About This Episode
Episode Transcript
The transcript below has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Amira Hala 0:00
This moment represents both a significant acceleration and an expansion of longstanding repressive tactics. I think there are continuities and some ruptures in that sense. In the report, we make the argument that current counter-terrorism measures in Europe replicate the logic of colonial emergency laws, which, as I mentioned before, were used to suspend rights and maintain imperial dominance.
There is also a more contemporary legacy of state oppression against Palestine solidarity in Europe and elsewhere, and I think long before October 2023 as well.
Yara Hawari 0:34
From Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network, I am Yara Hawari, and this is Rethinking Palestine. Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, European governments have escalated their instrumentalization of counter-terrorism measures to criminalize Palestine solidarity groups.
From proscriptions to fabricating narratives around extremism, these efforts and more have made it increasingly clear that there is a pattern of repression that is being used to demobilize opposition to the Israeli genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. According to the European Legal Support Center, the ELSC has published a new report detailing these efforts across Europe, particularly in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and France.
Joining us to discuss the findings of this report is Amira Hala, the research officer at the ELSC and the lead author of this new report. She holds a PhD in international relations, where her research focused on how ideas of normal and deviant behavior are used as tools of authoritarianism. Amira, thank you for joining us on this episode of Rethinking Palestine.
Amira Hala 1:43
Thanks for having me.
Yara Hawari 1:45
So I think many of our listeners will be aware that the Palestinian struggle for liberation and the solidarity movement has long been ludicrously smeared as terrorism in an effort to crush it, but also to dissuade those from joining in efforts. Could you give us a bit more background on this and bring us up to this current moment?
Amira Hala 2:07
Yeah, absolutely. So the terrorism tag against the Palestinian struggle for liberation has been mobilized by the so-called West since at least the 1930s. So that would require us to go a bit back in time to the Palestinian Revolt that started in 1936 against Zionist presence in Palestine, and also in its later phases, it targeted the British presence in Palestine.
At the time, specifically in 1937, the British Mandate Authority in Palestine outlawed the Higher Arab Committee and the Regional Arab National Committees, which at the time constituted what was effectively the entire organized urban union movement, and they were the ones who had initially called for civil disobedience.
But the British Mandate also appointed a chief advisor on terrorism and policing in Palestine. And this person was Charles Tegart, appointed in November 1937. And his big ideas included building about 70 concrete fortresses at all the main lookout posts across the country. And he also had this huge wire fence put up along the 80-kilometer border with Lebanon and Syria, and all of this was done to try to stop foreign weapons and fighters from getting in—any kind of support for the revolt in Palestine from reaching Palestinians. And this whole strategy was essentially a playbook he himself had written from his time dealing with anti-colonial rebellions in Northern India.
In this report that we recently published, we make the connection to today’s framing of Palestinians and Palestine solidarity as terrorism, as well as the colonial logic of emergency rule that acted as the legal veneer for suspending rights. And so I guess it’s also important to note here that the repressive modalities that were used by Britain against Palestinians during the 1936 revolt, or those by France against Algerians in Algeria, and by Germany in Namibia, and so on—these kinds of modalities were never really purely colonial inventions. And so this is obviously very relevant to today’s banning and proscription of Palestine solidarity groups in Europe. These modalities of repression also emerged from a back-and-forth between metropolises and colonies.
So they form a kind of connected history of controlling populations, both at home and abroad. And that’s, of course, not to deny that the intensity and legal permissibility of violence were, of course, undoubtedly greater in the colonial sphere. But essentially, it’s the underlying doctrines of surveillance, population control, and categorizing groups as so-called internal enemies. These phenomena were developed and refined through this constant exchange between the metropolis and the colonial context. I think that it’s important also to note that this long history of framing anti-colonial resistance as terrorism is what really makes this framing of Palestinians and their allies as terrorists so powerful.
