feature image photo by Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images
In 2018, the founder and publisher of the Arkansas Times, Alan Leveritt, received an ultimatum in his inbox from one of his paper’s longtime advertisers. It stated that, in order for his paper to continue receiving ad dollars from them, he would have to certify in writing that his company would not engage in any boycott of Israel now or in the future.
This baffled Leveritt. Soon after receiving this note, he sued the state of Arkansas, arguing that requiring him to certify he wasn’t boycotting Israel violated his First Amendment rights. Initially, in 2021, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Leveritt, finding that a boycott of Israel was constitutionally protected speech. However, in 2022, the full Eighth Circuit reversed this decision, ruling that Arkansas’s anti-BDS law did not violate the First Amendment because it regulated economic activity rather than speech. Despite the ACLU’s efforts, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in February 2023, leaving the Eighth Circuit’s ruling in place.
As of 2022 in the United States—a country where a single boycott against British imperial taxes ignited the American Revolution, later celebrated as a principled act of protest—thirty-five states have enacted laws that penalize or restrict state contracts with those who boycott Israel, similar to the law in Arkansas.
I wrote the above sentence in 2022, after learning of Leveritt’s failed attempt to sue Arkansas. At the time, I was desperate to prove a point to a class full of apathetic liberal arts students. I needed to prove that fascism was not just on the rise, and it wasn’t just an orange blob of a presidential candidate we needed to be worried about.
Fascism was here, ripe and ready, growing steadily but profoundly in our own backyard.
Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) is a nonviolent, Palestinian-led movement created in 2005 that calls for countries, companies, universities, and all other institutions to oppose Israeli occupation through boycott, divestment, and sanctions. In so doing, BDS hopes to hold the Israeli government accountable for its human rights violations. I need to be repetitive for a moment and highlight a fact I’ve already stated, because I don’t want your eyes to gloss over a significant detail: The BDS movement was created in 2005, almost 20 years ago.
For well over 13 months, my social media feed has been drowning me with photos of Israel’s genocidal campaign against the people in Gaza, broader Palestine, and now Lebanon. I hesitate to use the word drowning, because I am a Palestinian alive and safe in the comfort of my apartment in America, holding an American passport. But the consistency for which the live-streamed, horrific genocide has flowed from my distant homeland into every single person’s pocket, if they wish to see it, feels like a kind of drowning, suffocating in its clarity.
After a year of watching prestigious and elite private or public American organizations fire their employees who sign petitions honoring Palestinian human rights or universities authorizing police force to storm college campuses and dismantle pro-Palestinian encampments, it feels ridiculous to have to bring up this same point — that fascism is here, that our rights as American citizens to speak freely, to protest freely, to boycott freely (which is considered a constitutionally protected form of free speech and expression under the First Amendment) is under threat and has been under threat.
But bring it up I must.
Systems of control, censorship, and dehumanization employed against Palestinians echo disturbingly within American policies and university campuses, where students advocating for Palestine are censored in direct contradiction to democratic principles like free speech and the right to dissent.
I want to be very clear: I am not and have never been in support of a Donald Trump presidency, a reality I am now forced to process and mourn once again. But I also don’t believe he and his followers are the only ones to blame for the growing fascist movement in our country. We didn’t wake up on Wednesday and suddenly find ourselves barreling toward fascism. Regardless of which party holds office, our political leaders have been violating and will continue to violate their sworn oaths by failing to uphold the constitutionally protected right to free speech. And as much as we’d love to believe this rise in fascism has to do with one party or particularly racist, sexist, or bad-apple candidates, the defining factor of free speech for both Democrats and Republicans has been agreed upon in one particular issue: The Palestine Exception, which refers to the unique and deliberate silencing of Palestinian advocacy, where the right to support Palestinian rights is restricted in a way unmatched by any other international issue.
In 2015, Tennessee was one of the first states to formally condemn the BDS movement, legalizing their condemnation by passing SJR-170. Like other states that have since followed, Tennessee’s law requires that anyone who enters into a contract with a state agency must certify that they are not involved in any anti-Israel boycott. Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee signed into law that all state contracts must include “a written certification that the company is not currently engaged in, and will not for the duration of the contract engage in a boycott of Israel.” Within this law, ‘Israel’ includes not only the State of Israel but also the Israeli-controlled territories, Gaza, and their settlements in the West Bank.
In June 2016, New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that required state agencies to divest from organizations and companies that participate in any form of boycotts of Israel. During a speech at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, Cuomo described the BDS movement as an ‘economic attack’ on Israel and that “if you boycott against Israel, New York will boycott you.”
