As Israel expands the genocide, repression mounts in the U.S.

_{Photo: Children look on as people walk amid the rubble of a building destroyed in an overnight Israeli strike in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on Tuesday. Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images}

As Israel prepares plans for a full-scale ground invasion and occupation of Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians in the week since it unilaterally shattered the ceasefire agreement, its backers in the U.S. are escalating their crackdown on opposition to the U.S.-backed genocide.

That’s because they’re desperate to regain control of a narrative that slipped out of their grasp, as American support for Israel has fallen to a 25-year low.

Columbia University has totally capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands. 

Former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil continues to be held in ICE custody in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from his home.

The Trump regime continues to direct ICE to harass and detain other students and academics for exercising their right to free speech.

And now the Anti-Defamation League has launched a new campaign… against Wikipedia. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt went on MSNBC to accuse Wikipedia editors of antisemitism. 

These may be strongman tactics — but they are a reflection of real political weakness.

Hundreds killed as Israel prepares plan to occupy Gaza.

In the nine days since Israel’s government unilaterally shattered the temporary ceasefire agreement, it has killed over 700 Palestinians — including at least 270 children. That makes the last days among the deadliest for Palestinian children since Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza over 16 months ago. 

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are being forced to flee for their lives once again as the Israeli military expands its attacks across Gaza. Many of them had only recently been able to return to their homes during the month and a half that the ceasefire agreement was in effect. 

Israel is still fully blockading Gaza, and the few hospitals that have managed to withstand Israeli attacks are barely functioning. Palestinians in Gaza City described fending off stray dogs as they waited for a single ambulance to arrive to retrieve the dozens of corpses littering the streets. 

On Monday, Palestinians mourned the murder of two beloved journalists, Hossam Shabbat and Mohammed Mansour, in separate, targeted Israeli strikes. Hossam and Mohammed are among the over 200 Palestinian journalists that Israel has murdered in Gaza since the genocide began. 

As the Israeli military pushes further into Gaza, the Israeli government is reportedly readying plans for a full-scale ground invasion that would require the deployment of some 50,000 Israeli troops — with the ultimate aim of occupying huge swathes of Gaza for months or even years. 

The plan would see over two million Palestinians forcibly relocated to al-Mawasi, an already overcrowded 10-mile strip on Gaza’s coast. Though the plan has yet to be approved by Israel’s security cabinet, it was drafted by Israel’s new Defense Forces chief of staff and reportedly has the support of far-right ministers in Israel’s government — as well as Trump’s greenlight.

Co-director of Oscar-winning film beaten and detained in West Bank.

Meanwhile, in the Occupied West Bank Jewish Israeli settlers attacked Hamdan Ballal, the Oscar-winning co-director of the documentary “No other Land.” Hamdan was subsequently abducted by the Israeli military and held in an Israeli military base — handcuffed and blindfolded for over 20 hours — before finally being released, bruised and bloodied.

On Monday night, armed Israeli settlers descended on the Palestinian village of Susiya. As is so often the case, they were flanked by Israeli soldiers, who immediately turned their guns on the Palestinians being attacked. According to Hamdan, an Israeli settler he recognized and two Israeli soldiers followed him to his home and beat him bloody. All the while, his wife hid inside with their three children, powerless to help her husband as he screamed out in pain.

“I felt they were going to kill me, not just to punish me. … I felt I would die,” Hamdan told Al Jazeera.

Settler attacks like these are a daily reality for Palestinians across the Occupied West Bank. But this violence has only escalated since the Israeli military launched a large-scale military operation in the West Bank in January, just days after the now-shattered Gaza ceasefire went into effect. 

Since then, the Israeli military has ethnically cleansed entire Palestinians towns, forcing over 40,000 Palestinians to flee their homes, accelerated illegal settlement expansion, and further empowered settler mobs to attack Palestinians with impunity.   

In the U.S., Israel’s backers are escalating their crackdown on dissent…

Repression is mounting stateside as the Trump regime and the pro-Israel lobby team up to silence anyone who speaks out against these atrocities. 

