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January 8, 2021
Dear Friend,

There is a straight line between Wednesday's siege on the Capitol and this country's history of white supremacist violence against Black and Indigenous people and people of color. 
 
During this week of mob violence, we at Palestine Legal are continuing our work defending the rights of students, professors and grassroots activists wishing to speak out for Palestinian freedom. 
 
The discrepancy between state and media treatment of rightwing insurrectionists on the one hand and Indigenous water protectors, Black people and Palestinians asserting their right to live in dignity is outrageous, but not surprising. 
 
See below for more in-depth analysis from the NLG, Defending Rights & Dissent and the Justice for Muslims Collective.
 
The struggle for justice continues for all of us from Turtle Island to Palestine, even once the nightmare of Trump as president has concluded.
 
And Palestine advocacy remains on the proverbial bipartisan chopping block, with false accusations of antisemitism and false accusations of support for terrorism being levied as censorship tools. 
 
Our director Dima Khalidi made clear in an op-ed she published this week that the Biden administration needs to rescind Trump policies targeting Palestine advocacy.
 
Check it out below.
 
We just published a video guide to our new site tracking legislative efforts against the movement and want to give you a first look! You can find it below and like and share on Facebook and Twitter.
 
Wishing you all well as we conclude the first week of the new year.

Kristian Bailey
Communications Manager
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Dima Khalidi's Op-Ed on the Biden Transition and Palestine Advocacy

Director Dima Khalidi published an op-ed in In These Times about the need for the Biden administration to rescind policies from Trump and his predecessors against Palestine advocacy:

"Israel and its allies are doing every­thing in their pow­er to shut the move­ment down, silence us, and dis­cred­it our voic­es and efforts to achieve justice. 

There are two pri­ma­ry tools that Israel and its allies are using to achieve this: push­ing mea­sures to define Pales­tine advo­ca­cy as anti­se­mit­ic, and mak­ing false accu­sa­tions of sup­port for ter­ror­ism. Both of these, as deployed in the U.S., are under­min­ing fun­da­men­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al First Amend­ment rights, as my orga­ni­za­tion, Pales­tine Legal, has doc­u­ment­ed.

If Biden tru­ly wants to live up to his man­date to repu­di­ate Trump’s anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic poli­cies, he needs to do the fol­low­ing to pro­tect not just our con­sti­tu­tion­al rights to call for Pales­tin­ian free­dom, but our moral oblig­a­tion to do so as well.”

Read more here
WATCH: Video guide to our legislation site
Click below to watch a video overview of our new legislation site’s key features and where to find information and resources about the legislative attack on advocacy for Palestinian freedom in the U.S.
Partner Statements on Rightwing Violence
Photo courtesy of NLG
National Lawyers Guild
"The difference between the police response to protesters of color just a few months ago and all throughout American history, and the current response to white Trump supporters instigating a coup, lays bare the priorities of U.S. law enforcement. As we witnessed today, right-wing revanchists were able to storm the Capitol with little to no resistance by law enforcement. Some police officers were even documented opening barricades to let right wing operatives through, taking selfies with them, and carefully escorting them away from the scene. 

These events exhibit the racist, politically-imbued nature of policing in DC and the United States at large. The NLG continues to oppose this racist system, with all support and power to the people." (Keep Reading Here)
Defending Rights & Dissent and the Justice for Muslims Collective
“While we condemn these crimes against democracy, such antics cannot be used to justify new repressive measures against actual protests, restrictions of the right of peaceful assembly, or curtailment of speech. This cannot become a justification to create a new domestic terrorism law, which may be intended to address white supremacist violence, but which will doubtlessly be deployed against the very communities it purports to protect.” (Keep Reading Here)
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