, who noted that Parsi had recently come into the crosshairs of the notorious pro-Trump influencer Laura Loomer, who accused him of being “a mouthpiece for the Iranian regime" and threatened that his “days in our country are numbered.”
The State Department has previously appeared to make decisions directly in response to Loomer's online outbursts. Loomer was the first to erroneously claim that the two women detained in April were relatives of Soleimani. She also took credit for the department revoking the visa of the British commentator and Israel critic Sami Hamdi, who was abducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the middle of a speaking tour.
The State Department has also appeared to follow her lead after she called for it to block children injured during Israel's genocide in Gaza from entering the US on medical humanitarian visas to receive desperately needed surgeries and rehabilitative care.
News of the State Department's pursuit of an investigation against Parsi was described as the latest attempt by the Trump administration to use the threat of deportation to bully critics into silence.
"Trita Parsi is a courageous and outspoken critic of the US-Israeli war on Iran, alongside whom we’re proud to have worked in opposition to war and injustice for many years," said the civil liberties organization Defending Rights & Dissent. "The Trump administration’s investigation of Parsi is an outrageous attack on free speech. Government officials are explicit that they are exploring deporting Parsi specifically for his advocacy—a blatant affront to the First Amendment."
Branko Marcetic, another prominent war opponent who writes for Jacobin magazine, called the attack on Parsi "contemptible."
"Irony is if the Trump admin had listened to Parsi, they'd be in much better shape now," he added. "Instead, they put their political futures in the hands of people Trump himself called warmonger idiots, and now they're left throwing this bureaucratic temper tantrum."
Drop Site News, which has often interviewed Parsi as an expert, also noted the significance of the fact that the "exclusive" report was being published by The Free Press, a hawkish right-wing publication that "has repeatedly published articles that amplify official pressure on critics of Israel, US wars, and aggressive foreign policy, contributing to a chilling effect intended to deter others from speaking out."
Some of Parsi's ideological opponents have also warned against the government's efforts to punish his speech, like Kaveh Shahrooz, a prominent Iranian-Canadian advocate for regime change in Iran.
"You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who, over the past decade, has been more aggressively outspoken against Trita Parsi and NIAC than I have," Shahrooz said. "But I’m deeply uncomfortable with what’s being reported."
"Unless the [US government] can demonstrate that Parsi violated US law... deporting him would amount to targeting someone for their speech and political beliefs," he continued. "An abuse of government power directed at someone you despise today can very easily be directed at you, or at someone you support, tomorrow."
Update (6/13/2026): Following the publication of this piece, the US State Department issued a statement that it "has no plans to revoke the green card of Mr. Parsi at this time."
Parsi has responded to the reports with a post to his Substack, in which he said, "I don’t believe there was any investigation against me," but that "some elements within the State Department wanted to start one and thought external pressure," via The Free Press' report "could help move things forward." Parsi's full response can be read here.
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‘Absurd and Cowardly’: Labour Government Slammed for Barring Hasan Piker, Cenk Uygur From UK
"An Israeli politician who oversaw genocide? Here's a red carpet!" one critic said in response to the ban.
Jun 01, 2026
The UK government is drawing heavy criticism for barring Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker, two prominent critics of Israel, from entering the country.
According to a Monday report from The Guardian, the UK's Home Office cancelled electronic travel authorizations (ETA) for both Uygur and Piker on grounds that their presence in the country "may not be conducive to the public good."
Uygur took to social media shortly afterward and said the UK banned him due to his criticisms of Israeli influence over US policy.
"I didn't get banned for criticizing the UK, but for criticizing Israel," Uygur wrote. "They broke the irony record by saying it was because I said Israel might control other governments."
"Think about it," Uygur added, "if I had said that the Israeli government controls the British government so thoroughly that they'll ban someone from coming to the UK just for criticizing Israel, they would have said that was an antisemitic statement. This is absolutely Kafkaesque."
Shortly after Uygur's post, Piker, who is Uygur's nephew, accused the UK government of barring him for similar reasons.
"The UK has revoked my visa as well," Piker wrote. "All at the behest of Israel. The west is betraying 'liberal values' for a genocidal fascist foreign government."
