France Looks to Imprison Pro-Palestine Activists

Attacks on the movement for Palestine are escalating. Following the high profile detainment of political prisoner and Palestine movement activist, Mahmoud Khalil, several other pro-Palestine students and researchers across the United States have been abducted by federal agents and threatened with deportation by the Trump administration.

The escalation of attacks on the movement for Palestine is not confined to the United States. In France, the state is using broad “anti-terrorism” laws to target prominent figures on the Left who have shown solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. As journalist Olly Haynes reports in Jacobin, these anti-terrorism laws have already been used to sentence a labor activist to a year in prison for a communique contextualizing the October 7 attacks, which stated, “the horrors of the illegal occupation have accumulated. Since [October 7] they have received the responses that they themselves provoked.”

On June 18, another labor activist will head to trial. Anasse Kazib is a railroad worker, union activist, former presidential candidate, and spokesperson for the publication/political organization Revolution Permanente (RP). For writing a post on X expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people, he faces charges of “apologia for terrorism.” If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison. (Disclosure: RP is the sister site of Left Voice, where I am an editor).

The charge of “apologia for terrorism” is a law that candidly aims to police acts of free speech. The law comes from a penal code passed in 2014 under the presidency of Francois Hollande and makes it illegal to “directly incite or publicly apologize for acts of terrorism.” To be clear, under this law one does not have to be accused of committing acts of terrorism. They don’t need to be accused of materially supporting acts of terrorism. Mere speech deemed and vaguely defined by the government as “apologia for terrorism,” is enough for an activist to face charges.

Under current French president Emmanuel Macron, the law has been used to go after various figures on the Left who have spoken out in solidarity with Palestine. Other notable figures who have been called in for questioning include Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of one of France’s more well-known left-wing parties, as well as Rima Hassan, a French-Palestinian politician. While Hassan is not facing an official trial, the legal moves against her have empowered the country’s Far Right to call for her French citizenship to be revoked.

These charges are one of the most extreme examples of a government using the law to try to silence pro-Palestine activism. However, the French government is not unique in its equating of pro-Palestine advocacy with support for “terrorism.” Following the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, Trump took directly to social media threatening to, “deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again.” Similar campaigns of repression can be found in the United Kingdom where 18 activists were arrested by counter-terrorism police and imprisoned for months, or in Germany where hundreds of police conducted raids targeting members of Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network after several countries designated it as a terrorist group.

Kazib and RP are attempting to fight the charges by launching a broad democratic campaign. They hope to make the case that the repression of the movement for Palestine is an international trend and that resistance to this repression is inseparable from the larger fight for Palestinian liberation. Last year they circulated a letter denouncing the repression. This letter received more than 800 signatures from leaders, intellectuals, and activists from the Left including Bhaskar Sunkara, Clare Daly, Ilan Pappe, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Nancy Fraser, Jodi Dean, and Robin D.G. Kelley. RP is also encouraging journalists and news outlets around the world to cover the attack on Kazib.

As RP puts it in a statement, “In the face of this growing repression — and beyond any political differences —it is essential that we stand in solidarity with Anasse Kazib, his comrades, and all those being targeted for supporting Palestine. The fight against the oppression of the Palestinian people is inseparable from the fight against the criminalization of its supporters. Laws that treat political expression as a punishable crime and equate solidarity with Palestine with terrorism are tools of political repression. In this context, obtaining the acquittal of Anasse Kazib and his comrades is a crucial battle for the broader solidarity movement. On June 18, let’s use the trial of the Révolution Permanente activists as an opportunity to denounce state repression both in France and around the world.”

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