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palestine
Critics Warn Bipartisan Bill to Abolish UNRWA Will Be 'Death Sentence For Thousands of Palestinians'
"UNRWA is vital to keeping hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Palestinians alive."
Jul 17, 2026
Human rights advocates are raising alarm about a bipartisan bill in the US House of Representatives aimed at abolishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which they say will help Israel in its efforts to starve Palestinians in the occupied territories of food and medical aid.
Across Gaza, the West Bank, and other surrounding areas, UNRWA provides emergency food or cash assistance to roughly 2.6 million people and records about 10.5 million primary-care visits annually, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
But since the genocide in Gaza began, Israel has waged a multifront campaign to dismantle the agency, legally banning it from operating in Israeli territory, blocking it from bringing desperately needed aid and staff into Gaza, and pressuring nations around the world to cut off funding based on unfounded allegations that the organization is controlled by Hamas, which dissolved Gaza's governing body earlier this month as part of the ceasefire agreement with Israel.
The bill introduced in the US House on Wednesday by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) would require the State Department to "dismantle" and transition its services to other nongovernmental organizations.
"UNRWA has been corrupted by Hamas for years, with documented ties to terrorism," claimed Lawler, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa. "That’s why [Rep. Gottheimer] and I have introduced the bipartisan Replace UNRWA with Real Humanitarian Assistance Act to abolish UNRWA and replace it with trusted partners that will deliver aid to those who need it, without empowering terrorist organizations."
Gottheimer added that UNRWA "employs Hamas terrorists involved in the October 7 [2023] attack," echoing a claim that has been presented by Israel in its assault on the agency.
In 2024, Israel accused 19 of UNRWA's more than 13,000 employees in Gaza of having taken part in the attack, which resulted in the death of about 1,200 Israelis.
A UN investigation found that nine of the 19 employees may have been involved in the attack. Investigators found insufficient evidence to support involvement in nine cases and obtained no evidence in one case. UNRWA said the employment of the nine implicated staff members would be terminated.
Israeli officials have continued to portray UNRWA as a "civilian arm" of Hamas, alleging that hundreds of militants lurk among its ranks, but independent reviews have uncovered no evidence of this.
Nevertheless, many nations have taken Israel's claims at face value, initially cutting off funds and creating an existential funding crisis for the agency. While many have since resumed funding, its largest contributor, the US—which provided around a third of the agency's budget—has not, and the agency has been forced to scale back services for vulnerable refugees.
"This bill would be a death sentence for thousands of Palestinians who depend on UNRWA services," said Matt Duss, the executive vice president at the Center for International Policy (CIP) and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). "What's really going on here: using the false claim that 'UNRWA equals Hamas' to advance the Israeli right's goal of removing the Palestinian refugee issue from the agenda."
Adil Haque, a law professor at Rutgers University, raised concerns about what sort of NGO might replace UNRWA if it were fully dismantled.
"This is how we ended up with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and daily mass shootings of starving civilians," he said, referring to the US-Israeli nonprofit that supplanted UNRWA as the primary distributor of aid before shutting down after the October 2025 "ceasefire."
The organization consolidated aid distribution to a small number of sites under Israeli military control, where soldiers routinely fired into massive crowds of starving people. At least 859 people were killed near GHF sites in less than two months in 2025, and thousands more were wounded, according to a UN report.
Lawler and Gottheimer's bill has 23 co-sponsors, all of whom are Republicans. However, a majority of Democrats in both the House and Senate voted for a spending package in March 2024 that defunded the agency. Some Democrats have since sponsored legislation aimed at restoring the funds.
"UNRWA is vital to keeping hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Palestinians alive," said Dylan Williams, the vice president for government affairs at CIP, in response to a post by Lawler promoting the legislation. "Your attempt to kill it unconscionably compounds Israel’s genocide in Gaza."
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Politicians Should Stop Hiding Behind the 'Two-State Solution' Fantasy
Saying the phrase “two-state solution” has become little more than a way of dodging key facts that exist on the ground.
Jul 16, 2026
Creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel seemed feasible when President Bill Clinton hosted the signing of the Oslo accords at the White House in September 1993. The goal was reaffirmed in 2011 when 90 percent of the Senate co-sponsored a resolution supporting “a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
But today, the two-state scenario is far-fetched to the point of delusion if not evasion.
For politicians, it has become a box to check. According to data from the American Jewish Congress, every Democrat and most Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee currently say they support “the two-state solution.”
Whatever the rhetoric, ending Israeli control over Palestinians in the territories occupied since 1967 is not on the table.
A grim truth is that no one really knows what a genuine “solution” might be for the mega-tragedy that continues to unfold in Palestine.
“Nobody who talks about a so-called ‘two-state solution’ talks about an end to settlements and colonization, and an end to the occupation,” Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi said in an interview this year. “If you don’t have those as the preconditions, it’s not a state—it’s some reshuffling of a status quo of colonization and occupation.”
At best, only such reshuffling is on the horizon. The essence of colonization and occupation is baked into Israel’s Jewish nationalism that has hardened into systemic cruelty toward Palestinians undergoing genocide.
Yet the boilerplate refrain for a two-state solution has great political utility in the United States. For most politicians, it’s very handy for virtue signaling. The same holds true for pro-Israel pressure groups. Even AIPAC, while incapable of faulting the Israeli government for anything, blames Palestinians for refusing “to negotiate on the basis of the Trump peace framework—which envisions a two-state solution.”
Especially for politicians eager to have the deep-pocketed Israel lobby on their side at election time, saying “two-state solution” has become little more than a way of dodging key facts that exist on the ground. The Israeli military now controls 70 percent of Gaza after reducing it to rubble that has buried an unknown number of bodies. The 2.1 million Palestinians still alive in the enclave are confined to just 30 percent of its 141 square miles, under terrible living conditions.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank has pushed Palestinian people into smaller and smaller fragmented areas, divided by hundreds of checkpoints, while they face lawless violence from Israelis akin to the KKK’s terrorizing of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Several hundred settlements and outposts in the West Bank are now home to upward of 730,000 Israelis, with more arriving all the time.
Given such realities, advocates for a two-state solution have no credible answer to a basic question that is rarely asked: Where would the putative Palestinian state actually be located?
When Britain, Canada, and Australia announced their formal recognition of a Palestinian state last fall, putting the number of nations doing so over 150, they were recognizing a phantom. “Israelis and Palestinians alike say the possibility of a two-state solution seems more remote than ever,” the New York Times reported at the time. “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has devastated the enclave. Israeli settlements have become ever more entrenched in the West Bank.”
