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, we’re 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 a Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network. I am Yara Hari, and this is Rethinking Palestine. Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, European governments have escalated their in instrumentalization of Counterterrorist measures to criminalize Palestine solidarity groups.
From prescriptions 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 and Gaza, according to the European Legal Support Center. The ELSC has published a new report detailing these efforts across Europe and in particular in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and France.
Joining us to discuss the findings of this report is Amira Hala is 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. Amir, 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.
And at the time, specifically in 1937, not only did the British Mandate Authority in Palestine Outlaw the Higher Arab Committee and the Regional Arab National Committee, which at the time constituted this sort of the entire organized urban structure 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 Taggart, 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 kind of huge wire fence put up along the 80-kilometer border with Lebanon and Syria and all of this was done to try and 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 also basically just using a playbook that he himself had written from his time dealing with anti-colonial rebellions up in Northern India.
And so in this report that we recently published, we make the connection between 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, or those by France against Algerians in Algeria, and by Germany and 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 prescription of Palestine solidarity groups in Europe. These modalities of repression themselves 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, but 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 things were developed and refined through this kind of constant exchange between the metropolis and the colonial context. I think that it’s important also, I think to note that this long history of figuring 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 powerful propaganda. 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, this kind of tool of tagging people as terrorists, it was revived in the wake of the nine 11 attacks, for example, or in 2013 onwards against the backdrop of the rise of iso. In each of these instances and other instances, its entire Muslim and Arab populations are presented as innately hateful, aggressive, irrational, and so on.
These are, of course, not just recent in nine 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 who were particularly in Southwest Asia, North Africa.
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. And Swana, according to Western imperial powers, of course, can therefore have any 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 Westport ports are theirs or their kind of inventions.
So what they can do, however, these kinds of quote-unquote backward on developable populations in Swana, what they can do, what we can do, and what they do, and what we do when we rise up. It is basically terrorism and not legitimate resistance. And so today, not only have European and, more generally, Western governments, of course, branded resistance and Palestine as terrorism, but they are also using so-called counter-terrorism measures to ban Palestine groups, or rather, sorry, 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, lobby groups, and arms manufacturers who have a financial stake in all of this.
But they also have these European and Western governments and 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 motivation because somewhere like Iran, for example, gives them the money to do that. 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 nationalists 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 nine 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’s also been used in the heart of Europe itself to basically halt resistance, even resistance that has a lot to do with internal struggles. Struggles in Britain for democracy and republicanism, very similar tactics have been used against the centers 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.
And in the report, we make the argument that the current counter-terrorism measures in Europe replicate the logic of colonial emergency laws, which as I mentioned before, we’re 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, as well, and even at the ELSC, we were established in 2019 because there already had been a gap in defending and supporting Palestine solidarity activists in organizations in Europe and long before 2023 and long before 2019 when we were established. 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 of 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 the list goes on.
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 who openly express anti-Jewish racism and who constitute a real threat to both Jews and Muslims, they are rarely ever branded 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, other Arabs there 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 Raza 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 been completely denied in the past, and now we see attempts at restricting it. Over and over again. But nevertheless, they have been able to show us what settler colonialism, ethnonationalism, and Jewish supremacism look like in real time. So I would say that the escalating response in part is because more and more people are learning the truth.
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 a 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 terrorists.
It is not something that comes naturally to the outside observer because anyone who has access to an internet connection can easily understand the reality of what is going on. And the closer the Palestinians get to liberation, the more work that needs to go into distorting that struggle.
And the more the repression. So, in the report, we show that the current moment marks a somewhat distinct acceleration in the sense that there had been a systematic and coordinated prescription across Europe in multiple countries. And so these countries specifically, we focus on Germany, Britain and France and the Netherlands, although the prescriptions have not fully happened in all the countries, only in Germany and Britain, but it’s very much evident that they are in, in the process of doing so.
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, this kind of vague definitions of terrorism mean that governments can stretch it to mean whatever they want.
So now it’s being used to target protesters to criminalize slogans like 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 is 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
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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 have a tendency to dismiss us as something that’s okay, maybe getting a little bit worse, but I don’t think they fully realize what this kind of legislation actually 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, 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. And these specific terms stick because of their history, but not just because of their history, because they keep being updated over and over again. So you mentioned nine 11, right?
There were moments before nine 11 as well so there are so many instances where this is. Updated and reinforced, hammered into the brains of the general public. And I think that’s why terrorism, whether legislation or just discourse, is very powerful in that sense. But I think also at the same time, it’s slowly but surely being kind of 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 the ability of the solidarity movement to push back again. 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 A LSC has worked on for years. Where we see this tool of prescription being used or potentially going to be used. But today I’ll focus on two case studies specifically. So the recent prescription of the direct action group, Palestine Action in the UK, and then also the kind of really imminent threat of the solution of the group or Urgence Palestine in France.
So first, let’s talk about Palestine Action. In theUK, 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 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, um, this, the beginning of this genocide in October 2023, and for years, um.
As kind of we alluded to before, activists faced standard criminal charges for their acts, actions like,, 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’re doing what they’re doing, but in a significant and dangerous escalation, the UK government moved to prescribe.
So that basically means just outright ban. The Group 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 really constitutes, despite all the escalating repression anyway, this designation specifically constitutes a, a really seismic shift.