It is what makes it stick with some people, what makes it believable to them in a way. So it’s because essentially this long history is why this notion of terrorism is a powerful propaganda tool—or more accurately, a powerful propaganda tool for imperialism. And it’s also a tool that is constantly being updated.
So if you think about how it was revived, this kind of tool of tagging people as terrorists, it was revived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, for example, or in 2013 onwards against the backdrop of the rise of ISIS. In each of these instances and other instances, entire Muslim and Arab populations are presented as innately hateful, aggressive, irrational, and so on.
These are, of course, not just recent—in 9/11 or 2013. These are very old colonial representations and understandings of colonized subjects, and especially of Arabs. So in a way, Arabs have all these excesses, right? So one important one is the love of violence for the sake of violence. But at the same time, these colonized subjects in general, and those in particular in Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA)—so SWANA was also presented at the same time as having these violent excesses. They were also presented as kind of lacking something, until today—so lacking civilization, lacking the capacity to develop modern sensibilities. It includes the capacity to self-govern. And so from these competing logics of excess and lack, Arabs and others in SWANA, according to Western imperial powers, can therefore have no meaningful revolutions. Because by their—or our—very nature, and I am an Arab myself, they—or we—are unable to value freedom, justice, democracy, and all these things that the West purports are theirs or their kind of inventions.
So what they can do, however, these kinds of quote-unquote backward, undevelopable populations in SWANA, what they can do, what we can do, and what they do, and what we do when we rise up, is basically terrorism and not legitimate resistance. And so today, not only have European and, more generally, Western governments, of course, branded resistance in Palestine as terrorism, but they are also using so-called counter-terrorism measures to ban Palestine solidarity groups in Europe.
And why is that? The most obvious reason is to silence the massive public opposition to the genocide, to protect their own complicity. And this has been a coordinated effort between governments, Zionist lobby groups, and arms manufacturers who have a financial stake in all of this.
But they also have—these European and Western governments—an interest in maintaining the notion that Palestinian resistance and Palestine solidarity constitute terrorism and are, of course, also, quote-unquote, externally funded and encouraged by, let’s say, Iran, not for the purposes of liberation. So it’s important for these European governments, European states, Western states, to make it seem as though Palestinians, for example, are not resisting because they are colonized, but because there is some sort of external pressure on them to do so.
There is a financial incentive, as, for example, Iran provides them with the funds to do so. And so they’re not doing it for the purpose of liberation, but merely to orchestrate chaos. And so this allows the West to appear civilized against all these kinds of allegedly barbaric others and positions the Israeli ethno-nationalist and settler-colonial project as necessary against the so-called Islamic terror.
And so this is precisely where the myth that the Zionist entity is the quote-unquote “only democracy in the Middle East” comes from.
Yara Hawari 9:09
Amira, it’s interesting that you started nearly a hundred years ago because I think most people would think to start post-9/11 and the so-called war on terror era, which is where we see the use of the notion of terrorism really on steroids.
So I think it’s really important to recognize that this is something that has been used and weaponized against people of the East and, in particular, Muslims and Arabs, for nearly the last century.
Amira Hala 9:40
Absolutely, it has been. It’s not just about Palestine or Palestinians, although it’s important for us to also specify exactly how this happens to Palestine and Palestinians.
It’s coming directly from the colonial playbook. It has also been used in the heart of Europe to suppress resistance, even resistance that has much to do with internal struggles. In Britain, struggles for democracy and republicanism have employed tactics very similar to those used against the settlers decades ago.
So, given this extensive history that you’ve briefly laid out for us, what is so distinct about this moment in the repression? Or is it merely an acceleration of repression? I think this moment represents both a significant acceleration and an expansion of longstanding repressive tactics. I think there are continuities and some ruptures in that sense.
In the report, we argue that current counter-terrorism measures in Europe replicate the logic of colonial emergency laws, which, as I mentioned before, were used to suspend rights and maintain imperial dominance. There is also a more contemporary legacy of state suppression against Palestine solidarity in Europe and elsewhere.
