This week, Roqayah and Kumars speak with Liz Jackson, a founding staff attorney for
Palestine Legal and Cooperating Counsel with the
Center for Constitutional Rights. We talk to Liz about the surveillance and harassment of Palestine solidarity activists on US college campuses by the far-right and governments. We learn more about the pernicious
Canary Mission website which smears activists as anti-Semites and supporters of terrorism, and other efforts to suppress boycott, divestment, and sanction efforts targeting Israel. Liz also describes efforts by Trump's Department of Education to
expand the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel and Israeli policy toward Palestinians. We also discuss several pieces of anti-BDS legislation at the state and national levels, and the ways in which Palestine Legal is working to safeguard the right to protest Israeli apartheid. Liz explains that the best way to combat the avalanche of repression is to bring BDS more and more into the mainstream. Finally, we examine the campus free speech frenzy from the perspective of Palestine activism, and discuss whether free speech absolutism is actually the best foundation upon which to build a movement for justice in Palestine.
You can follow Palestine Legal on Twitter at
@pal_legal and visit
Palestine Legal online to learn about ways you can support their work.
A transcript for this episode will be provided upon request. Please send an email to deleteuracct @ gmail to get a copy sent to you when it is completed.
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