There’s a battle in Congress, the courts, and Washington to suppress American democratic freedoms by crushing dissent on Israel.

A serious red line has been crossed: America’s democratic freedoms, expansive on paper, will simply not tolerate serious dissent on the U.S.–Israel relationship. As criticisms of Israel have become more mainstream, the attempt to shut them down entirely has become more extreme.

In pursuit of this blank-check relationship with an Israeli government that is becoming ever-more intransigent with each passing year, pro-Israel forces in the U.S. are attacking our own democratic freedoms in order to suppress public outcry about apartheid and potential genocide 6,000 miles away. And, if the recent campus crackdowns are any indication, these forces are winning their battle.

With tens of thousands of Palestinians left dead and the Israeli assault on Gaza ongoing, the U.S. protests targeting university ties with Israel over the last month — voluble and outspoken — have been overwhelmingly nonviolent.

Yet these nonviolent protests have met with the full brutal force of the U.S. security state. Dispersing the protest encampments, police have viciously beaten protesters, fired rubber bullets, and enveloped students in dense clouds of tear gas.

  • @cyborganism
    64•9 days ago

    Anyone remember the war in Iraq? How people criticizing that war were treated as anti patriotic?

    • @[email protected]
      58•11 days ago

      I protested that Halliburton cash grab war and it was rough. People young and old would treat us as if we were pissing on the flag. Still waitin’ on them WMDs Dubya!

        • @[email protected]
          23•11 days ago

          It was unfortunately fruitless. That’s when I learned that Republicans don’t listen to protesters. They just vilify them in the news and call the police. Now we know they don’t even flinch at an insurrection. They may even call you a patriot.

          • @[email protected]English
            5•11 days ago

            That’s when I learned that Republicans don’t listen to protesters.

            The best part was in 2006 when Democrats retook congress and demonstrated that they were just as much a rubber stamp for war as Republicans had been.

          • @[email protected]
            1•10 days ago

            That’s when I learned that Republicans don’t listen to protesters.

            I distinctly remember the way liberals enthusiastically villified antifa when they were the only ones willing to throw down with the neo-nazis and their police protectors in the streets a few years ago. Stop pretending that liberals’ overtly fascist cousins are the only anti-democratic faction in the US political establishment.