And I think long before October 2023, there had already been a gap in the defense and support for Palestine solidarity activists and organizations in Europe. The ELSC was established in 2019 for this reason. We see the kind of vague definitions of terrorism and how they’ve been used as a tool of state control, and also relying predominantly on the racist tropes I mentioned before.
Their reliance on this and their reliance on these vague definitions—they use predominantly to go after those who express solidarity with Palestine. And these include activists. All of this also before 2023. This includes activists, academics, journalists, students, doctors, and others.
It’s like encompassing all and anyone who expresses, even just in words, solidarity with Palestinians. And this is always happening in conjunction with using the allegation that Palestinians and anyone who supports them are anti-Semitic. The labels of terrorism and antisemitism, I think, work really well together for the purposes of this kind of imperial state propaganda.
And we see, especially in more recent times, that while European countries have actual organized neo-Nazi movements that openly express anti-Jewish racism and constitute a real threat to both Jews and Muslims, they are rarely ever branded as terrorists or even criminals. There is this kind of implicit assumption that maybe racism grows out of disillusionment or ignorance, but when it comes to Palestinians and other Arabs, their—slash our—alleged innate violent nature makes it so that they are always going to be hateful and extremists. And anyone in solidarity with them, with Palestinians, especially if that person is white, they’re either merely brainwashed or naive, and that’s, of course, according to state propaganda.
This has not been working as it had in the past. Obviously, we see the increasing awareness around settler colonialism and Palestine. And gradually, and even before October 2023, Palestinians, whether in Gaza or elsewhere in Palestine, have been able to show us a lot more clearly now that they have some access to the outside world through social media, for example.
It’s important to note that this access had previously been completely denied, and we now observe attempts to restrict it over and over again. But nevertheless, they have been able to show us what settler colonialism, ethno-nationalism, and Jewish supremacism look like in real time. I would say that the escalating response, in part, is because more and more people are learning the truth and more often than not, taking action against the Zionist project.
But I think October 7th, 2023, constituted this really important moment for the West to update yet again the racist tropes around the innately violent and lacking, and therefore terrorist, Arab. So they wanted to make sure that Palestinians are never seen as freedom fighters.
They didn’t want anyone, from direct action groups to academics, to legitimately and convincingly discuss Palestinian anti-colonial resistance. And the thing is that there is a lot of work by these imperial governments that goes into framing the struggle for Palestinian liberation as terrorism.
It is not something that comes naturally to the outside observer, because anyone with an internet connection can readily understand the reality of what is occurring. And the closer the Palestinians get to liberation, the more work that needs to go into distorting that struggle, and the more the repression.
In the report, we show that the current moment marks a distinct acceleration, as there has been a systematic and coordinated proscription across multiple European countries. Specifically, we focus on Germany, Britain, France, and the Netherlands, although the proscriptions have not yet been implemented in all countries. They are evident in Germany and Britain and are in the process of being implemented elsewhere.
And of course, a significant escalation we find in the past two years is the pivot from charging activists under standard criminal law to using terrorism legislation, which has lower evidentiary thresholds and bypasses judicial oversight. And as I said, these vague definitions of terrorism mean that governments can stretch it to mean whatever they want.
It is now being used to target protesters and criminalize slogans such as “From the River to the Sea” and to go after online speech. But I think that the most distinct thing about this moment is also the growing strength of the movement.
I don’t think that Palestine solidarity or the Palestine solidarity movement has ever been this big, and this powerful. And this simply means that the repression will accelerate and expand. And I think this is a very critical moment for all of us who are fighting for liberation and against genocide to really commit ourselves not to be afraid of what has happened and what is coming.
Yara Hawari 16:15
If you’re enjoying this podcast, please visit our website, al-shabaka.org, where you’ll find more Palestinian policy analysis and where you can join our mailing list and donate to support our work.