Columbia University has totally capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands, agreeing to implement draconian measures in the hopes of regaining $400 million in federal funding. Those changes include banning face masks, hiring dozens of new security officers with the power to arrest students, and putting the Palestine studies and Middle East, South Asian, and African studies departments under academic receivership.

Former Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil continues to be held in ICE custody in Louisiana, over a thousand miles from his home, though a federal judge ruled last week that his trial would proceed in New Jersey. Mahmoud was abducted from his New York apartment by ICE earlier this month in a transparent act of retaliation against him for his pro-Palestine speech.

The Trump regime continues to direct ICE to harass and detain other students for exercising their right to free speech. On March 17, ICE detained Dr. Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow in peace and conflict studies at Georgetown University, before transferring him to a detention facility in Texas. Last week, DHS issued a deportation order against Cornell University PhD student Momodou Taal, a day before he was set to appear in court for a lawsuit he filed against the U.S. government to stop the deportation of student activists. Columbia undergraduate student Yunseo Chung, a green card holder who has lived in the U.S. since she was a child, is being hunted by ICE. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled to stop her deportation.

…but only because they’re losing control of the narrative.

Last week, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Grenblatt went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to accuse Wikipedia of antisemitism, after the ADL published an outrageous report claiming that Wikipedia editors conspired together to push content critical of Israel. It’s a transparent attempt to shut down criticism of Israel and retaliate against Wikipedia for pointing out the ADL’s anti-Palestinian bias.

If it sounds like the ADL is getting desperate, it’s because they are. Today, American support for Israel has fallen to a 25-year low. Pro-Israel groups and their right-wing backers know they’re losing the narrative war.

Our movements are cracking open the central claim of anti-Palestinian groups like the ADL — that Jewish safety could ever come at the expense of Palestinian freedom — and exposing it for the racist lie that it is. We are disrupting business as usual at every turn, refusing to allow mass slaughter to become the new normal. 

We are building an alternative vision of Jewish safety: one that acknowledges that none of us is free until all of us are free. That has become even clearer as Israel’s backers team up with Trump’s regime of white nationalists and Nazi sympathizers to crush dissent under the guise of combating antisemitism. All the while, everyday Americans struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table are being inundated with daily media coverage of U.S.-funded atrocities. 

Our movements are successfully shifting the narrative, moving more people than ever to question why their government is funneling billions in resources out of their communities and into genocide abroad. That’s why fascists are trying to silence us: They know we have real power, and they know the people are on our side. It’s up to our movements to stand resolute in the face of this mounting repression. And as the Trump regime hurls false accusations of antisemitism at student activists, using Jewish pain and fear as a cudgel to silence dissent, it’s up to us as anti-Zionist Jews to continue crying out with everything we have.

Tell Congress: Act now to secure Mahmoud’s release.

In the last week, supporters of our sister organization JVP Action have sent over 25,000 emails and calls to our members of Congress demanding they act immediately to secure Mahmoud Khalil’s release from ICE custody. 

Use the action tools provided by our sister organization to keep up the pressure on our elected officials.

Tell the Senate: Oppose Mike Huckabee’s nomination to Israel ambassador.

The Senate will vote soon on whether to confirm far-right and ultra-conservative former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to become U.S. ambassador to Israel. 

This is a man who wants U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East to be dictated by apocalyptic biblical prophecy.

That’s why our sister organization JVP Action is partnering with other movement organizations to tell the Senate to oppose Huckabee’s nomination. Write your Senators today.

What we’re reading: Report from the frontlines of Israel’s war of annihilation.

Journalist Hossam Shabbat was a college student when Israel’s genocide in Gaza began, and he was only 23 years old when he was killed in a targeted Israeli strike. 

Read Hossam’s last article for Drop Site News, with a foreword by his colleague Sharif Abdel Kouddous.

What we’re reading: ‘Racists and antisemites posing as protectors of the Jewish people’

JVP Action political Director Beth Miller writes for the Nation about Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel, Christian Zionist Mike Huckabee.

“When you’re trying to bring about the apocalypse, international law and human rights tend to take a back seat,” Miller writes.

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