But in US politics, the routine is to maintain the convenient fantasy of a two-state solution. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was simply offering up requisite platitudes during a CNN interview in August 2024 when she declared her commitment to “work toward a two-state solution, where Israel is secure and in equal measure the Palestinians have security and self-determination and dignity.”
David Mandel, a Sacramento chapter leader of Jewish Voice for Peace, told me: “In light of demographic and political realities, a ‘two-state solution’ has become a mostly empty mantra, frequently mouthed by politicians who did nothing to bring it about when it might have been a viable path to end violence and build toward something better.” He added: “It has also become a political refuge for many Americans, including a great many Jews, who are generally progressive and want to differentiate themselves from Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, but only performatively, without joining efforts to end real violations of Palestinian rights like occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.”
A grim truth is that no one really knows what a genuine “solution” might be for the mega-tragedy that continues to unfold in Palestine. Unhelpful from Americans is the facile prescription of a two-state solution or, for that matter, any other supposed remedy. Claiming to know what’s best for Palestinians is built into a colonial mindset that has propelled intervention in the region for more than a hundred years.
The pivotal role for Americans is to end their government’s enabling of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The obvious step in that direction is to halt US weapons shipments to Israel, but much more is involved. “I want to stop American aid,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said during a June 30 interview on Israeli television. “It’s like welfare. I don’t want it.” Earlier in the month, Netanyahu wrote about his plan to “draw down US financial military assistance over the next decade” in a letter to Republican Representative Marlin Stutzman. “The time has now arrived for us to move from aid recipient to partner.”
Netanyahu touted what the congressman described as a “new framework of joint defense cooperation, co-development, coproduction and mutual investment in areas including advanced missile defense, artificial intelligence unmanned systems, cybersecurity and next generation military platforms.” That Israeli wish list is in line with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act now pending in the House. “The provision would speed efforts to embed Israeli technologies into US weapons systems in ways almost never codified into law, even for allies,” Human Rights Watch warns.
While Israel’s disrepute is now widespread among Americans, and more members of Congress are voting to cut off US weapons shipments, current moves to integrate the US and Israeli militaries are aiming to bypass public opinion and the political process. Increasingly, the pro-Israel mission in the United States is to circumvent democracy.
Is a two-state solution the best possibility for Palestine? That’s not for Americans to say. But there is a “two-state solution” that the United States could and should impose—on itself and Israel.
In this decade, the catastrophic US-Israel alliance has enabled not only genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians but also the ongoing wars of aggression on Iran and Lebanon. The alliance should not morph. It should end.
American refusal to support the genocidal state of Israel would be a “two-state solution.” And it might lead to solutions in Palestine.
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'Seismic Shift' as Over 100 House Democrats Vote to Cut Off US Military Aid to Israel
"This should be a blaring wake-up call for Democratic leaders," said one campaigner. "The political tide is clearly turning against unconditional US military support for Israel."
Jul 15, 2026
Nearly half of all Democrats in the House of Representatives voted Wednesday to cut off US military aid to Israel, a move that underscored a dramatic shift away from the US support the Mideast ally has enjoyed for nearly 60 years.
While House lawmakers ultimately rejected Rep. Thomas Massie's (R-Ky.) amendment to a national security spending bill that would have eliminated the $3.3 billion in annual foreign military financing provided to Israel’s military, the details of the vote were viewed as an encouraging sign by defenders of Palestine and the rule of law.
Massie and 103 Democrats voted for the measure, while 215 Republicans and 98 Democrats rejected it. The overall tally was 104 for, 314 against, and 10 "present" votes, with 9 absences.
"I cannot vote for aid to a country that committed genocide and has used tax dollars to detain Americans like me," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said ahead of the vote, referring to an incident in which heavily armed residents of an Israeli settler colony stopped and surrounded him last week in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine.
Speaking to reporters after the vote, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas)—who had urged colleagues to support Massie's amendment—noted, "It used to be that just a small number of House Democrats would vote against sending taxpayer dollars to weapons for the Israeli military."
"Today, over 100 House Democrats voted for a measure to block billions of dollars in weapons to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu," he continued. "That is enormous progress. That is a victory for our movement, for security, peace, and justice for all people."
The vote, Casar said, "sasends a strong message to Netanyahu that the days are over of an unaccountable blank check to his wars and his war crimes, at least from the Democratic Party."
"So this is an important moment because nothing will be the same on this issue ever again, I think, after this vote," he added.
CPC Chair @RepCasar, Deputy Chair @Ilhan Omar and @USProgressives on the historic vote by a majority of House Democrats to block $3 billion in weapons to Israel pic.twitter.com/T58q6J5LHZ
— Keane Bhatt (@KeaneBhatt) July 15, 2026
Speaking after Casar, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said that she was "surprised" by many of her colleagues' votes in favor of the amendment, "and I am proud of them."
"I am proud that they have finally decided to lead with their morals, that they finally dared to stand up, and that we are all finally listening to our constituents, who have been asking us to do the right thing for many years," she added.
The high vote count in favor of Massie's amendment came after a "dear colleague" letter from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries' (D-NY) expressing his opposition to the measure.
Palestine and human rights defenders hailed Wednesday's vote.
“Today’s vote reflects a seismic shift in US politics. What was once unquestioning bipartisan consensus to fund Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians is now breaking apart," Jewish Voice for Peace Action political director Beth Miller said in a statement. "While it is shameful that the House failed to pass this amendment, it is also now clear that it is impossible for Congress to ignore our voices."
"The overwhelming majority of Democratic voters are demanding that we halt US military funding to Israel, and every Democrat who ignored these calls should fear for their seat,” Miller added.
Margaret DeReus, executive director of policy projects at the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), said Wednesday's vote "reflects the popular will of Americans, and the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters who do not want to see another penny of our tax dollars fund Israel’s genocidal military."
"No more weapons to Israel is a principled demand, a legal obligation, and now a political necessity for any Democrat in office," DeReus added. "Democratic lawmakers who continue to stand with [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's] fringe agenda of funding to Israel, and against their voters on the moral issue of our time, are inviting a primary challenge.
The United Nations' International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations. A UN panel of experts concluded last year that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Meanwhile, the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, where more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, most of them civilians, since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, including over 9,000 people who are missing and presumed dead and buried beneath rubble.
In addition to the $3.3 billion in annual military aid the US gives Israel under a 2016 memorandum of understanding signed by then-President Barack Obama, the Biden and Trump administrations have provided billions of dollars in additional armed aid to Israel since it began waging its US-backed war on Gaza.