In 2021, after the ice cream company Ben and Jerry’s decided to stop selling products in the occupied West Bank territories, the state of New York divested from Ben and Jerry’s parent company, Unilever. Shortly after, New Jersey followed New York’s lead and divested $182 million dollars worth of Unilever PLC stocks and bonds.
But perhaps these examples don’t feel serious enough, don’t demonstrate the extent to which our government has been silencing any condemnation of Israel long before chanting free, free Palestine became acceptable parlance. These laws haven’t just impacted large corporations. In Kansas, the state refused to allow one of their employed teachers to participate in their teacher-training program because she wouldn’t sign an anti-Israel boycott form. Arizona refused to pay a lawyer for his work on behalf of incarcerated people because he declined to sign a form certifying that he would not participate in a boycott of Israel or Israeli settlements. In Texas, an independent speech pathologist lost her contract with a local school district because she also refused to sign such an agreement. Artists asked to give lectures at the University of Houston have also been required to sign such forms — or lose their contracts. In fact, the University of Houston has gone as far as to require all of their contractors and employees to sign their Anti-BDS waiver.
Even Hurricane Harvey victims in Texas were required to sign away their right to boycott Israel before receiving their disaster aid. What did their disaster aid have to do with Israel? It’s not clear, but it proves just how broad these laws extend, often for irrelevant reasons. Although these individuals were not specifically refusing to sign such agreements because they were outspoken for Palestine, necessarily, it’s essential to note what these laws surreptitiously do in the reverse: undermine and endanger anyone who not only might speak out against an ethnostate, such as Israel, but any future aligning and voicing support for Palestinian human rights under occupation. This is very calculated. Tell someone that it’s illegal to protest Israel enough times, and perhaps we will stop asking why and follow orders. These anti-BDS laws are uniquely tailored to Israel and don’t extend to other U.S. allies, such as those in NATO.
This kind of monitoring of behavior and speech is not new in America’s history. Programs like COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program), operated by the FBI, were used to monitor and undermine anti-war groups, civil rights organizations, and left-leaning activists. COINTELPRO was officially terminated in 1971 after its existence was publicly exposed, leading to widespread condemnation and legal reforms. However, its legacy had a lasting impact on activism in the U.S., creating an environment of distrust between activist groups and law enforcement. This systematic targeting of activists for their political beliefs is a hallmark of authoritarian, if not fascist, tactics.
Just as COINTELPRO sought to undermine movements for civil rights by labeling them as threats, anti-BDS laws attempt to paint solidarity with Palestine as a form of dangerous dissent that must be controlled. While COINTELPRO targeted the Black liberation, civil rights, and anti-war movements, they had a singular aim: silence dissent and restrict political activism. Those aims are the same for anti-BDS laws: limit specific forms of political expression and advocacy that challenge established policies or state-aligned interests.
The Palestine Exception is a reinvention, a repackaging of COINTELPRO, and it’s happening on the state level under the guise of anti-BDS laws which have now insidiously informed informal American workplace protocols and college campuses. David Velasco, the editor-in-chief of Artforum was dismissed after publishing an open letter from artists calling for a ceasefire and “Palestinian liberation.” His firing led to resignations from other editors in protest. Steve Bell, a long-standing cartoonist for The Guardian had his contract terminated after the newspaper declined to publish one of his cartoons, which was interpreted as critical of Israel. But it’s not just single, high-profile individuals who are meeting their fate in terms of speaking out for Palestine’s liberation. Google terminated over 50 workers following protests against its provision of technology to the Israeli government amid the Gaza conflict.
Suppress dissent, reinforce ideological uniformity, or support a dominant national narrative — that’s what we are seeing over and over again with these chilling actions. And these actions of suppression whether covertly done or not, are, of course, not new to the history of authoritarian or nationalist regimes. The most obvious historical example is South Africa, which for decades suppressed and barred Black people, people of color, and Indian South Africans from holding positions of influence and voting. Those who protested, like Steve Biko, faced imprisonment, violence, and, in many cases, death. This institutionalized racism aimed to enforce racial hierarchies and prevent challenges to the state’s authority.
I don’t believe it is dramatic to make connections between the way in which our American government is silencing certain voices and how that specific silencing could lead to further authoritarian actions. If the two candidates who were just running for the seat of arguably the most powerful position in the world agree that America will and must continue to financially enable and support Israel with weapons and diplomatic cover in the United Nations, what makes you think these candidates aren’t similar in their beliefs about anything else?
America’s fight against fascism cannot succeed without confronting the Palestine Exception. Unless we face this head-on, our democratic values will continue to erode. This silencing is strategically bolstered by equating Zionism with Judaism, deflecting legitimate critique of an ideology. You cannot in good faith compare a 100-year-old Zionist land grab ideology with a 3,000-year-old religion.