Amira, thanks for that. I think one of your last points is really important, that solidarity activism has always been oppressed, but through the use of terrorism legislation, authorities are now able to target many more people with much less so-called evidence. This means that the repression can be far more widespread.
People tend to dismiss this as something that’s acceptable, perhaps getting a little worse, but I don’t think they fully realize what this kind of legislation enables authorities to do, which is far more than they’ve ever been able to do before.
Amira Hala 17:12
I agree with you, but also it’s not just that it enables these governments, these authorities to do a lot more, but I think it also—returning to a point I made in the beginning—it’s that this label of terrorism is really convenient also as a way to convince others who are on the fence or who may not be so interested that, “Oh yeah, these people, whether those who are in organized direct action groups like Palestine Action or simply people who are just marching down the street saying ‘Free Palestine,'” give them the idea that, “Yeah, these people are terrorists. Of course they are.”
And it’s, as I said, it’s so easy for people to believe that because terrorism has had this really long history, and it’s like people have successfully been conditioned to understand Palestine, to understand Arabs, to understand Muslims, to understand others with a big “O” in these specific terms. These specific terms persist because of their history, but also because they are continually updated. So you mentioned 9/11, right?
There were moments before 9/11 as well, so there are many instances where this is updated and reinforced, hammered into the public consciousness. And I think that’s why terrorism, whether legislation or just discourse, is very powerful in that sense. But I think, at the same time, it’s being slowly but surely challenged.
Yara Hawari 18:41
Yeah, I would agree with that. I think it’s been very effective, especially in the last two years, but perhaps even more so, the solidarity movement’s ability to push back against that kind of narrative of framing—not just about Palestine but beyond—has also increased, and I think because of necessity.
Amira, I’m wondering if you could share some of the case studies that this report you worked on looked at.
Amira Hala 19:09
The report focuses on four main countries that the ELSC has worked on for years, where we see this tool of proscription being used or potentially going to be used. But today I’ll focus on two case studies specifically: the recent proscription of the direct action group, Palestine Action, in the UK, and then also the kind of really imminent threat to the existence of the group, Urgence Palestine, in France.
First, let’s discuss Palestine Action. In the UK, Palestine Action describes itself as being committed to ending global participation in the Israeli genocide against Palestinians. And their primary method is direct action. So this means specifically targeting the facilities and assets of Elbit Systems, which is the largest Israeli weapons manufacturer profiting—or has been profiting—from the murder, maiming, and displacement of Palestinians for the past two years, but not only.
And for five years, Palestine Action has conducted a campaign against businesses and institutions that are complicit in the continued colonization of Palestine. And they, of course, escalated their actions significantly after the beginning of this genocide in October 2023. And for years, as we alluded to earlier, activists faced standard criminal charges for acts such as trespass or criminal damage and were often acquitted by juries. And so, even since October 2023, actionists from Palestine Action have often been acquitted by juries once the jury heard why they were doing what they were doing.
The UK government moved to proscribe—so that basically means just outright ban—Palestine Action as a terrorist organization using the Terrorism Act of the year 2000, and they did so in July 2025, so only a few months ago. This designation, despite escalating repression, constitutes a seismic shift.
It means that now, not only carrying out actions such as direct action against property owned by weapons manufacturers and others, but also expressing support for the group—for example, holding a sign that says “I support Palestine Action” or sharing a post—can lead not only to arrest but also to arrest under counter-terrorism powers, which carry far more severe implications than other forms of arrest or charges.
And it’s really, it’s interesting, but really, really sad, that the government bundled the vote on this ban. So the vote in Parliament to ban Palestine Action was bundled with those of two neo-Nazi groups. So they bundled it with the ban—or the vote on a ban—of two other neo-Nazi groups.
So these two neo-Nazi groups were bundled with Palestine Action, which forced Parliament to approve all three at once without specific debate—and maybe not forced Parliament, but prompted Parliament rather, because I know that many MPs also wanted to proscribe Palestine Action.