All told, the US has provided approximately $174 billion in direct bilateral assistance and missile defense funding—over $300 billion when adjusted for inflation—since the modern Israeli state's atrocity-laden founding in 1948. This makes Israel the largest overall beneficiary of US foreign aid since World War II.
US aid dramatically increased after the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, and the attack that same year by Israeli forces on the USS Liberty, which killed or wounded more than 200 Navy sailors in what numerous senior US officials believed was a deliberate attack. Last month, Massie introduced a resolution honoring the 34 Americans killed and 174 wounded in the Liberty attack.
Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said in a statement that "congressional Democrats are finally starting to catch up to the American people, who no longer want to give Israel a blank check."
"This should be a blaring wake-up call for Democratic leaders," Kharrazian added. "The political tide is clearly turning against unconditional US military support for Israel. Leadership can no longer dismiss this position as marginal or politically untenable. Members should listen to their constituents, stop shielding Israel’s government from accountability, and support future efforts to end the flow of US weapons and military financing."
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Trump Officials Sued Over ICC Sanctions Designed to 'Muzzle Palestine Advocacy'
"The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide."
Jul 15, 2026
A pair of advocacy organizations on Wednesday sued President Donald Trump and top members of his administration over sanctions targeting the International Criminal Court and its supporters, arguing the punitive measures violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution and illegally "muzzle Palestine advocacy."
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Manhattan by Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG), contends that Trump's Executive Order 14203 unlawfully restricts Americans' ability to seek "justice on Palestine at the ICC" and work with human rights organizations sanctioned "solely for calling on the ICC to investigate Israeli and American nationals."
"The Trump administration is using the blunt instrument of economic sanctions not only to punish human rights defenders but to police the political expression of millions of Americans," said Omar Shakir, executive director of DAWN. "The government is violating the constitutional rights of American citizens in order to shield officials of a foreign government who have committed a genocide."
DAWN notes that, under Trump's February 2025 executive order, the administration has sanctioned ICC officials "as well as leading Palestinian human rights groups al-Haq, al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)," as well as Francesca Albanese, the United Nations' special rapporteur for the human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Trump's order authorizes sanctions against "any foreign person" deemed to have "materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of," ICC efforts to "investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute" Americans or officials from allied nations, such as Israel.
The organizations behind the new lawsuit explain that "because the government can interpret the term 'service' to encompass anything that confers a benefit on the recipient, groups like DAWN and TAAG could face civil and criminal charges if they engage in routine advocacy with the sanctioned parties—for example, filing a brief with the ICC encouraging it to investigate possible crimes, sharing evidence or advocacy ideas with Palestinian human rights groups or Ms. Albanese, or working with them on a campaign to lift the sanctions."
“The chilling effect on plaintiffs has been profound,” the lawsuit states. “They now face prison terms and ruinous fines if, in their interactions with the designated parties, they provide or receive anything that defendants could plausibly characterize as a ‘service’—an extraordinarily capacious term that potentially reaches any act that confers a benefit on its recipient. Fearing liability, plaintiffs—and countless others like them—have turned to self-censorship.”
Tarik Kanaana, president of TAAG, said that "with this executive order, Trump has put himself and those in the U.S. government above the law, shielding them from any accountability for their roles in the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon and for war crimes around the globe funded by US taxpayers."
"As US taxpayers, we have the right to hold our government accountable for how it uses this public resource," said Kanaana. "That right cannot be taken away."
The lawsuit comes days after the US State Department launched a sweeping broadside against the ICC, an independent tribunal based in The Hague that investigates and prosecutes individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other atrocities. In late 2024, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the Trump administration officials named as a plaintiff in the new lawsuit, vowed on Monday to "dismantle" the ICC with increasingly aggressive sanctions against the court and its supporters and international pressure. (Neither the US nor Israel are party to the Rome Statute, which established the ICC.)
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International's secretary-general, warned in a statement on Tuesday that if nations fail to fight back against the US assault on the ICC, "they will acquiesce to a new era of lawlessness, impunity, and rampant injustice."
"Now is not the time to appease. Now is the time to resist," said Callamard. "For the good of humanity, victims’ hopes of justice, and the prospect of lasting global security, the international community must come together, stand up to the bullies in the White House and State Department and protect the international rule of law. We must not accept a reality where the most powerful have the least legal responsibility.”
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Mahmoud Khalil Sues Trump Officials for Conspiracy Against Pro-Palestinian Organizers
"This case will expose the scheme that sought to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US."
Jul 14, 2026
A lawsuit filed by former Columbia University student organizer Mahmoud Khalil wasn't his first legal challenge stemming from his arrest last year for his Palestinian rights advocacy, but he emphasized that his decision to take members of the Trump administration and private pro-Israel organizations to court was "about far more than what was done to" him when he was detained for 104 days.
"This case will expose the scheme that sought to criminalize the Palestine solidarity movement in the US," said Khalil in a statement. "It is about a coordinated, ongoing plot to punish, silence, and intimidate everyone who dares to dissent and speak out for Palestinian liberation. We will hold them accountable.”
Represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the law firm Beldock Levine & Hoffman, Khalil sued the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission, Betar, Trump administration adviser Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, his predecessor Kristi Noem, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, and John Armstrong, an official at the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.
The lawsuit was filed under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which was passed to stop efforts by vigilante groups like the KKK to coordinate with the government to strip individuals of their constitutional rights.
"Mahmoud is now using this statute to affirmatively challenge the illegal, anti-Palestinian, and anti-democratic public-private conspiracy to harass, intimidate, and punish Palestinians and their allies," said CCR.
Khalil: “I will not stop fighting until everyone who willingly contributed to my missing the birth of my son and to taking 104 days of my life from me answers for what they’ve done.” pic.twitter.com/x6iTgoxsXa
— Erik Uebelacker (@Uebey) July 14, 2026
As the Trump administration continues its efforts to deport Khalil, the lawsuit traces the alleged public-private conspiracy against pro-Palestinian organizers to October 2023, when Miller "vowed to punish Palestinians and their supporters through arrest and deportation."
A year later, the Heritage Foundation published Project Esther, which conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism, claimed all pro-Palestinian organizers were Hamas supporters, and pledged to execute a plan to deport foreign protesters “when a willing administration occupies the White House.”
The Heritage Foundation said a “public-private partnership" would be required to carry out Project Esther. The lawsuit alleges that Canary Mission, an anonymously run Israeli surveillance and doxing organization, and Betar, a self-described vigilante group with a history of surveilling and harassing supporters of Palestinian rights, provided that partnership.
