Canary in the Coal Mine

Earlier this month, NY governor Kathy Hochul demanded that City University of New York (CUNY) Hunter College remove job postings for Palestine Studies. She objected to key concepts in the Palestine Studies job postings - “settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, and apartheid,” which she deems to be “hateful” and “antisemitic.” Unfortunately, the CUNY chancellor and board of trustees concurred with the governor. This is an abuse of power on the part of the governor encroaching on the prerogatives of a university. It also represents spineless collaboration with anti-Palestinian discrimination by the CUNY administration. Most importantly, it begs the question of how CUNY can possibly teach Palestine Studies without referencing standard concepts in the discipline - settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, and apartheid. Similarly, how could a university teach the history of the African American experience without reference to slavery, Jim Crow segregation, reconstruction, lynching, and mass incarceration. It is state power being abused to shut down truth-telling about Palestinian history and Palestinian rights.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark) and Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) have co-sponsored a bill to require all official U.S. documents to use the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of “the West Bank.” Cotton and Tenney both betrayed their ignorance of the history of the region when they insisted that the state of Israel has “a rightful claim to its territory…going back thousands of years.” There is general consensus among historians that Palestinians, not Jews, are the indigenous people of the land of Palestine. The bill has yet to pass, but it enjoys the support of 80% of evangelical Christians who voted for Donald Trump. Christian Zionists have long pressed for Israel to annex the West Bank, hoping it will trigger the Second Coming of Christ. (Given how awfully many of them have treated their fellow human beings, you’d think they wouldn’t be so eager for “The Great Judgment.”) These misguided convictions are completely consistent with statements by Mike Huckabee, nominee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, who has said that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian…and there is no West Bank, only Judea and Samaria.”

ICE agents are targeting Palestinian solidarity activists across the country. The Department of Education has put 60 American universities on notice that they will be under investigation for campus “antisemitism,” and face costly penalties. The government is actively smearing students and faculty who have exercised their free speech rights to oppose Gaza genocide as “Hamas sympathizers.” They are spreading dangerous lies that Palestinian solidarity activists are engaging in “antisemitic” actions, supposedly making Jewish students “feel unsafe.” As is well known, the student demonstrations included Jewish students, often in leadership roles, and were peaceful. These lies are a false pretext for suppressing pro-Palestinian speech and activity the government does not like. On March 12, Yale Law School announced it had suspended an Iranian scholar Helyeh Doutaghi on its faculty, 24 hrs. after an AI-powered Zionist website, “Jewish Onliner” falsely labeled her as a “terrorist.”

On March 7, ICE agents targeted Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate and a highly-respected student leader of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia last year. Khalil is a human rights defender. He is in our country legally, a permanent resident holding a green card. ICE agents forced themselves into his Columbia University housing in New York City and abducted him. He has not been charged with any crime. His legal team contends this is punitive and retaliatory. The ICE agents did not present a judicial warrant, as required by law. Neither his lawyer nor his wife, who is a US citizen and 8 months pregnant, knew his whereabouts for over 24 hours. The government renditioned Khalil to a detention facility in Louisiana, cutting him off from his family, legal representation, and support network. The State Department used an obscure, rarely-used law in the immigration law code that authorizes the Secretary of State to personally deport individuals it deems as a “national security threat.” Many are seeing this for what it is – an outrageous violation of his civil rights. Vigorous street protests, calls to Congress, online petitions, and media attention to his case have thus far prevented his deportation. Thankfully, a federal judge blocked his unlawful detention and potential deportation until the constitutionality can be determined. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Khalil is stuck in a Louisiana for-profit prison notorious for prisoner abuse. Trump promised, “This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it.”

When you put these developments together, we see the racist dehumanization of Palestinians: erasing their history by illegitimately declaring their homeland doesn’t belong to them and renaming it in Zionist terms, blocking the teaching of Palestine in American universities, and misrepresenting and criminalizing pro-Palestinian activism. None of this is new. It’s been present in the United States for decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations. But what we are seeing now is an extremely dangerous authoritarian, lawless escalation of these trends. As is so often the case, Palestinians are the canary in the human rights coal mine. We do well to heed the warning. None of us are safe unless all of us are safe. There are encouraging signs the message is getting through: more and more people are paying attention, more and more people are angry and disgusted, and resistance is growing.