UK commentator Owen Jones noted the "double standard" in the UK's decision to bar Israel critics such as Uygur and Piker, but not applying the same restrictions to Israeli politicians who have engaged in genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians.
"An Israeli politician who oversaw genocide? Here's a red carpet!" wrote Jones. "And you can say anything, however murderous, about Palestinians and freely enter. If you say: 'I'm glad Israel wiped Gaza from the face of the earth,' in you come!"
Jeremy Corbyn, former leader of the UK Labour Party, the current ruling party whose government decided to bar the two Israel critics, described the move as "an absurd and cowardly decision from an increasingly authoritarian government."
"Let us call this what it is," Corbyn added, "an attack on the freedom to criticize Israel, as well as the UK government’s own complicity in genocide."
Jemimah Steinfeld, chief executive of the Index on Censorship, told The Guardian that the ban is "paternalistic" on the government's part because it "assumes we are just passive consumers of views rather than people who can think, judge, and challenge."
Steinfeld also predicted that the ban would ultimately be ineffective.
"It confers an underdog status to the people not allowed to enter, it could embolden other countries to follow suit, and it feels fairly meaningless in the internet age where people can simply go online to hear what they have to say," she said. "Free speech is tested by hard cases and, in this instance, the UK is failing."
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'By This Logic, Any Protest Could Be a Conspiracy': Conviction of Spokane ICE Protesters Raises Free Speech Concerns
"We were guinea pigs," said the father of one of the convicted protesters. "They brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed."
May 29, 2026
With the conviction of three anti-ICE protesters in Spokane, Washington on federal "conspiracy" charges Thursday, civil rights advocates and legal experts fear that the Trump administration may have just been handed a powerful tool to criminalize dissent.
Jac Archer, Justice Forral, and Bajun Mavalwalla II, nicknamed the "Spokane 3," were indicted last year for their actions at a protest in June 2025, where they attempted to physically obstruct ICE agents from transporting two Venezuelan immigrants to an ICE processing facility in Tacoma.
Both of the men reportedly entered the US legally under a humanitarian parole program that had been terminated by the Trump administration, leading advocates to protest their detention.
As Spokesman-Review, a Spokane newspaper, described:
Protesters that day eventually began linking arms around vans and in front of agents’ cars. The event grew chaotic. ICE agents entered a crowd of people standing outside the facility’s parking lot gate and began grabbing people by the necks and arms, pushing them to the ground. Protesters also slashed tires of vans meant to transport the detainees.
But where such activity would usually lead to charges against specific protesters for discrete illegal actions like trespassing, property damage, or other public order offenses, the Department of Justice (DOJ)—as part of a nationwide effort to crack down on protests against ICE—charged nine protesters with "conspiracy to impede or injure officers," even though no officers were actually injured during the protest.
Legal experts described it as a novel approach that wrapped many people involved in the protest into a single "conspiracy" regardless of whether they committed specific criminal acts.
“Usually if a protest gets out of hand and people are hurt or property is hurt, you see charges based on that,” Mary Fan, a former federal prosecutor and a University of Washington law professor, told The New York Times earlier this month. “They’re not going after people based on specific harm done. They’re stretching conspiracy charges to target protesters and people who organize protests.”
Facing pressure from the federal government to bring the case following a national memo sent from the DOJ to prioritize and publicize cases against ICE agents, then-acting US Attorney for Eastern Washington Richard Barker resigned last year rather than bring charges against the protesters.
He said at the time he was grateful he “never had to sign an indictment or file a brief that [he] didn’t believe in." His successor, Stephanie Van Marter, however, did sign the order.
Six of the defendants pleaded guilty to the charges to avoid federal prison time. But Archer, Forral, and Mavalwalla chose to fight them, believing the case was part of an unjust attempt to criminalize their right to protest.
After a trial that lasted seven days, a jury found the three defendants guilty of conspiracy. But the defense has argued that the trial was marred by problems that rendered the verdict faulty.
As the Guardian explained:
In February, a federal judge ordered the release of a Venezuelan migrant whose transportation for deportation the protesters sought to block, ruling his arrest violated the constitution.
But the jury, drawn from conservative eastern Washington state, did not hear those facts at trial, thanks to rulings by Judge [Rebecca] Pennell. Pennell, a former federal public defender and appointee of the Democratic president Joe Biden, also ruled the protesters on trial could not use the First Amendment as a defense, though they were allowed to state their reasons for demonstrating.