It’s not like they had to do this against their will. So in the report, we outlined that the Terrorism Act of 2000 is particularly dangerous because its broad definition of terrorism criminalizes even politically motivated property damage and treats political motivation as a core component of terrorism.
In this way, this act effectively insulates government policy from meaningful challenge or scrutiny. The proscription of Palestine Action is also not really about property damage. We see a long-standing tradition of direct action and protest in British and European history, which also included property damage.
It is a tactic used by many celebrated protest movements throughout history, and in Britain, specifically the suffragettes in the early 20th century. And their actions that also damaged property are, especially today, widely celebrated as a highly important feminist event.
The proscription is really about neutralizing a group that effectively targets the arms trade supporting and enabling genocide. But it’s also about signaling to the public that Palestine solidarity is terrorism, regardless of whether or not you are in Palestine Action.
A judicial review of the proscription was granted by the High Court on July 30th, 2025. The court acknowledged that it is “reasonably arguable” that the ban interferes with freedom of expression and that the Home Secretary, who decided to ban—her name is Yvette Cooper—may have had a duty to consult the group before imposing the proscription.
Despite this, the court denied interim relief, meaning the ban remains in effect until at least November 2025, when the judicial review is probably going to take place. This means that any support for Palestine Action remains criminalized.
Now looking at France, we have the case of Urgence Palestine, a collective that formed in October 2023, mobilizing for Palestinian self-determination. And in April 2025, the French Interior Minister initiated proceedings to dissolve the group using sweeping administrative powers and stated that this was necessary to, quote, “strike the Islamists.”
So don’t be confused by the terminology—dissolution, ban, proscription. There are different, slightly different legal frameworks that govern each, but ultimately the effect is the same. And the French government accused Urgence Palestine of advocating for a terrorist organization and “provoking hatred against Jews.”
Then you see this over and over again, this link between terrorism and anti-Jewish racism always coming up in discourse. But importantly, and as groups like, for example, Amnesty International warned, this move could have a massive chilling effect, and this move could also deter all sorts of solidarity actions and anti-racism work in France.
This kind of dissolution, like many other legal frameworks, relies on France’s sweeping administrative powers under the Internal Security Code, which allows the Council of Ministers to dissolve any association by decree for vaguely defined reasons—provoking hatred or engaging in actions that are likely to provoke terrorism.
And so you can see how that can be interpreted in very broad terms. As with other cases, this process also bypasses standard criminal proceedings and due process. What is particularly alarming here is that, even before the dissolution decree was officially issued, the French government, for example, froze the assets of a spokesperson for Urgence Palestine.
This is a measure taken without any criminal conviction or even charges against the person. I think that the threat to dissolve Urgence Palestine must also be understood to be part of a broader surge for dissolutions under the current President Macron, who has in the past targeted Muslim civil society groups, anti-fascist collectives, and anti-capitalist organizations.
Overall, these two cases, along with other cases in the report, essentially constitute the securitization of solidarity. This is what we observe happening: a kind of coordinated Europe-wide effort, and also beyond Europe—although we didn’t really write about the US in that report, but we can see many parallels.
We see the use of administrative tools and counter-terrorism measures to bypass judicial oversight and criminalize resistance to genocide and colonialism. And portraying solidarity as an existential threat to national security, which is precisely what this kind of label of terrorism does, is again another very powerful tool for controlling the population and maintaining the status quo in Palestine.
Yara Hawari 27:49
I know a bit about the impact in the UK following the proscription of Palestine Action. And I think it’s not at all what the authorities expected. I don’t think they anticipated the pushback and the fact that hundreds of people—um, literally hundreds of people—would be willing to put themselves at risk of arrest just to continue voicing their support for the group.
