The Wave of Crackdowns on Palestinian Protest Started Years Before Oct. 7

Airbnb announced that it would stop listing properties in Israeli settlements, as part of a new policy to stop contributing to “existing human suffering.” The day after the company publicized this decision, then–Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan wrote to governors in Illinois, New York, Florida, Missouri, and California, encouraging them to take action against the global housing company. It worked; Airbnb buckled to the pressure and reversed course within a matter of months.

This happened in 2019, long before Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre and Israel’s furious reprisal this year, which has killed more than 11,000 people, including over 4,000 children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. But Airbnb’s backtrack four years ago is a useful distillation of the pressures that individuals and corporate entities face when they publicly oppose Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It’s much worse now. In the month and a half since Israel launched its assault on Gaza, there has been a diffuse and swift crackdown on expressions of support for Palestinians or criticism of Israeli actions.

Numerous employees across the U.S. have been fired or have resigned for pro-Palestinian statements. Federal law enforcement agents have reportedly already visited mosques and questioned Palestinian Americans, a chilling resumption of this country’s post–9/11 surveillance machine. And despite its signature deadlock, Congress has managed to mobilize on this issue too.

The Senate passed a unanimous resolution condemning pro-Palestine student groups as “anti-Israel, pro-Hamas.” In the House, Rep. Ryan Zinke introduced a bill to expel Palestinian noncitizens, echoing ideas already floated by former President Donald Trump to attempt another Muslim ban. And a bipartisan coalition in the House voted to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, for her comments criticizing Israel’s actions in the war.

In all of these cases, the backlash to pro-Palestinian activism is dangerously charged with bad faith interpretations of protesters’ aims. One can critique student groups whose letters portrayed the Oct. 7 massacre as legitimate armed resistance, for example, but conflating their words with material support for terrorism, as the Anti-Defamation League has, categorizes the students’ speech as a threat to national security.

In Europe, Germany and France have banned pro-Palestine protests, though crowds have amassed in Berlin and Paris regardless. The Frankfurt Book Fair canceled its celebration of Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli within days of the attack, drawing criticism from more than 1,000 writers and publishers. Irish Web Summit CEO and founder Paddy Cosgrave stepped down from the organization after prominent tech companies pulled out of the conference following his tweet that “war crimes are war crimes even when committed by allies, and should be called out for what they are.” And British politician Michael Gove is pushing a bill banning boycotts of Israel in the U.K.

In Israel, authorities have suppressed internal dissent too. The Knesset, Israel’s legislature, suspended member Ofer Cassif for 45 days after he criticized the country’s assault on Gaza, while Israel Frey, a prominent and outspoken left-wing Orthodox journalist, was forced to flee his home after he posted a video of a prayer for victims in Israel and Gaza. +972 Magazine reported that both Arabs and Jews have been suspended from their jobs for posting pro-Palestinian messages, with universities publicly rebuking the national government for pressuring them to investigate their own students. Israel’s communications minister has threatened to ban Al Jazeera; the Israeli Supreme Court has banned anti-war protests; and the Knesset has now criminalized the consumption of “terrorist material” as a so-called counterterrorism measure. The draconian law provides pretext to arrest anyone who posts “sympathetic” content supposedly related to Hamas.

The crackdowns we’re seeing now weren’t born out of the horrors of Oct. 7. The right to engage in peaceful protest against Israel’s occupation has been under attack for years. In the U.S., that attack has been focused squarely on the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, which coalesced in 2005, a year after the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion concluding that the wall Israel built between itself and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the West Bank was illegal. At the time, the court warned that West Bank settlements and the wall could become “tantamount to de facto annexation.” Almost 20 years later, that prediction has all but come true.

Modeled off a similar boycott movement in the 1980s that helped end apartheid in South Africa and boycotts that played a critical role in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, the BDS movement calls for pressure to be levied against Israeli entities, including companies and settlements in the West Bank, to achieve the end of the occupation of Palestinian territories, to grant the right of return to Palestinian refugees to the homes they lost in 1948, and to bring full equality to Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. Although the movement began as an economic boycott, targeting goods exported from Israel, the tactics have extended to pressuring artists not to perform in Israel and academic boycotts that push universities to break ties with Israeli state institutions that further the occupation.

The response from local governments in the U.S. has been draconian and dramatic. Since 2015, 36 states have passed anti-BDS legislation—laws that primarily penalize individuals or entities (such as businesses or universities) that boycott Israeli companies or settlements by refusing them state contracts or investment. Members of Congress, most notably Sens. Marco Rubio and Joe Manchin, have also tried and failed for years to impose a federal BDS ban.

Other laws have created overbroad “redefinitions” of antisemitism that would include virtually any criticism of Israel. (In 2018 a Texas school district refused to renew the contract of a Palestinian American school speech pathologist who would not sign an anti-boycott pledge.) And a report by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights also documented almost 300 incidents of censorship, punishment, and other silencing tactics of Palestinian advocacy, overwhelmingly in the academic setting, between 2014 and 2015.

Despite the clear threat these actions pose to First Amendment rights, challenges to these laws have had mixed results. While some circuit courts have duly struck down these laws as unconstitutional, others have carved loopholes to let them stand. The Supreme Court declined to take up the issue earlier this year, leaving the fight unresolved, despite the fact that the court has traditionally protected politically motivated boycotts that aim to “bring about political, social, and economic change.” The patchwork of anti-BDS laws also shows the lengths to which Israel and U.S. lobbying groups affiliated with Israel have attempted to choke out even nonviolent resistance to their preferences.

And yet: The global protests for Palestinian freedom show that Israel’s monopoly of morality, as Palestinian activist Sally Abed described it, is breaking. Historic rallies have seen Palestinian flags proudly unfurled after decades of silencing, joined by the voices of Jewish peace activists. These outcries are the most forceful opposition to Israel’s unceasing bombardment of Gaza, which many scholars and lawyers are classifying as tantamount to genocide, as Western countries continue in lockstep with Netanyahu despite sustained criticism from the U.N.

When Palestinians speak out, they are continually forced to answer for the brutal crimes of Hamas, an obsessive and reflexive deflection from the growing list of alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza. Pinning down condemnation of Hamas will not change this fact. BDS actions and Palestinian activism have long sought to break the silence over the brutal reality of life under occupation. But as Israel continues to punish Gaza in front of the world’s eyes, no amount of censorship or punishment can deflect attention away from this devastating and unavoidable truth.