Recognizing Palestine’s role in exposing these repressive mechanisms is essential to preserving democracy. It is the last barrier against a future where erasing facts and silencing history distort our understanding of truth. In actively erasing Palestine’s narrative, those seeking to rewrite history are also working to engineer a more authoritarian future.
If Israel is shielded from criticism, it sets a dangerous precedent that other governments may also claim immunity from critique, eroding the principles of accountability and transparency that are essential to democracy. It would mean that politicians who critique their own countries, a freedom in the United States that Jamaal Bowman and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have taken advantage of when they point toward racist policies like the filibuster, the electoral college, or gerrymandering as sources for continued systematic oppression, should perhaps be censored because of the very nature of their critique. It suggests that those studying Canada’s actions when building a pipeline that disrupts one of their Indigenous communities should also be silenced. It would mean that when Russia annexes more and more Ukrainian land, making refugees of their neighbors and bombing one village after the next, Russia’s actions are also irrefutable.
If the very nature of governing bodies today is not to be reconsidered and challenged, whether that be reflecting on their colonizing history or recent actions, then the possibility of countries righting their own wrongs could also vanish as no nation would be held accountable. Germany could stop paying their continued reparations to Holocaust survivors which, in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, now includes the 8,500 Ukrainian Holocaust survivors currently suffering through Russia’s attacks. Those who openly spoke out against Germany and Hitler before and during WWII may never have been heard, may have been censored, and thus could have created a reality where Germany, a nation whose history has been deeply analyzed and critiqued, never needed to condemn and remedy their actions.
Solidarity with Palestine isn’t just a gesture of justice far from home; it’s a stand for the democratic ideals we claim to hold dear.
This comment has been removed as it is in violation of Autostraddle’s Comment Policy. Repeat or egregious offenders will be banned.
Thank you for writing this article. I completely agree. I will stand in solidarity with Palestine.
ok but can hamas release the hostages and end the war? can hezbollah stop attacking druze israeli children with rockets in the north? can iran stop sending bombs and letting their women show their hair? women life freedom. end islamic autocracy and free palestine and all my muslim brothers and sisters from the pain of living under regimes that sacrifice us for their political goal to erase israel. ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ
Yes! I’m really torn on signing up for A+ bc Autostraddle is one of the few queer female magazine out there & it’s meant a lot to me & many others. But I can’t support the blind, unqualified demonisation of all Zionists & unqualified support for Palestine without teasing out the nuances of the situation. I also can’t support the assertion that lesbians can be attracted to people with penises. Autostraddle need to rethink bc they’re losing a lot of former readers due to this stuff.
Maybe you personally can’t be attracted to a person with a penis if you identify as a lesbian. My BJ days are long gone, but there certainly are people with penises who are very attractive. But there definitely are people who identify as lesbians who can be. Are you saying that if a lesbian dates a trans woman they would have to have bottom surgery for their lesbian partner to be attracted to them? This site is also for non binary and genderqueer people and bisexual women who *gasp* might like the D, or just don’t care what junk someone they’re attracted to has in their pants.
Yes, I am saying that. Penises are male genitalia. Vaginas are female genitalia. If a woman wants to sleep with someone with a penis, she’s not a lesbian, because lesbians are not attracted to male genitalia. If a trans woman were post op, that’s different. Sexual orientation is based on the physical, not on how somebody mentally identifies, but on their physical body, specifically their genitalia. Autostraddle can and should support trans people, without denying biological reality.
That’s a pretty narrow view of sexuality. I see that works for you, but not for everyone who considers themselves a lesbian. Maybe you can’t believe it, but doesn’t mean it’s not true.
you all respond to my comment but completely back track into your own navel gazing about righteous gender feelings.