And this is due to significant pushback at a civil disobedience level. It’s very organized, but there’s also pushback on a legal level. There’s an ongoing effort to overturn the proscription, but I think this has also had an undoubtedly negative impact on the wider Palestine solidarity movement.
What are you seeing on your side?
Amira Hala 28:36
Yeah, no, absolutely. At ELSC, one of our main activities is supporting and defending Palestinian solidarity activists and advocates. And so we’ve seen, since October 2023, but also since the ban on Palestine Action and other organizations in other countries, a surge in incidents being reported to us.
The proscription and kind of securitization of Palestine solidarity groups have had a significant but also intentional chilling effect on the broader movement. This is about creating widespread confusion and fear amongst people. And it’s very clear to us, and I hope it’s clear to many others—and I think it is—that this is a tool to target the wider movement.
That proscription is a tool to target the wider movement. It’s not just about Palestine Action in Britain. It’s not just about Samidoun in Germany. It’s not just about Urgence Palestine. It’s not about so-and-so and so-and-so. And there have been, as you said, many arrests connected to the proscription.
For example, recently, a protester in Kent was threatened by armed police—so Kent in the UK—was threatened by armed police for holding a sign that read “Free Gaza,” and officers were claiming that this phrase itself could be interpreted as support for the now-proscribed Palestine Action.
So you see that this ban is leveraged to suppress even basic expressions of support for Palestine. And already, as you said, the UK has seen hundreds of arrests since the proscription of Palestine Action. And these are people who are merely holding protest signs reading “I oppose genocide.”
They were taken in the hundreds by the police into custody. The primary goal of these bans is to intimidate the broader public and deter participation in solidarity actions. The widespread confusion about their meaning is intentional.
The proscription or dissolution of the organization Urgence Palestine in France has not yet occurred, but Amnesty International has warned that this dissolution of groups like Urgence Palestine in France would have a “deterrent effect on all individuals and organizations engaged in solidarity actions with the Palestinian people.”
This is a key impact of proscriptions. They are in themselves designed to paralyze political organizing and enforce silence in the face of genocide. But the repression also extends beyond formal bans into everyday surveillance and particularly targets Muslim communities and activists.
These are kinds of precursors to the proscriptions and the bans. They are the real, kind of the heart of the work of the counter-terrorism framework. So, for example, in the UK, you see the “Prevent” strategy. So this is a kind of pre-criminal counter-terrorism arm of the state established in 2003 with the stated purpose of stopping people from becoming terrorists or supporting terrorism.
This happens through the Prevent program by identifying and intervening with individuals deemed at risk of so-called radicalization. And so basically this pre-criminal counter-terrorism arm mandates, for example, that teachers, doctors, and social workers report political expression, such as displaying Palestine flags or chanting against genocide.
They report them as potential radicalization, and that’s encouraged. Even before October 2023 and between October 2023 and January 2024, just in that really brief period, it’s been reported that over 100 schoolchildren and students in the UK faced Prevent referrals for supporting Palestine. And universities are also major sites of securitization.
So Palestine solidarity activism is heavily monitored as a potential security threat. So, for example, at Leiden University in the Netherlands, counter-terrorism measures transformed the campus into this kind of surveillance zone with undercover guards and ID checks, and also very ridiculously framed academic subjects like conflict studies as potential vectors of terrorism and militant activism.
And this is really like an institutional paranoia and also mirrors precisely what’s happening with the Prevent strategy in the UK, for example. Something that treats political engagement with Palestine as inherently suspect. Another impact that we’re seeing on the rise now, specifically—and so you find that repression not only escalates and accelerates, but also expands, right?
And so right now we’re seeing, for example, the rise of entry bans. Migration and movement across borders is really impacted. For example, the Netherlands prevented Samidoun’s European coordinator from speaking at a Dutch university, and of course, Samidoun, Palestine Prisoners’ Network, was banned in Germany already in 2023.