Instead, the jury watched hours of law enforcement body camera video and heard from a parade of ICE agents... Jeremy Burlingame, an ICE agent who testified, had authored social media posts that called Black politicians “lying ghetto garbage” and transgender people “mentally ill.” He boosted a post showing ICE arresting a pregnant woman at gunpoint that called her a “pregnant invader.”
Federal prosecutors deemed the posts troubling enough to recall Burlingame to impeach him, despite the fact that he was their witness...
But Burlingame’s online posts, the lack of injury to ICE officers, and the absence of evidence showing communication between the three defendants prior to the protest were not enough to sway the jury.
The defendants now face potential sentences of up to six years in prison and a $250,000 fine. However, they are expected to appeal the verdict and have filed a rarely used motion allowing their attorneys to argue that no rational juror could find their clients guilty.
"I question whether justice truly was served by today’s verdict,” Barker told the Spokesman-Review. "This was the first conspiracy prosecution in Eastern Washington history under... a Civil War-era law dusted off to punish members of the Spokane community who stood up for two young men who were unlawfully detained by ICE."
Video by KREM 2 News/Youtube
Looking beyond the details of the trial itself, many observers questioned the very premise of the DOJ's prosecution.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown said from the start of the trial she believed it was "politically motivated."
"It was meant to make an example out of people who disagreed with federal immigration policy," she said.
City council member Sarah Dixit, who said she took part in the protest, said: "Based on the evidence that was shown, I personally didn’t see evidence of what they were accused of. Conspiracy is a charge that feels complicated to prove, and I don’t believe that the government made a strong case for that.”
Others expressed fear for the precedent that had been set. La Rond Baker, the legal director of the Washington ACLU, said the Trump administration "has a demonstrable history of using the Department of Justice to silence and punish its critics."
The administration has pursued similar sweeping conspiracy charges against other groups of anti-ICE protesters around the country—including in Los Angeles, Broadview, Illinois, and North Texas.
“The verdict was painfully disappointing,” said Archer’s attorney, Carl Oreskovich. “I think it was an extraordinarily aggressive approach to prosecution of protests. And it certainly is going to chill people who want to utilize their First Amendment right to dissent against government actions that they don’t agree with."
In a comment to The Guardian, Robert Chang, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law and executive director of its Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality, said the verdict was "frightening."
“By this logic, any protest could be a conspiracy,” he said. “The goal posts keep moving.”
Bajun Mavalwalla Sr., a retired US Army intelligence officer who served in Afghanistan, said his son—also a veteran of the same war—and the other two defendants were standing for "the freedoms that separate this country from the dictatorships.”
“People in Spokane and people in Eastern Washington need to understand that we were guinea pigs. That they brought the swamp of Washington, DC, into our area to stop American citizens from exercising our rights that are guaranteed,” the elder Mavalwalla said after his son was convicted.
“It was the whole point of the Constitution, the right to protest, the right to dissent, the right to assemble, all of those things are now in question because of this case," he said. "My son has taken the brunt of the entire weight of the United States government onto their shoulders.”
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When Trump Targets the Media, the World's Autocrats Are Taking Notes
Trump's words and actions against the news media at home are inspiring copycat behavior by authoritarians and dictators around the world, fueling a growing global crisis of press freedom.
May 21, 2026
Only a day after President Donald Trump spoke of unity following a gunman’s abhorrent attempt to kill him and members of his administration at the White House Correspondents' dinner, the president quickly returned to his regularly scheduled programming of berating members of the press that ask him unwanted questions.
In a "60 Minutes" interview with CBS correspondent Norah O’Donnell taped and aired the day following the assassination attempt, Trump repeated many of his now-tired insults about the press, referring to the media in general as “horrible people,” and calling O’Donnell a “disgrace” who should be “ashamed” of herself for raising excerpts of the alleged gunman’s manifesto in a question to the president.
At this point, understandably, many of us have simply begun to tune out Trump’s now-frequent diatribes against the press. Nearly a decade since Trump first tweeted the now-ubiquitous phrase “fake news” and infamously labelled the news media the "enemies of the American people," such insults just don't land like they used to.