can anyone at this website understand what it is like to live as a woman who has lived under autocratic regimes? i mean real ones-like the ones in Iran or Somalia or Afghanistan. You have NO idea what it’s like and you can quabble over who hates israel more or who accepts trans the best and you know what our sisters and mothers and friends are still being abused and systematically held in gender apartheid-the real kind-the kind the western mind cannot fathom. the western palestinian and privileged arab stance on what the middle east is like is hilarious. I am Muslim but I have SURVIVED things you will NEVER experience as a woman in europe or america. You cannot fathom-and it is all mostly state sanctioned. My life in America is my golden ticket and my relatives and other close friends are not as lucky. My best allies in the fight against extreme Islam ruining our religion and culture are Israelis, Druze, Bahai, other LGBTQ Arabs from Arab Countries. Nobody on this website that i love would have the stamina or fortitude to last one week in my home country. I worry for Americans well being- but any time the PLO is glorified as some queer social movement is horrifying to me as a lesbian muslim woman who fought by might to exist under the wedge of extremist Islam. Please open your mind and understand what we go through. Bless your lives of photoshoots, PhDs, struggle sessions, recipe blogs, breakups, depression and ennui, bless the roads not littered with explosives, bless your imperfect friends and families that do not honor kill you for being gay, bless the problematic pop culture, and silly silly republicans who cannot hold a candle to any Islamist regime I have lived under. Bless your innocence and teenage like angst at a world you truly do not understand ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّٰهِ
Pretty sure Autostraddle has been pro trans for the 15 years I’ve been reading it. And pointing out Israel has killed 40 times more people in this war than the other side is not a lack of nuance.
Aafreen, I’m really sorry for detracting from your comment. I think it is v dangerous that Autostraddle can no longer define the word woman, & says that lesbians can be attracted to bio males w male genitalia, but it wasn’t the place to discuss that and detract from your comment.
Nobody here has experienced anything like you have- we all have problems, but nothing comparable at all. And yes, the Republicans are v flawed, definitely NOT on the same scale as all-powerful dictators in Islamist regimes. People seem to have lose sense of proportion and not realise their lives are far better in the scheme of the world than they could be. And the idealising of the PLO is very worrying. I’ve seen feminists on Twitter mourning the death of the Hamas leader. It’s insane. It’s like the way Ho Chi Minh was idealised during Vietnam.
You sound incredibly brave, and we need to hear from more people like you.
“I’m really sorry for detracting from your comment, but I’m going to go ahead and do it again in the midst of apologizing.”
If it wasn’t the place for it the first time you did it, it certainly wasn’t the next time. But, you know, as AS is fond of saying, you do you.
U sound absolutely ridiculous😂. ur logic and that of which u are defending sound identical to the Republicans and other extremist u claim to be against. And it’s sad really, the one-dimensional view u have of the world as a supposed “lesbian”. Truly just and embarrassment to the lgbtq umbrella as a whole .
The right (and especially the Christian right) wins because they are united and we cannot stop dividing ourselves. I don’t know how to fix it, but they are going to destroy us if we don’t.
This comment is embarrassing u sound absolutely ridiculous 😒.
No that isn’t a lack of nuance, of course not. I should have been clearer : what I meant by ‘unqualified support for Palestine’ was the downplaying of Hamas’ atrocities in the article about rape in the war, and the recommending of things like Kehlani’s Next 2 U video without acknowledging that to many Jews, ‘intifada’ signifies acts of terror. And more generally, the refusal to acknowledge that, although Netanyahu’s government have behaved with horrendously to the Palestinians, some form of military aggression (definitely not the current method) needs to be deployed to get rid of Hamas. I share this site’s horror at the treatment of Gazan civilians, but the atrocities of Hamas have barely been covered. The hostages, most of whom are still being held captive, have barely been mentioned. That’s what I mean by a lack of nuance. Of course Hamas is not the same as the Palestinian state, but Autostraddle has only covered the Israeli atrocities. Their coverage has been unbalanced. & their refusal to consider moderate Zionist perspectives is too extreme.
This “explanation” only furthers the embarrassment of ur initial comment. It clear the only thing “unbalanced” are your own biasis.
There is a clear commitment to see Israel as an entity that only is violent bc the big bad Palestinians.
Not the big bad Palestinians, the big bad Hamas, who are propped up by many other people. How do you propose Israel should deal w them?How can they get the hostages back? This carpet bombing of Gaza and Lebanon pagers were barbaric. But there needs to be some other form of military action. Hamas are not going to stop firing rockets anytime soon.
Once again the flaw in ur argument remains clear. u feel it is within Is-not-real’s right to “deal with” the Palestinians in any capacity in the land that Israeli stole ( look into the 1st Nakba)….
The hostage argument is moot, bc the Israeli government, who u claim must have “some sort of military action” have rejected countless deals with leaders Hamas to release all hostages contingent on a ceasefire. That same government has not only rejected that deal time and time again, but has “accidentally” shot and harmed their own hostages bc of there annihilate-at-all cost apporach. One might argue the constant rejection might be to idk continue completely decimating the infrastructure and people. To justifying isreals use of bombs, at a rate planet Earth has LITERALLY never seen before. Justify starving innocent children and families at a rate we have never witness in realtime like this before. To justify burying thousand of people alive under rubble at a rate we have not seen in this lifetime.
