Statement by the National Lawyers Guild Warning against the Escalating Repression of the Palestine Solidarity Movement

For 19 months, the world has witnessed a livestreamed genocide in Gaza carried out by the Israeli occupation regime and armed and funded by the United States. More than 18,000 children have been killed by Zionist occupation forces. Civilian infrastructure has been systematically destroyed, universities demolished, homes flattened, entire families wiped off the face of the earth, children incinerated,and journalists, health care and humanitarian workers targeted. People fleeing bombardment are murdered in cold blood. It is clear to all that genocide is the official state policy of the Israeli regime. The so-called “international community” is watching as the deliberate starvation of the Palestinian people in Gaza is carried out by the U.S. and Israel in real time—an atrocity of global proportions.

The National Lawyers Guild expresses deep concern that the U.S. government at  federal, state and local levels will attempt to escalate repression against the growing movement for Palestinian liberation and crack down even more severely on dissent, seeking to use the recent violent incidents in Washington, D.C. and Boulder, CO as an excuse to continue and intensify the ongoing and severe assaults on supporters of the movement, particularly amid the escalating Israeli-U.S. genocide in Gaza.

We are unequivocal: the First Amendment still exists. Political speech—especially speech critical of the Zionist state, U.S. imperialism, and in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle—is constitutionally protected. This includes denunciations of genocide, calls for boycott, and solidarity with Palestinian armed resistance which are all protected under international law.

The NLG categorically rejects the conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, a red-herring tactic that is used to distract from the real atrocity, genocide in Palestine. Attempts to equate opposition to Israeli state policy with hatred of Jewish people are deliberate and dangerous misrepresentations. They are used to discredit and dismantle legitimate political advocacy and resistance to colonial violence.This moment must not be used as another pretext to criminalize protected political speech. We demand respect for due process and constitutional protections.

Despite massive opposition in the U.S. and around the world, successive U.S. administrations—both Democrat and Republican—have continued to arm and support this genocide while escalating attacks on those who protest it. From the brutalization, suspension and deportation of students to federal prosecutions and sweeping executive actions—we are witnessing a new era of McCarthyism, this time cloaked in the language of anti-semitism and counterterrorism.

Only hours after the arrests of the alleged perpetrators, Israeli and US officials began aggressively manipulating the media to spread propaganda and manufacture consent for increased repression.  This propaganda, issued before the facts have been established, serves a political purpose: to delegitimize global opposition to the US-backed Israeli genocide, criminalize solidarity with Palestinians, and frame protected political dissent as a hate crime or terrorism.

We are particularly alarmed by the growing use of hate crime and terrorism charges to expand state power and suppress constitutionally protected activism. This concern is heightened by the rollout of Project Esther, a zionist initiative developed by the Heritage Foundation that uses “antisemitism” as a pretext to surveil, criminalize, and dismantle the Palestine solidarity movement. Project Esther’s ultimate aim is a “McCarthy-era blueprint for crushing the American left,” targeting everyone from anti-capitalists to environmental justice organizers under the guise of fighting extremism.

The National Lawyers Guild affirms:

• Speech condemning Israeli settler colonialism, genocide and supporting Palestinian liberation is core political speech.
• The arrest of Elias Rodriguez and Mohamed Sabry Soliman must not be used to justify a broader crackdown on this movement.
• We reject the cynical conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
• We stand with students and all people exercising their First Amendment rights.
• Palestinians have the right under international law to resist occupation
• We demand an immediate arms embargo on “Israel” and an end to the US participation and complicity in the genocide, including the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” cynically seeking to weaponize food as a weapon against the Palestinian people  while blocking real aid from international agencies such as UNRWA and the WFP
• We demand an end to the use of hate crime and antiterror laws to criminalize and silence political opposition.
• We call for due process for Elias Rodriguez and Muhamed Sabry Soliman