Yet Trump's words do in fact matter. While many of Trump’s rhetorical attacks against the press during his first term were dismissed as bluster from a president known for his flair for the dramatic, they laid the groundwork for the broad attack on the media that we’re seeing under Trump 2.0.
Under Trump, attacks on the media have been a leading contributor to the US’ year-over-year tumble in global democracy indexes.
Under his second presidency, the Trump administration has waged a multifaceted campaign against free speech and independent journalism, characterized by retaliatory lawsuits against major media outlets; legal harassment and intimidation of journalists; slashed budgets for public broadcasting; and regulatory pressure, taking aim at reporting not to the administration’s liking.
Even as the First Amendment comes under unprecedented pressure in the US, the impact of the Trump administration’s attacks on the news media hasn’t stopped at the US border. The linguistic framing Trump popularized to villainize the press (and justify executive action against them) has also contributed to a growing crisis of press freedom worldwide.
Trump’s attacks on the media have inspired copycat behavior from press freedom pariahs around the world. From Hungary to Turkey, authoritarian or illiberal leaders have echoed Trump’s hostile rhetoric against the press, adding their own spin in remarks designed to discredit the news outlets and journalists intent on exposing corruption and holding their leaders accountable to their people.
Autocratic regimes in Russia, China, and Egypt have seized on to Trump’s “fake news” framing with actual legislation barring the spread of “false” or “misleading” news and information. What actually defines fake news usually isn’t clear—the vague, ambiguous wording of many of these laws gives the government wide latitude to decide how they are applied.
Amid a rise in global conflict, governments around the world are increasingly using “national security” as a pretext to censor critical war reporting. Only weeks prior to the Correspondents’ dinner, Trump threatened to jail an unnamed journalist from an unnamed media outlet if they did not reveal the identity of the government source who gave the press information about a US military operation to rescue a pilot whose plane was downed in Iran.
While Trump hasn’t yet followed through on this particular threat, other countries have not hesitated to lock up journalists that report inconvenient truths about the conflict. In early March, the government of Kuwait arrested Kuwaiti-American journalist Ahmed Shihab-Eldin, a day after he shared a verified CNN video depicting the downing of a US F-15E fighter jet by the Kuwaiti military during a friendly fire incident. Luckily, after a wave of international pressure on the part of the press freedom community, Shihab-Eldin was released and was able to safely leave Kuwait—at the cost of his citizenship.
Despite the bad news, there are still a few bright spots as journalists and independent media outlets in places like Hungary have demonstrated remarkable resilience and strength in the face of sustained political and economic pressure.
Perhaps no one has better mastered the art of media capture than Hungary’s now-ousted prime minister, Viktor Orbán. Despite Trump’s ill-fated bid to save Orbán’s reelection campaign, the Hungarian people in April proved that government pressure on the media has its limits, and that public interest reporting that holds leaders responsible for corruption and abuses of power cannot be so easily silenced.
At this critical time for democracy around the world, we must not become complacent to rhetorical threats against the media, no matter how banal or flippant they may seem. As history has proven, over and over again, attacks on the press are a harbinger of broader crackdowns on civil liberties and personal freedoms.
The US is not immune to democratic backsliding. Under Trump, attacks on the media have been a leading contributor to the US’ year-over-year tumble in global democracy indexes. We must not make the mistake of normalizing Trump-style attacks on the press. When the president makes a threat against the media, we should listen to what he says. The world’s autocrats certainly are.
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Occupation and Genocide Anywhere Are a Threat to Democracy and Freedom Everywhere
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all.
May 20, 2026
Earlier this year a number of participants announced their withdrawal from Australia’s Adelaide Festival’s "Writer’s Week" following the disinviting of Australian-Palestinian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah. The event was subsequently cancelled.
This made me think of United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese’s words—“The occupation of Palestine must be understood as part of a broader project of domination. This is not merely about the physical borders of historical Palestine. It is a systematic assertion of permanent supremacy that knows no border…”—delivered in her Nelson Mandela Lecture.