"Between March and May 2025, Miller, Rubio, Noem, and Armstrong used ICE to arrest or to try to arrest at least nine students or scholars pre-selected by the private groups," said CCR. "The federal defendants continue to seek Mr. Khalil’s deportation and pursue the conspiracy through sham, corrupted immigration proceedings under their control. Working together, the government and private co-conspirators sought to deny Palestinians and their supporters their constitutional rights: to equal protection, to freedom of speech and travel, to freedom from punitive detention, and, ultimately, to exist in this country."
As The New York Times reported, former Heritage Foundation national security director Robert Greenway said two months after Khalil was arrested that it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”
CCR pointed to a "range of harms" Khalil has suffered as the result of being targeted by the Trump administration, starting when he was arrested in March 2025. During three months in detention, he was sent to Jena, Louisiana—nearly 1,300 miles away from his family and lawyers—and was forced to miss the birth of his first child. He also faces "an ongoing threat to his lawful immigration status in the United States," with his attorneys preparing to appeal his deportation case to the US Supreme Court.
Baher Azmy, legal director for CCR, said that "the brazenness of this conspiratorial plan is matched only by the exquisitely detailed and shamelessly public record the conspirators produced of a collaborative plan to silence the growing student movement protesting US support for Israel’s genocidal campaign," referring to the country's assault on Gaza that began in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
“The conspirators acted through forms of state repression and arbitrary detention that numerous courts have found are blatantly unconstitutional," said Azmy. "They targeted Mr. Khalil, smeared him, and subjected him to the torment of detention for nothing other than being Palestinian and supporting Palestinian rights in order to send a message of terror across the student movement for Palestine."
"The KKK Act was designed to prevent conspiracies to stifle advocacy for political freedom," he added, "and together we are demanding accountability for this outrageous injustice.”
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From the Haymarket 8 to the Michigan 8
How the state uses conspiracy charges to crush social movements.
Jul 14, 2026
On the morning of June 10, 2026, the FBI, together with an ensemble of local and state police departments, including the University of Michigan Police Department, conducted a series of simultaneous raids and arrests in Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin in spectacular militarized fashion. The operation targeted eight individuals engaged in Palestine solidarity activism at the University of Michigan.
That afternoon, FBI director Kashyap Patel announced that the targeted individuals “engaged in a coordinated campaign of violent, criminal acts seeking to pressure University of Michigan leaders and other businesses in the Eastern District of Michigan to cut off all ties with Israel.” The alleged violent, criminal acts in question? Property damage. The coordinated campaign in question? Per their indictment, “using encrypted messages, social media, and overseas collaboration platforms […] [and] the internet and social media to broadcast their message.”
To be clear, the Michigan Eight are not being charged with property damage or vandalism. Instead, they are facing charges of conspiracy to transmit a threat, conspiracy to tamper with a witness, and destruction of property to prevent seizure. Less than a week after the raids against the Michigan Eight, 15 individuals were similarly indicted in Minnesota on various conspiracy charges for their participation in community activism and mutual aid in the context of Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) Operation Metro Surge that saw 2,000 ICE agents deployed in Minnesota, leading to over 3,000 arrests, two protesters shot by ICE agents, and one individual dead in ICE custody. The conspiracy charges faced by the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15 carry a maximum sentence of 5-20 years and, when there are multiple counts of it, defendants face potentially decades in prison. A week after the Minnesota 15 indictments, anti-ICE protesters were sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison after being convicted of various conspiracy charges related to protest activity at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas.
These are just three out of several other recent cases involving social movements and conspiracy charges. What links them is not the recurrence of some crime called “conspiracy,” but the conversion of ordinary political association into proof of unlawful intent. Conspiracy charges are among the most common charges brought against social movements precisely because they represent an extremely broad, far-reaching, and powerful tool of the state. You do not need to have taken any action, nor do you need to know the other alleged co-conspirators to be found guilty. Federal prosecutors simply have to establish that at least one alleged conspirator has taken an overt (legal or illegal) act toward the alleged plan. Needless to say, virtually anything can be claimed to be an overt act.
The only conspiracy related to the Michigan Eight or the Minnesota 15 is the one that has been constructed by the federal government.
Aside from formal charges of conspiracy, there is also the more diffuse concept of conspiracy that the prosecution in these cases use more generally to paint activists as dangerous, terroristic individuals engaged in a plot against the state. For example, during the detention hearing on June 12, 2026, for four of the Michigan Eight, one of the federal prosecutors, Margaret M. Smith, assistant United States attorney at the Department of Justice, made several references to the defendants being part of a revolution and a “revolution organization.” This language, as we shall see, has a long association with conspiracy charges. It does more than just describe the alleged beliefs of defendants. It represents the bridge by which belief, affiliation, and collective organization can be made to stand in for actual evidence of particular criminal acts.
But what does the nebulous concept of conspiracy mean and why does the government keep using it and who is it meant to target? The late Michael Parenti once noted that “conspiracy means to collude together in secrecy for what are potentially illegal or immoral ends and [the ruling elites] do this all the time and they talk about the necessity of it and they even give it a name, they call it national security.” Indeed, the only conspiracy related to the Michigan Eight or the Minnesota 15 is the one that has been constructed by the federal government. In fact, across more than a century of American history, the recurring pattern that has shaped the state’s response to dissent and protest has been the tendency to treat collective organization itself as a crime. The First Amendment may protect the freedom of speech and assembly as the very conditions of democratic politics, but conspiracy charges have long made these supposed rights conditional.
The Long History of Conspiracy Charges
The state has a long history of using the concept and charge of conspiracy as a weapon against social movements that have sought to expand democratic freedoms. We must therefore place the particular case of the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15 in a longer history that involves the Haymarket Trial (1886-1887), the Espionage Act (1917), the Smith Act (1940), the Anti-Riot Act (1968), RICO (1970), and more contemporary post-9/11 developments such as the Patriot Act (2001). These historical moments represent the cumulative expansion in what the state can make conspiracy mean: from attributing responsibility for an unidentified act to an entire radical milieu, to treating speech as dangerous, group membership as suspicious, mundane logistical organization as evidence of criminal intent, and decentralized movements as racketeering enterprises. While, in case of the Michigan Eight, the targets are Palestine solidarity activists, and while in the case of the Minnesota 15, the targets are anti-ICE organizers, the tools that have been assembled and are still being expanded and perfected can and will be applied to other groups. What is at stake here is no less than ability to collectively organize to create a better and more just world and to resist oppression.