Hopefully not, but other European countries may follow suit banning Samidoun as well. And Samidoun is one of the case studies we also write about in the report. Finally, we also see a pattern where states and intelligence agencies seem to do it in kind of stages.
So first there is this stigmatization and securitization of solidarity in political declarations and in a kind of general media discourse, which then legitimizes surveillance, and then that finally outlaws the group entirely.
So, for example, the German Domestic Intelligence Service labeled Samidoun as an extremist, which then granted authorities greater power to surveil activists. But similarly, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions—the BDS movement—has also in Germany been branded as “secular Palestinian extremism,” which also paves the way for future bans.
There are house raids, intimidation, smearing, and other tactics that affect the wider movement. It is multi-pronged and extends beyond targeting specific organizations. It’s all about creating a hostile environment for any form of Palestine solidarity by criminalizing groups, speech, symbols, embedding surveillance in public institutions like schools and universities, and using administrative powers and counter-terrorism measures to intimidate and silence activists.
Yara Hawari 35:40
Amira, you mentioned the work of the ELSC in the movement and what they’re doing to counter these repressive measures. But what can individuals do in the face of this increasing authoritarianism?
Amira Hala
I think for me on a kind of personal level, but I think also at a movement level, the answer will always be organized, collective resistance, and one that also importantly transcends borders and rejects these kinds of criminalizations that are taking place. And there is so much to learn, largely transnationally.
And this was also one of the reasons why we wanted to do this report—kind of apply this transnational framework to our work to show people, to show activists and others who are interested that there are these patterns, there are these kind of coordinated efforts, but there are also these kind of telling signs that enable us to predict what could happen.
I think collective organizing, collective resistance, and learning from each other across borders is really important. Not just across borders within Europe, but also among those who have long resisted authoritarianism elsewhere outside the West. And I would like to read you a short concluding paragraph from the report, which I think really encapsulates the spirit of our work at the ELSC, and also in general in the report.
“The escalating crackdown on Palestine solidarity across Europe is not inevitable. It is a challenge to be met with unity. The use of anti-terror measures and other mechanisms of repression shows us the fragility of power, how fiercely it clings to silence, and how easily it unravels when confronted by organized resistance. The bans, raids, and prosecutions detailed here are not signs of the movement’s weakness, but of its growing strength.”
So this means that if you’re able to continue organizing and protesting, commit yourself and encourage others to commit themselves to solidarity work, because without it, we would be enabling and ignoring genocide and supremacy.
More specific to the report, as I said, it is important to outline this pattern so that the movement can recognize when further bans are imminent. Ideally, this would enable it to resist them. We are also seeing signs, some signs that the tool of proscription may be replicated in places like Belgium, Italy, and Austria.
We also end with a section that provides some useful resources—some material on what to do during house raids, toolkits from campaigns that support victims of racist police violence, tools for requesting personal information from domestic intelligence agencies, and for challenging surveillance.
It’s important to keep pushing with whatever means we have at our disposal. We at the ELSC and many others like us use the kind of very limited pushback that the law offers to challenge these proscriptions. So, for example, with Palestine Action, we’re trying to change this proscription and to challenge it in court.
But the law is never going to be our salvation, essentially. So, as I said, continue organizing and mobilizing against genocide. And importantly, if you ever get in trouble, please reach out to the ELSC and report any incidents of repression.
Yara Hawari 39:06
Amira, thank you so much. We’ll leave it there, but we hope to have you on another episode of Rethinking Palestine very soon.
Amira Hala 39:14
Thanks, Yara. Thanks for having me.
Yara Hawari 39:20
Rethinking Palestine is brought to you by Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. Al-Shabaka is the only global, independent Palestinian think tank whose mission is to produce critical policy analysis and collectively imagine a new policymaking paradigm for Palestine and Palestinians worldwide. For more information or to donate to support our work, visit al-shabaka.org.
And importantly, don’t forget to subscribe to Rethinking Palestine wherever you listen to podcasts.




