From Palestine to Los Angeles.
Photo: Members of the California National Guard stand guard in front of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles, June 9, 2025. Daniel Cole/Reuters
A lone demonstrator facing off against dozens of riot police.
Unarmed civilians dodging tear gas and rubber bullets.
A journalist arrested on live air.
For Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and apartheid, the scenes playing out across Los Angeles are all too familiar.
Our oppressors are the same — and “each act of defiance” brings us closer to a world where all of us are free.
In LA, thousands refuse to comply with ICE.
In the U.S., countless people of conscience are resisting the Trump administration’s fascist attacks on immigrants and risking their lives to protect their neighbors and communities. This is what solidarity looks like.
Following massive ICE raids across Los Angeles in which hundreds were abducted from their homes and places of work, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in protest. Glendale, a city in Los Angeles County, announced on Sunday that it was ending its contract with ICE.
Protesters are being met with a brutal crackdown. Militarized police have deployed tear gas and stun grenades, shot protesters — and in this video, a journalist on live air — with less-lethal munitions, and arrested hundreds.
In response, Trump deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles on Saturday, the first time in 60 years a president has bypassed a state’s governor to do so. In its decision, the administration framed anti-ICE protests as constituting a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” On Monday, Trump further escalated the already wildly disproportionate state response, deploying hundreds of Marines to Los Angeles — a violation of U.S. law.
Dismantling the “global infrastructure of state violence.”
For decades, the United States has fueled and funded Israel’s war of annihilation on Palestinians, providing the Israeli government and military with weapons and technology used to incarcerate, dispossess, and kill millions. The brutal crackdown we’re seeing in Los Angeles is a daily reality for Palestinians living under Israeli siege and occupation, from Gaza to Masafer Yatta.
As the Wire argued in February, that violence inevitably finds its way back home: from the deployment of military-grade drones to surveil student activists, to the use of counterterrorism laws — originally conceived to target Palestinians — against Stop Cop City protesters.
None of us will be free unless Palestine is free; unless, in the words of JVP-Los Angeles, the “global infrastructure of state violence is dismantled.” Until then, we say: Come for one, face us all.
“Never again means never again for anyone. Not for Palestinians under siege. Not for immigrants in detention. Not for the families being hunted in our own neighborhoods.”
“Each act of defiance reaffirms that Gaza is not forgotten.”
While protesters in Los Angeles defended their communities from ICE, activists thousands of miles away were standing defiantly in the face of the same forces of ascendant global fascism.
The Madleen set sail for Gaza on June 1, carrying food aid like flour and baby formula and a dozen activists from seven different countries, among them climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
Named for Gaza’s only female fisher, the Madleen was the latest effort in a years-long campaign by activists around the world to break Israel’s punishing siege on Gaza. Less than two weeks after it departed — and while it was still in international waters — the Israeli military surrounded the ship, seized it, and abducted all 12 activists onboard, a brazen violation of international law.
The aid that the Madleen carried was symbolic. It would have been impossible for a dozen activists to deliver the hundreds of trucks of food Israel would need to allow into Gaza every single day to stave off the famine it created. Likewise, the activists on board the Madleen knew it was incredibly unlikely they would reach Gaza’s shores.
Just last month, the Israeli military attacked another ship organized by the same group behind the Madleen, forcing the activists on board to turn around. And the Israeli military has yet to be brought to justice for murdering 9 activists and journalists aboard a Turkish humanitarian ship bound for Gaza in 2010.
Still, the Madleen is a powerful symbol of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza: a growing awareness that our oppressors are the same, and so our struggles for liberation are inherently intertwined. That it was intercepted and hijacked so brazenly by Israeli forces also stands as a stark reminder of Israel’s brutal blockade — and the failure of the international community to end it.
“The Madleen may have been stopped at sea, but its message travels far: The blockade is not invisible, nor will it be forever. Each intercepted vessel, each detained activist, each act of defiance reaffirms that Gaza is not forgotten – and that until freedom is restored and justice achieved, the sea will remain a front line in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.”
Email Congress: Support the Block the Bombs Act
On June 5, Members of Congress introduced the first ever bill that proactively seeks to prevent the U.S. from sending some of the worst weapons to the Israeli military.
Use the action tool provided by our sister organization, JVP Action, to demand that your member of Congress join the Block the Bombs Act today.
What we’re reading: “a striking collapse in perception for Israel around the world.”
Israel’s far-right government is spending more than ever before on public relations, showing just how isolated it has become.
“The growing marketing costs for Israeli brands, provided to Drop Site by internal whistleblowers at Meta, put specific numbers on the increasing toxicity of Israel’s international reputation.”
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