In 1941, the legal scholar Albert J. Harno wrote that, due to its “elasticity” and “vague boundaries,” the concept of conspiracy “presents serious potential dangers of abuse.” Only, there is nothing “potential” about its dangers. From some of its earliest applications right to the last two weeks, the charge of conspiracy has been the bane of organized labor and other broad social movements that the state has sought to repress. One facet of the seemingly endless elasticity of the concept of conspiracy relates to the category of unindicted conspirators. In the case of the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15, this term is constantly invoked in the indictments. Aside from the fact that unindicted conspirators cannot testify on behalf of the defense, prosecutors can introduce the out-of-court statements of unindicted conspirators in court as evidence against the defendants without these statements considered hearsay. Prosecutors can thus introduce texts, emails, phone calls, et cetera, involving unindicted conspirators as evidence against the defendants even if the defendants were not a direct party to these communications. Moreover, the shadow of not knowing whether one is or is not an unindicted conspirator introduces even more fear into social movements. This uncertainty is a feature of conspiracy law and one of its political effects, thus extending the coercive reach of an indictment beyond the courtroom.
Conspiracy and Labor Repression
Nineteenth-century labor cases show where this logic first acquired its legal form and political function. Labor Studies scholar Risa Lieberwitz notes that the charge of conspiracy has historically “provided a powerful weapon against groups advocating political and social change [and] the labor movement [in particular] was the target of many criminal conspiracy prosecutions during the 19th century, beginning with the Philadelphia Cordwainers’ Case of 1806, which was both the first criminal conspiracy trial in the United States, and the first recorded labor case.” If the Cordwainers’ Case demonstrated that workers coming together to demand higher wages could be a criminal conspiracy, the trial of the Haymarket Eight showed how conspiracy could make an entire political milieu culpable for an act that the state could not directly attribute to any one defendant.
On May 4, 1886, a bomb was thrown during a labor demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago. Till this day, no one can say for certain who threw that bomb. During the trial, prosecutors could not prove who threw it nor prove that the defendants had planned the bombing. They could not even, in some cases, prove that they had been present when the bomb was thrown. What they could prove was that the Haymarket Eight had given speeches, written articles, edited newspapers, belonged to radical organizations, and broadly advocated for a social revolution.
The concept of conspiracy was what allowed the prosecution to transform this into evidence of collective responsibility for the bombing. The prosecution did not need to identify the bomber; it only needed to argue that the Haymarket Eight had been part of a conspiracy to create the conditions in which such a bombing became likely. In other words, the defendants were guilty of belonging to and contributing to a radical workers’ milieu that the state had defined as dangerous. Haymarket helped established what would become a recurring pattern where membership in particular groups (whether well-defined or as vague as “antifa”) and speech (like posting messages on social media) and acts (like organizing a meeting or using the internet) can become evidence of a conspiracy.
Conspiracy, Speech, and Political Organizations
Haymarket thus supplied the basic argument that the state would repeatedly adapt: When direct proof of individual action was absent, prosecutors could substitute much fuzzier ideas. World War I expanded this basic framework under the sign of national security. The federal government used the Espionage Act of 1917 against socialists, labor organizers, anti-war activists, and others who opposed conscription or otherwise criticized the war. During this time, the Department of Justice conducted a series of mass raids and arrests, collectively known as the Palmer Raids (1919–1920), in more than 30 cities and towns, targeting thousands of individuals, particularly Italian-American and Jewish-American socialists, the so-called “hyphenated Americans” that President Woodrow Wilson railed against, warning that “any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”
In Schenck v. United States (1919), the Supreme Court unanimously held that the First Amendment did not protect Charles Schenck, who had distributed anti-draft and anti-war flyers to draft-age men, from prosecution under the Espionage Act precisely because, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. concluded, "The words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.” In other words, the Supreme Court ruled that otherwise lawful speech could be punished if it was thought likely to obstruct or encourage resistance to government aims.
In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the Supreme Court did not expressly overrule Schenck v. United States, but it effectively superseded Schenck's clear-and-present-danger standard and, on the surface, introduced a more expansive interpretation of the First Amendment, holding that advocacy of illegal action cannot be punished unless it is “directed towards inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.” Yet, the so-called Brandenburg test still reveals the subjective nature of, well, law in general, its interpretation, and its enforcement. In this case, the key subjective terms are “imminent” and “likely.” Whether an action is imminent and whether speech is likely to produce an action requires a level of guesswork that is wholly reminiscent of the trial of the Haymarket Eight.
Described as a “prison for ideas” by the National Committee to Win Amnesty for the Smith Act Victims in 1954, the Smith Act of 1940 would extend this logic within the context of the Cold War. Among other things, the Smith Act criminalized “knowingly or willingly advocate, abet, advise, or teach the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing any government in the United States by force or violence.” In the late 1940s and 1950s, communists in particular were prosecuted under the law, not because they had launched an armed insurrection, or even taken material steps toward an armed insurrection, but because they belonged to organizations that taught Marxist theory and advocated for communist revolution.
Like their predecessors in 1886 who did not have to prove that the Haymarket Eight had thrown the bomb, prosecutors in these cases did not have to prove that communists had entered into an agreement to commit a crime (the most basic definition of conspiracy), but that the Communist Party itself was a criminal enterprise. The state did not need to demonstrate that any communists had agreed to carry out a specific unlawful act in the near future. Instead, their membership in the party and their ideological beliefs were sufficient proof of criminal liability. Charisse Burden-Stelly summarizes it well, writing that “membership in the CPUSA automatically meant conspiracy of insurrection.”
Conspiracy and Protest
In the context of popular protests and anti-war mobilization, the Anti-Riot Act of 1968 made it a federal offense to cross state lines or use interstate facilities with the intent to incite, organize, or encourage a riot. If the Smith Act treated membership as evidence of insurrectionary conspiracy, the Anti-Riot Act adapted the same logic to the mass movements of the 1960s by treating travel, communication, planning, and assembly as evidence of an intention to produce disorder. The Chicago Seven would be the first to be prosecuted under the Anti-Riot Act and charged with conspiracy to incite a riot and crossing state lines with intent to incite a riot. Again, we see the danger in the elasticity of the key terms of the act that allowed the federal government to frame lawful activities taken to organize a protest, in this case at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, as evidence of unlawful intent, namely, to incite a riot.
