The answer to fascism.
Last Thursday, plainclothes ICE agents in the Bronx shot 28-year-old father Oscar Belgal, who was inside his car with his five-year-old child at the time. Belgal survived, but as of Wednesday, he was being held in solitary confinement with the bullet still in his neck.
Two days later, ICE agents in Texas ran over 48-year-old Miguel Parra-Hernandez with their car at a traffic stop, shattering his ankle and hip. Parra-Hernandez wasn’t even their target — and in fact, he says he’s never met the man ICE was pursuing at the time. Video of the incident shows Parra-Hernandez fleeing across a parking lot before an unmarked vehicle strikes and then runs him over.
Then, on Monday, DHS agents raided the home of sitting Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, seizing her passport, cellphone, personal computers, and notebooks. Resorts emerged later that the Trump regime intends to build a case against her to strip her of her citizenship.
“This kind of abuse of government power and targeting of political opponents is exactly how fascists operate,” JVP-Twin Cities said in a statement. “We know the conditions that enable the occupation and genocide in Palestine, and the racist deportation regime in the Twin Cities, are similar and mutually reinforcing. We struggle against them together, in community.”
Trump’s repression machine.
From the moment Trump entered office, our communities have been under constant attack. His regime has worked to systematically strip away the rights of trans people. It has empowered ICE to invade our cities, rip children from their parents’ arms, and shoot people in the street. And it has made it their mission to crush the Palestine solidarity movement, for two main reasons.
In the first instance Trump intends to continue U.S. support for Israel’s genocide at all costs, even though this policy is increasingly at odds with what the American people want. Poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans oppose their tax dollars being used to fund and arm the mass slaughter of Palestinians, in large part because of the way our movements have so thoroughly shifted public opinion toward support for Palestine. And so the Trump regime has raised the cost of resistance, shredding our First Amendment rights as a means to crushing growing opposition to the genocide.
And second, the right understands the Palestine movement as the tip of the spear: a way to test and refine their authoritarian tactics, for the purpose of crushing resistance to the Trump regime writ large. This was laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther” — a blueprint for dismantling civil society that directly named JVP as a top target. Nearly two years later, the Trump regime has strong-armed universities into cracking down on Pro-Palestine campus activism; attempted to criminalize pro-Palestine speech; and abducted and attempted to deport pro-Palestine organizers like Mahmoud Khalil and many others. JVP is among the groups under attack. As always, some of the sharpest attacks have been against organizations and specific activists who are Palestinian, or more broadly Arab and Muslim.
The answer to fascism is solidarity.
Trump can see the writing on the wall.
People are angry. While our government sends billions each year to the Israeli military, Americans die from treatable illness because they can’t afford healthcare. Millions have taken to the street to protest ICE brutality and Trump’s attacks on fundamental rights. And in the months before the midterms, voters across the country have rejected Trumpism at the polls. From Texas to Colorado to Michigan to Florida, voters are backing candidates who understand the struggle for the working class as inherently linked with the fight to end U.S. support for fascism and genocide abroad.
In the face of escalating attacks on our movement and on our fundamental rights write large, and as we mark three years of escalated genocide in Palestine, our movement has demonstrated that when we act collectively, we can wield real power. Desperate to hold onto power, the Trump regime is lashing out, convinced that if it can overwhelm and exhaust us, we will eventually give up.
That’s where they’re wrong. In February 2025, a month after Trump took office for the second time, JVP’s Executive Director Stefanie Fox wrote in the Wire about what was coming:
“They will try to make us shrink or surrender. Instead, we will get bolder every day. Repression’s silencing effect can spread fast, but courage is also contagious. When your voice rises, mine does too.”
Two years later, amid constant attacks, we’re still here. We have refused to cede even one inch before we’ve lost it. We have refused to leave anyone behind. We have refused to allow political divisions — real or manufactured — turn us against each other. Instead of shrinking, we have grown bigger and bolder, disrupting business as usual at every turn and refusing to allow genocide or fascism to become the new normal.
Our fight is not over; in fact, we’re just getting started. The Trump regime understands our movement as a force to be reckoned with, and they’re going to keep coming after us. Our job is to resist despair, to remain committed to one another and to our shared struggle, and to stay focused on the task at hand. Palestine is the compass. We’re not going anywhere.
Find your place in the movement.
On Tuesday night, we gathered online for our quarterly Mass Member Meeting. Together, we grounded ourselves in this political moment, saw our strategies and campaigns brought to life by member leaders doing powerful organizing around the country, and heard words of strength from whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who just got arrested alongside over 100 other JVP members during our mass sit-in outside Netanyahu’s speech at the UN three weeks ago.
Just weeks before the mid-term elections, we learned from our political team about the momentum our movement is building in key races across the country. We heard stories from member leaders who have been leading successful campaigns to divest from Israel Bonds, fight repression against student organizing, and mark the High Holidays in ways that build Judaism beyond Zionism.
If you feel alone and powerless, know that you are not. The answer to fascism is solidarity. Become a member of the largest Jewish organization in the world fighting for Palestinian freedom, and we’ll help you get organized to meet this moment, together.
JVP Action Power Dial: Help elect pro-Palestine champions.
Phonebank for candidates fighting to end U.S. complicity in Israeli genocide and apartheid. Whether it’s Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan or Angie Nixon in Florida, we are changing the face of Congress. This space is for everyone.
Tell Congress to Block the Bombs.
We just brought 240 anti-Zionist Jews and friends to Capitol Hill to demand that Congress stop funding Israel’s genocide. It was the largest-ever Lobby Day in JVP history.
Take action now to tell your member of Congress to support the Block the Bombs Act.
We’re reading: Grief as a pulse of our organizing work.
JVP’s Executive Director Stefanie Fox shares a d’var Torah (a word of Torah) that she offered last month on the afternoon heading into Yom Kippur.
“With so much death, so many lives lost, over years and decades, how do we keep rooting in our responsibility to resist?”
The Wire is one of the largest American publications dedicated to justice. Every week, we cover important news from Palestine, the United States, and the Palestine solidarity movement — and provide ways to take action.
Get The Wire
Every week, the Wire reaches tens of thousands with critical news and analysis from Palestine, the United States, and the Palestine solidarity movement — and provides ways to take action.