Indeed, the impact of the ongoing genocide and occupation not only echo far beyond Palestine, because of our shared humanity, but also because of the impact it is having on freedoms across the globe. The censorship of Abdel-Fattah is yet another example of this, and it is not only happening in Australia. Even in South Africa, a country that charged Israel with genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), artists are facing attempts to constrain their work.
The global wave of solidarity with Palestine has been used by some governments as a pretext to diminish freedoms by attacking the right to protest and political participation. While some did this by using laws that were already in place, others enacted ambiguous or unduly expansive legislation criminalizing Palestine solidarity and weaponizing the battle against antisemitism.
Protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
For instance in the US, Project Esther was released by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank also responsible for the odious Project 2025. The strategy’s recommendations have made their way into the policy of the Trump administration. This includes suing, firing, deporting, and defaming activists, organizations, and institutions by effectively claiming that involvement in advocacy for Palestine is material support of "a terrorist support network.” And also clamping down on college and university campuses where “more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained.”
The United Kingdom, on the other hand, used counterterrorism legislation to ban Palestine Action. This despite an intelligence assessment report undermining the government’s claims by finding that most of the groups’ activities are “not terrorism” and the ban risked wrongfully criminalizing people. While the ban has been found to be unlawful, since put into effect in July 2025 terrorism arrests have increased by 660%, with the majority of these linked to it.
Across Europe Palestine solidarity was particularly targeted, like in Germany where the homes of pro-Palestinian activists have been raided and support for Israel has become a prerequisite for citizenship.
The effects of these actions will not be limited to Palestine advocacy and puts all movements at risk by diminishing freedoms that enable organizing across issues. So protecting the freedom to advocate for Palestine is essential to protecting the right to protest, a fundamental tenet of democracy.
Research by investigative journalist and author of The Palestine Laboratory, Andrew Loewenstein, identified over 120 countries that have bought weapons or some form of repressive technology from Israel, all principally tested on Palestinians.
Israel provided military and strategic support to apartheid South Africa’s invasion of Angola, resulting in mass casualties; it is among the countries that armed perpetrators of Rwanda’s genocide and Myanmar at a time it was found to be committing a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” against its Rohingya Muslim population.
In modern times Israel’s offerings have included drones, spyware, and surveillance tools. Like the Israeli-made spyware being used by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an immigration agency that has been found to not only undertake abusive practices, but also violate its own policies.
For us in South Africa though, this is no surprise. The "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, where I was born and raised, was a product of the South African apartheid regime’s segregationist policies—which Israel took interest in—and stripped Black people of South African citizenship.
Like other homelands when it declared "independence" in 1977, it was shunned by the world. Despite its official stance, Israel was the only country to quietly recognize Bophuthatswana through informal connections and a quasi-diplomatic mission. A Jerusalem Post editorial in 1992 even referred to Bophuthatswana as "Africa’s Little Israel."
The backdrop of this relationship was the “clandestine alliance” between Israel and South Africa’s apartheid regime. Not only did the two countries collaborate on nuclear, but Israel would also become South Africa's largest weapons importer after the 1977 UN arms embargo and support the regime’s attempt to undermine sanctions.
It was a relationship of mutual admiration, an ideological alignment that in recent times is only matched by India’s admiration of Israel.
Apartheid had far-reaching consequences that extended beyond South Africa's borders. Along with unlawfully occupying Namibia, a colonial legacy embraced by the regime, it also launched hostilities in countries like Zambia and Zimbabwe. Similarly, Israel continues to conduct atrocities and aggression not only against the Palestinian people, but also in places like Lebanon, Yemen, and Syria. More recently, more than 300 people have been killed and scores injured following Israel's 10 minute assault in Lebanon—despite a two-week Middle East ceasefire, which Israel would afterwards claim did not include Lebanon. In the same way apartheid was deemed a threat to international peace and security, so too is the occupation and genocide in Palestine.
Not only is taking a stand against the overwhelming devastation that has been unleashed on Palestinians a duty, but also an obligation for people desiring peace and liberation for all. Because beyond the bombs, Israel has used international humanitarian law to try to justify the murder of civilians—a template being adopted by others like the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Like the people of South Africa and oppressed people everywhere, the people of Palestine too will continue to make their rightful claim to freedom. And for the sake of humanity everywhere, people of conscience must continue to stand with them and keep the fire of freedom within reach.
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