On February 18, 1970, seven defendants were acquitted on conspiracy charges, two were acquitted on all charges, and the remaining five were convicted of travelling across state lines with intent to incite a riot and sentenced to five years in prison. Over two years later, those convictions would be overturned by an appeals court panel that found numerous errors made by the judge. Yet, the damage to the defendants’ lives and to the broader public had been done. Even when defendants are acquitted or have their convictions overturned, conspiracy charges succeed in the ideological work for which they are perhaps best designed, leaving behind a public narrative in which dissent and protest are not cornerstones of democracy, but dangerous, hidden plots conducted by shadowy figures.
Even unsuccessful prosecutions impose a real material and mental cost on defendants and, more generally, they impose a heavy cost on the public at large, forcing all of us to consider whether participation in collective protest or forms of dissent may expose us to repression.
The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act of 1970 would give an even more expansive tool for prosecutors to bind heterogeneous individuals and acts under the label of a single, criminal enterprise. RICO has increasingly been used by federal and state prosecutors to target labor unions and broad social movements. The statute’s breadth gives prosecutors considerable flexibility in defining a criminal enterprise and explaining how otherwise separate acts fit together.
In September 2023, Georgia prosecutors brought a sweeping state RICO indictment against dozens of activists associated with opposition to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, commonly known as Cop City. The indictment alleged that a broad protest movement constituted a criminal enterprise and cited a wide range of activities, including alleged acts of property destruction, distribution of literature, mutual aid, reimbursements, fundraising, communications among activists, and protests and demonstrations.
Prosecutors used the flimsiest of evidence to rope even more people into this “conspiracy” as “co-conspirators.” Signing a petition was enough to get a visit by the police and having mud on one’s shoes in a forest was taken as evidence of participation in alleged acts of property damage at a construction site. The significance of the Stop Cop City case lies less in the specific allegations, but in the indictment’s construction of a broad social movement as a unified, organized criminal enterprise. Social movements are almost by definition heterogenous and decentralized. They always comprise individuals with different goals, tactics, and levels of commitment.
The dismissal of the RICO charges against the defendants in December 2025 does not make this case any less troubling (the state could refile charges or repeal the dismissal). On the contrary, the dismissal sharpens the stakes of indictments like this. While the dismissal shows how weak the charges were in the first place, the state successfully punished the defendants. Even unsuccessful prosecutions impose a real material and mental cost on defendants and, more generally, they impose a heavy cost on the public at large, forcing all of us to consider whether participation in collective protest or forms of dissent may expose us to repression. From this perspective, it does not matter much that a court may eventually reject prosecutorial overreach when the threat of prosecution may shape the way we behave.
Responding to Repression with Trust and Solidarity
One lesson that we can learn from the historical continuity between each of these episodes is that movements for economic and racial justice, movements against wars and imperialism, and anti-fascism as a concept (through the targeting of “antifa”) have all been described, in different moments, as threats to public order. In each case, the state and its prosecutors have been able to portray individuals participating in these movements as public enemies. The language of conspiracy is especially useful in this process because it turns ordinary features of collective life into suspicion. Each of these historical cases has contributed to the ever-expanding use of conspiracy charges in state repression of social movements. Across these cases, the object of prosecution moves further and further away from identifiable unlawful acts to the social relations that make collective action possible. This past should inform our understanding of the recent cases and remind us not to take at face value the charges against the Michigan Eight and the Minnesota 15.
Like the cases from the past, the present charges are an attack on political speech and, more broadly, all those who seek to collectively work toward a more just and freer future. Isaac Sant, one of the Minnesota 15, has noted that what they are facing is “not a normal criminal trial; this is a political case, this is political repression against organizers.” The long history of conspiracy charges and state repression suggests that political repression cannot be defeated alone in the courtroom. This is because conspiracy cases do not just target the named defendants; the broader targets are concepts like trust, collective organization, and solidarity, that is to say the very bases of social movements.
Like previous generations of workers faced with political repression, we must seize the current crises as an opportunity to revitalize the labor movement from the ground up. That revitalization is not going to come from union leadership, but from you and other rank-and-file worker-organizers. As the veteran labor organizer Daniel Gross recently noted, in Unions of Our Own (2026), “A truly just society with reliable economic security, where we can live freely on a healthy planet, simply cannot happen without organized workers and liberatory unions.”
This moment threatens our very ability to collectively organize for a better world at the same time as it represents an opportunity for workers everywhere to double down on collective organization, whether it is to keep our fellow workers safe from abductions; to organize toward divestment from companies profiting from war and genocide; or to fight the daily struggles of autonomy, respect, and dignity on the shop floor. In all cases, every victory, big or small, is not a concession, but a privilege that workers have wrested from state and capital. The stakes of not meeting this moment could not be heavier.
Correction: The piece has been updated to reflect the fact that Brandenburg v. Ohio superseded, rather than overruled, Schenck v. United States.
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World Cup Fans Are Cheering for a Free Palestine
The support shown for Palestinians has been especially inspiring at a World Cup that, like others, has been tainted by more signs of corruption.
Jul 14, 2026
The Palestinian national soccer team isn’t playing in this year’s World Cup. But despite a national and global crackdown on pro-Palestinian protest and speech, the games have witnessed an outpouring of support for Palestinians. Fans, players, and coaches from the likes of Egypt, Scotland, Brazil, South Korea, Morocco, Mexico, Turkey, Norway, Senegal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Algeria, Spain, and perhaps all 48 countries playing have publicly shown support for Palestinian lives and their struggle for freedom and a return to lands taken since 1948.
This comes after nearly three years in which the world has watched the Israeli government respond to October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, which killed around 1,200, with a war that has killed more than 73,000, mostly civilians, and is widely considered a genocide by international experts.
Games have featured Palestinian flags held aloft in stadiums and by players and coaches on the fields. Chants of “Free Palestine” have come from the stands and the streets surrounding games. People have attended games wearing the Palestinian national team jersey. Others have flown banners reading, “Kick Israel Out of FIFA” and “Red Card Israel.” (FIFA is the infamously corrupt international organization that runs the tournament; a red card is given to soccer players ejected and banned from games for foul play.)
The support shown for Palestinians has been especially inspiring at a World Cup that, like others, has been tainted by more signs of corruption. Most recently, President Donald Trump called FIFA’s president to overturn a red-card ban for a US player so that he could participate in what turned out to be a lopsided loss for Team America. The FIFA president also awarded Trump a meaningless “peace prize” not long before the United States joined Israel in an illegal and historically unpopular war in Iran.
“Palestinian families don’t get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear.”