It means that now, not just carrying out actions like direct action against property owned by weapons manufacturers and others, but even expressing support for the group. So, for example, holding a sign that says, I support Palestine action, or sharing a post, can lead not only to arrest, but arrest under counter-terrorism powers, which have far more severe implications than any other forms of arrest or charges.
And it’s really, it’s interesting, but really, really sad, that the government. This really interesting thing where they bundled the vote on this ban. So the vote in Parliament to ban Palestine action, they bundled it with those of two neo-Nazi groups. So they bundled it with the ban or, or the vote on a ban of,, two other neo-Nazi groups.
So you have two neo-Nazi groups. One of them is like, I think it’s called murder. Called something I, I apologize, I don’t remember the exact name, but these two words were in the title. So these two, two new 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 prescribe 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.
And so in a way, this act effectively insulates government policy from any meaningful challenge or scrutiny. The prescription of Palestine Action is also not really about property damage. We see a long-standing tradition of the use of direct action in protest in Bri, in Britain and in Europe, in British and European history, which included the direct action, included property damage as well.
And 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 damage property are. especially today, very widely celebrated as this like really important feminist thing that happened.
The prescription is really about neutralizing a group that effectively targets the arms trait, 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, and a judicial review of the prescription was granted by the High Court that was 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 prescription.
But despite this, the court denied interim relief, which means that the ban remains in effect until at least November 2025. When the judicial review is, um, probably going to take place, and so this means that any support for Palestine action remains criminalized. Now looking at France. We have the case of Ojos Palestine, and this is 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 so confused by the terminology, the solution ban prescription. There are different kinds of slightly different legal frameworks that govern each, but ultimately the effect is, 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 um, and, and kind of, um, 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 in anti-racism work in France.
And this kind of solution action, like many other legal frameworks, utilizes France’s sweeping administrative powers under the Internal Security Code, which basically allows the Council of Ministers to dissolve any association by decree for vaguely defined reasons such as. 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. And obviously, as with other cases, this process also bypasses standard criminal proceedings and due process. And what is particularly alarming here is that the process, and even before the solution 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 search for solutions under the current President Macron, which have in the past targeted Muslim civil society groups, anti-fascist collectives, and anti-capitalist organizations.
And so I think overall, these kinds of two cases, but also other cases in the report, essentially constitute the securitization of solidarity. This is really what’s what we see 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 prescription of Palestine action. And I think it’s, 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. This is because of massive pushback on a civil disobedience level. It’s very organized, but there’s also pushback a, on a legal level. There’s an ongoing effort to overturn the prescription, 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. And at ELSC, one of the main things we do is we support and defend,, Palestine solidarity, um, activists and advocates. And so we’re, we have seen, since October 2023, but also since the ban on Palestine action and other organizations in other countries, we’ve seen a surge in, um, incidents being reported to us.
The prescription 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,, 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 prescription is a tool to target the wider movement, not, it’s not just about Palestine Action in Britain. It’s not just about Samon in Germany, it’s not just about Rojas Palestine. It’s not about so and so and so, and there have been, as you said, many arrests connected to the prescription.
For example, recently, a protester in Kent was threatened by armed police. So Kenton 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’d 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 prescription of Palestine action. And these are people who are merely holding protest signs, reading. “I oppose genocide.”
They were taken in the hundreds by police in custody. The primary goal of these bans is to intimidate the broader public and deter them from participating in solidarity actions, and this widespread confusion about what the bans mean is intentional.
The prescription or dissolution of Urgence Palestine in France hasn’t happened yet. 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 on solidarity actions with the Palestinian people.”
This is a key impact of prescriptions. 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 prescriptions 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 a 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 school children and students in the UK face 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 framing 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 on of entry bands. Migration and,, movement across borders is really impacted. Um, so for example, in the Netherlands, prevented. Sam MAD’s Europe’s coordinator from speaking at a Dutch university, and of course, Sam Madon, Palestine Prisoners’ network was banned in Germany already in 2023.
And maybe, hopefully not, but maybe other countries will potentially follow suit, in other European countries. Banning Sam Madon as well. And Sam Mado is one of the case studies. We also write about that 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 Sam Madon as an extremist, which then granted authorities greater power to survey 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, there is intimidation, there is smearing, there are all sorts of things that have an impact on the wider movement. It is really kind of multi-pronged and really goes far 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 and,, powers and counter-terrorism measures to intimidate and silence activists.
Yara Hawari 35:40
Amira, you mentioned the work of the ELSC, um, in the movement and,, and what they’re doing to counter these repressive moves. 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 criminalization that are, that are taking place. And there is so much to learn,, kind of trans nationally.
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, to show people, to show activists and, and others who are interested that the, these are these patterns, there are these patterns, there are these kind of coordinated efforts, but there are also these kind of telling signs of what enable us to predict what could happen.
I think collective organizing, collective resistance learning from each other across borders is really important. Not just across borders within Europe, but also those who have for the longest time been resisting authoritarianism elsewhere outside of the West entirely. 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 show us the fragility of power, how fiercely it clings to silence, and how easily it unravels when confronted by organized resistance. The bans raised 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 is able to recognize when further bans are about to happen, for example, and hopefully, this wouldn’t enable them to resist them. We are also seeing signs, some signs that the tool of prescription 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 prescriptions. So, for example, with Palestine Action, we’re trying to change this prescription 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 progression.
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, RA. Thanks for having me.
Yara Hawari 39:20
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