Besides that argument also frames the start of this violence at the wrong point in time. Israel has been flagged by human rights groups for over three decades for there treatment of Palestinians (on Palestinian land!).Labeling the Gaza strip as the largest open air prison in the world… IN THE WORLD!! FOR OVER 30YEARS.
It’s disingenuous and ignorant to make any argument on the resistance groups of an oppressd people without taking that into consideration.
Anytime u form a sentence like “carpet bombing & and blowing people up is bad BUT” know that ur butt is on the wrong side of history and pray to ur god that u come to ur senses and realize how embarrassing and violent it is to be on the side of justifying that level violence for any reason at all .
“ok but can hamas release the hostages and end the war?” Unfortunately, no. Even if Hamas was willing to do so, it would not end the war. Netanyahu will not stop until he has destroyed every last bit of Hamas — and then the rest of Palestine — unless he’s forced to. He’s been fairly open about that. And who knows how far he will go after that, if he is able? Retaliation for the October 7 attack is a pretense for what is happening now.
I wish I had an answer for how to stop the authoritarian Islamic regimes. I can’t even put words together to express . . . anything about it. I know that I am lucky and privileged and that anything I would say is not enough. There are bad people on both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict, and good people suffer too much because of them.
Mona-you are speaking to me like a child. I’m from an Islamic country. It is nothing like you can imagine and you have no answers but believe you have the answers to solve Israel and Palestine?! I’m sorry you are wrong about many things. We the people of Islamic nations are being sacrificed to erase a small country. We the people of Islamic nations are being sacrificed for the Palestinians. Our resources are sent to Iran to fund proximal armies and militias to target Bahai, Druze, Jews, Christians, Yazidis. You know nothing of what you speak and I pray and hope you will never experience my life and remain blissful in your altruism and your moose forest lesbian world. I stand with my statement that no AS writer would last one day in my home country. You do not know what i had to do to get to the US, google “Rainbow Railroad” you don’t understand that my survival depended on coming here. For example we can take Drew Gregory a great writer but is a lesbian transgender of Jewish decent with club fashions! This woman loves to parrot the most radical of Islamist talking points that in my home would be the people wishing me a closeted lesbian at the time, certain death. It is political ideology over reality-it is your wish for the world over its true nature . I want world peace I want my Palestinian brothers and sisters to live without fear. I want the same for the Yehoodi -they deserve peace in their lands! What the west knows is nothing. What the west propagates from privileged Arab Americans and Europeans of Islamic decent with their grandmas and babas romanticism stories is more like fan fiction . Also many arab and muslim who did not have refugee status here are very very wealthy and privileged where our home countries are and many of their parents took part of the regimes that stole money from the people so their children can live in Malibu and scream about resistance in their bra tops and girlfriends. Alice through the looking glass world! الجمل ما يراش حدبتو
There is a lot of assumption of who u are talking to… It seems u have gone through a great deal of pain and are misdirecting that anger and hurt.
Just bc ur a queer that has been thru the unimaginable doesn’t means that there aren’t queer people who gravitate toward this article haven’t been through a different version of the unimaginable. How would you know? The internet it world wide. There are horrors happening in places like Haiti and the Congo to name a few. u don’t have the sole rights on suffering babes.
I understand that in the US people are living a life that shelters them from understanding the cost of their privilege around the world and there are things that people in the US cannot fathom.
But one could argue that u are Alice lost in a one version of what this world has looked and will look like…. I pray u heart is opened to see what else is possible, what the arc towards liberation of all oppressed people can look like in a our lifetime and beyond.
I love reading Elena’s writing. Clear, direct and so important.
For someone to fix there mouth to say “Unqualified support of Palestine” is all I need to know about the type of person u r.
It’s clear the ongoing history of the oppression of Palestine people is lost on someone who would make that comment on a Palestinian person article. It very easy to center the symptom of harm rather than the cause.
What about the 1st Nakba? What about the constant colonization of Palestinian land? The Gaza strip for decades be deemed the largest open air prison in the world by human rights watch groups?
It’s so easy to be blinded by the propaganda of Israel. The question is why do u feel entitled to the land of Palestinians? What entitles Is-aint-real to occupy thier land and imprison Palestinians in the process?
I’d recommend reading Malcom X, MLK, June Jordan,
Ta’Nashi Coates; Marc Lamont Hill, and/or Angela Davis on this issue to color in context and check ur privilege in the process… 🤔😒
Thank you, Elena.
Thank you for writing this piece Elena. Thank you to Autostraddle for being in afraid to include pro-Palestine voices. This is the reason I read Autostraddle.
Thank you for writing this! We must stand together as a community, now more than ever