Expressions of solidarity at soccer games don’t change anything on their own. During the days of the tournament alone, the Israeli government, which receives extensive military backing from the US government, has killed dozens of people in Gaza. Before a match between Argentina and Egypt, Israel killed Mohammed al-Wahidi, a representative of an Egyptian humanitarian organization in Gaza, along with two children and another person, on the day al-Wahidi was organizing a Gaza City viewing party to watch the game. (Al-Wahidi is one of more than 1,000 Palestinians, including hundreds of women and children, reported killed by the Israeli military in Gaza since the officially declared “ceasefire” last year.)
A soccer tournament, alone, doesn’t solve anything, Palestinian journalist Dina El-Kurd has said: “Palestinian families don’t get their homes back because people flew a flag in a stadium. But movements build over time and through moments of visibility, through the accumulation of pressure, and through the refusal to let the issue disappear.”
Egypt’s coach Hossam Hassan has been one of the most bravely and consistently outspoken. “Before being Arab, Muslim, Christian, or anything else, I am a human being,” he said in a press conference when he might have only spoken about playing against probably history’s greatest-ever player in Lionel Messi and Argentina. “Through football—the world’s soft power—I want to send a message,” he said. “Please let the Palestinian people live. I ask athletes and journalists everywhere to help deliver that message.”
Along with coaches, journalists, and players—including, one hopes, the likes of Messi—isn’t that a message to share at viewing parties, bars, and family gatherings during the World Cup’s final matches—and beyond?
The red, green, and black colors of the Palestinian flag are easy enough to apply as face paint. I’ll be taking some small steps by wearing a Palestine jersey and using the games to raise funds for humanitarian relief in Gaza. Discussing the morality of continuing US military support for the Israeli government is a start.
Journalist El Kurd says she’s felt a kind of hope seeing the flag waived in stadiums: “It’s not the hope that this will be resolved soon or easily, but the hope that says Palestinians are not alone and the cause is not forgotten.”
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Machine Gun-Toting Israeli Settlers Detain Ro Khanna During Trip to Occupied West Bank
"These hoodlums come in with machine guns—M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us. They block off the road."
Jul 11, 2026
Rep. Ro Khanna this week was detained by a group of Israeli settlers whom he described as "hoodlums... with machine guns" while making a visit to a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank.
In an interview with Reuters published on Saturday, Khanna (D-Calif.) said he and his tour group were surrounded by armed settlers as they were traveling through the West Bank on Wednesday.
"We were at a village that Israeli settlers had destroyed, they had destroyed the school, they had destroyed that village, and we were just looking at it," said Khanna. "And these hoodlums come in with machine guns—M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us. They block off the road."
The California Democrat said that the settlers called in members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to help them deal with him and his group.
"The IDF is on their side," Khanna remarked, "not on the side of the Americans."
Cameron Kasky, an aide to Khanna, told Reuters that the group was held for over an hour before officials whom he believed to be police intervened and secured their release.
The IDF told Reuters that both military troops and police officers dispersed the settlers who had set up a roadblock near the small Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta.
Khanna wasn't the only American to have a run-in with Israeli settlers this week, as CNN reported that four settlers attacked groups of journalists, including CNN reporters and crew, who were traveling through an area north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah on Saturday.
As the journalists were driving, four settlers blocked off the road with their cars and began attacking the reporters' vehicles with wooden clubs and metal rods.
"The settlers then began to jump on the vehicle behind CNN's—carrying another group of journalists—and smashed the windshield of that vehicle," the network reported. "Another group of settlers tried to block a separate exit route before chasing the journalists towards the town of Sinjil."
Israeli police arrived on the scene and arrested four settlers who were allegedly responsible for the attacks, CNN reported.
"The Israel Police and the IDF view any manifestation of violence or causing damage to property very seriously," the Israeli officers said after the arrests, "especially when it concerns media personnel performing their work."
Israeli settlers for years have carried out violent attacks on Palestinians living in the West Bank, and witnesses have regularly described IDF soldiers at the scene either standing by as the attacks occur or even actively helping the attackers.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that claims about settler violence have been "blown up beyond belief," describing attacks as being carried out by a small number of "juvenile delinquents."
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Presumptive British PM Burnham's Gaza Apology Met With Skepticism
"Andy Burnham knows that war crimes are being committed in Gaza, but has he got the courage to do anything about it?" asked the Greens' deputy leader.
Jul 10, 2026
Labour MP Andy Burnham, who is on track to become Britain's next prime minister following Keir Starmer's resignation last month, apologized Thursday for his party's initial response to Israel's genocidal war on Gaza—but critics said his circumspect atonement fell short of the mark.
"Let me start by saying the unbearable suffering in Gaza is a scar on our collective conscience," Burnham, the erstwhile Manchester mayor who won last month's Makerfield by-election, said in a three-minute video. "It's completely unacceptable that innocent Palestinians, including children, continue to be killed, that there's still a humanitarian crisis with too little aid getting in, and that the Israeli military continues to expand the area it controls in Gaza."
"We've got to do more to put pressure on the Israeli government," he asserted. "The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better. Yes, we have taken some important steps. These include recognizing the Palestinian state, placing sanctions on Israeli ministers, and imposing waves of sanctions on violent settlers and the organizations that support them."
"But let's be honest, the UK was too slow to call for a ceasefire, and we must now do more to strengthen our approach," Burnham continued. "Israel continues to violate the ceasefire agreement, killing innocent Palestinians. We're seeing a surge in settler violence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and the continued expansion of illegal settlements, displacing Palestinian communities."
The lawmaker accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government of "clearly attempting to make a two-state solution impossible."
"That's why we need to do more, which includes looking at further sanctions, both on those involved in the violence in Gaza, but also looking at measures to ban trading goods with illegal settlements," he said.
"There's increasing evidence that war crimes appear to have been committed," Burnham added. "There must be accountability for the depth of the suffering the people of Gaza have experienced. Ultimately, however, it must be for the international courts to determine, rather than politicians."
The International Criminal Court has already issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister, for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, where more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded, most of them civilians, since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. The International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel filed by South Africa and formally supported by nearly 20 nations.
While some Zionist UK MPs denounced Burnham's comments as anti-Israel, Burnham's pledge of a "fair and balanced approach" to Israel and Palestine, his placing of the onus on courts and not elected officials, and the fact that he did not say the word "genocide" in his apology drew criticism from Palestine defenders.
"Gaza has now endured more than 1,000 days of genocide," Green Party Leader Zack Polanski said in response to the video. "Andy Burnham must answer: As prime minister, will he end Britain's participation in genocide or continue it?"
Deputy Green Leader Mothin Ali told The Guardian that Burnham is hiding behind international courts “because admitting that the British government knows war crimes are being committed would trigger a legal duty to immediately halt arms sales."
Andy Burnham knows that war crimes are being committed in Gaza, but has he got the courage to do anything about it?Britain must halt arms sales to Israel immediately
[image or embed]
— Mothin Ali (@mothinali.bsky.social) July 9, 2026 at 2:58 PM
Adnan Hmidan, chair of the Palestinian Forum in Britain, said that Burnham's "recognition that far stronger action is needed to confront the grave violations committed against the Palestinian people" is an important step.
"But the scale of devastation, killing, starvation, and forced displacement inflicted upon Gaza demands far more than acknowledgement," he continued. "It requires courageous political action."
"As an increasing number of legal experts and international human rights organizations have concluded, we hope more British political leaders will recognize that the atrocities committed in Gaza constitute genocide under international law, and will support the measures necessary to ensure accountability, end impunity, and uphold international law without exception or double standards," Hmidan added.
British political commentator Saul Staniforth said on social media that "it was clear from the very start that what Israel was doing in Gaza was genocide... and yet over two-and-a-half years later, Burnham still refuses to call it genocide. Why? Because if he did, he'd have to take action as PM."
"Burnham only made his statement yesterday on Gaza because of pressure, and meaningful action by a government led by him will only happen because of pressure," Staniforth added.
Queen Mary University of London politics professor Tim Bale told Al Jazeera that Burnham is “trying to repair damage, but his remarks are probably more symbolic than substantive."
Noting that Labour has “only just recovered from the accusations of antisemitism that were swirling around it during the [Jeremy] Corbyn era," Bale asserted that “the UK is already at the edge of what it’s likely to do and say on Israel.”
“It also has to worry about maintaining relations with a profoundly pro-Israel US administration,” the professor added.
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The Pro-Palestine Movement Is Rewriting the Rules of US Politics
Recent election cycles represented the first time in modern American history where Palestine factored as a major, decisive variable in how citizens cast their ballots.
Jul 10, 2026
A major showdown on the House floor seemed imminent. An amendment, advanced by the Rules Committee, was poised to force a rare and telling record vote on stripping Israel of $3.3 billion in annual US military aid.
Brought forward by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie (Ky.) and drawing support from key progressive Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Greg Casar (Texas), the measure was set to put every lawmaker's stance on unconditional foreign assistance under a public microscope.
However, the high-stakes vote never actually happened. On June 30, the entire legislative package collapsed under the weight of Washington's internal political warfare. In a dramatic procedural twist, a coalition of Democrats and disgruntled conservative Republicans voted down the mandatory "rule" required to even begin debating the underlying State Department spending bill.
But even if the vote on Massie's amendment had occurred, the result would have been entirely predictable. It would have been defeated, as support for Israel on both sides of the congressional aisle remains structurally entrenched—even as the American public shifts against Israeli policy in historic numbers.
The strategic focus must remain on reaching out to the public, who hold the true power to influence—and even coerce—politicians into making the right choices.
According to a watershed Gallup poll published on February 27, a plurality of Americans now sympathize more with the Palestinians than the Israelis, leading by a margin of 41% to 36%. This marked the first time since Gallup began tracking the metric over two decades ago that Israel did not hold the upper hand in public sympathy.
Yet the shift is part of a broader, undeniable trend. A nationwide survey published in late June 2026 by Quinnipiac University revealed that an unprecedented 48% of American voters now think the United States is “too supportive” of Israel—the highest percentage recorded since the pollster first began tracking the question in 2017.
This is precisely why Massie's amendment carries such profound weight. It is significant not because US politicians have suddenly developed a collective moral conscience, but because recent election cycles represented the first time in modern American history where Palestine factored as a major, decisive variable in how citizens cast their ballots.
For years, conventional political analysts dismissed pro-Palestinian mobilization, claiming Americans only vote based on immediate socioeconomic interests and rigid party loyalties. That assessment has since proven faulty.
The political cost of Washington's complicity became undeniable following the fallout of the 2024 presidential race, a reality later confirmed by those within the inner sanctums of power. In the post-election debates, senior administration insiders admitted that the handling of the Gaza genocide alienated core voter blocks.
The political cost of Washington's complicity became undeniable after the 2024 presidential race. According to Axios, top Democratic strategists conducting the party's post-election audit explicitly admitted to advocacy groups that internal party data proved the administration's Gaza policy was a "net-negative" on the ballot.
This finding—disclosed during internal briefings by Democratic National Committee autopsy author Paul Rivera—confirmed that the party's unconditional backing of Israel directly fractured its base, and ultimately contributed to its loss of the elections.
The upcoming November elections are expected to be fiercely contested, and Gaza will, once more, be on the ballot. Following a series of progressive, anti-war victories in local primaries, The Guardian reported that US foreign policy toward the conflict has effectively "turned into something of a litmus test for the left."
This historic transformation in the popular American perception of Palestine and Israel does not indicate that a political rupture is soon to follow, as US politicians are notorious for their moral flexibility and their ability to spin language in whatever way is necessary to remain in power.
Indeed, the evolution of the language used by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez regarding the word "genocide" in Gaza tells the entire story of how the Democratic establishment is never compelled by genuine moral urgency, but rather by sheer political expediency.
In the early months of the genocide, Ocasio-Cortez hesitated to adopt the term, acutely aware of the deep sensitivities surrounding such language in US media and mainstream society.
"The fact that this word is even in our discourse... demonstrates the mass inhumanity that Gaza is facing," she stated, attempting to navigate an acceptable rhetorical middle ground in January 2024 during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Yet, under the relentless weight of pressure from an increasingly mobilized progressive constituency, she systematically upgraded her language in March of the same year, declaring on the House floor: "If you want to know what an unfolding genocide looks like, open your eyes. It looks like the forced famine of 1.1 million innocents."
This linguistic shift continued to intensify until it reached the Munich Security Conference last February, where Ocasio-Cortez finally deployed the term without any qualification. Unconditional US aid, she flatly argued, "enabled a genocide in Gaza."
Ocasio-Cortez is just one of many Democratic progressives who carefully filtered their vocabulary to avoid the political fallout of using the term genocide too early, or too late. Her position was eventually corrected not because of a sudden moral awakening or the discovery of new information regarding the "unfolding genocide," but because the margins of error allowed by a newly conscious American public have completely closed.
Therefore, the strategic focus must remain on reaching out to the public, who hold the true power to influence—and even coerce—politicians into making the right choices.
Ultimately, the current movement serves as a crucial barometer, proving that sustained, grassroots, anti-war pressure is successfully destabilizing Israel's traditionally unquestioned shield in Washington.
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