Free Palestine! Free Mahmoud Khalil! Advance the Movement for a Free Palestine!
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle US Country Chapter vehemently denounces the shameful and blatantly genocidal US support for the restart of indiscriminate airstrikes by the Zionist regime on the people of Palestine. This comes amidst the illegal arrests, detentions, and threats of deportation for students and all activists in the US leading protests against the US-backed Zionist genocide and its numerous other anti-people policies.
This escalation in military violence abroad and state repression at home is a harrowing sign of the full-blown fascism emanating from the White House and attempting to spread itself to all corners of the country. It is also emblematic of the decades-old Zionist fascism that US imperialism has been arm in arm with since the founding of the Zionist movement itself. Only a united anti-imperialist, anti-fascist, and anti-Zionist movement can stop these attacks on the people in Palestine, in the US, and around the world..
Ever since the Zionist entity was forced into signing the ceasefire with the Palestinian resistance, it violated it daily with killings of Palestinians by sniper fire, tanks, and airstrikes, and continuously blocked food and medical supplies despite promising to allow their entry. When the Palestinian resistance pointed out these violations and refused to continue the release of Zionist settler hostages until the regime carried out their end of the agreed-upon deal, the Zionists, in collaboration with the US, spread lies about the resistance’s actions, painting them as the ones holding up the ceasefire agreements despite clear adherence on the part of the resistance every step of the way. The complete end to the ceasefire on behalf of the US-Zionist forces was thus engineered to continue the war of extermination as part of the fascist Zionist settler colonial project.
The attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement in the US, in particular the student movement, are attempts by the US state, first under Biden, now escalated under Trump, to silence the movement to give cover to continuing the genocide of Palestine. This has included the attempts to revoke student visas of activists in the US, with systematic support from the State Department and Department of Homeland Security.
On March 8, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers under the Department of Homeland Security arrested Palestinian student leader Mahmoud Khalil in his home. He was then threatened with deportation despite his holding of a legal Green Card. Upon his lawyers’ filing of court proceedings on his behalf in New York, ICE deliberately obstructed Khalil’s legal process by transferring him arbitrarily to a detention center in Louisiana - 1,300 miles away from his pregnant wife. At least three other students on visas, Leqaa Kordia from Palestine, Ranjani Srinivasan from India, and Dr. Rasha Alawiehha from Lebanon, have been threatened with deportation since Khalil’s arrest. The Trump regime has taken its actions despite lawyers and judges pointing out their blatant unconstitutionality.
The targeting of student protesters and leaders is not just an attempt to break the student movement for Palestine in the US; it is also meant to give fuel to Trump’s racist and xenophobic onslaught against migrants in the US, a keystone of his fascist agenda. With the resumption of indiscriminate Zionist airstrikes on Gaza and the continued police state imposed on the West Bank, it’s clear that Trump’s fascist agenda and the Zionist war of extermination have always been hand in hand in the interests of US imperialism.
While these attacks are increasing as the imperialist system desperately attempts to save itself from the crisis it created, the broad anti-fascist movement is still growing exponentially in the US, as is the anti-imperialist movement for solidarity with the people of the world. Only the steadfastness and unending fighting capacity of the Palestinian resistance, supported by the masses of the world, brought about the ceasefire, and it was broken because the Zionists know that they are losing. The people will resist all attempts to ethnically cleanse Palestine, including Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” profiteering scheme.
We call on ILPS members to join the people of the world and continue taking to the streets for an end to the Zionist occupation of Palestine, the release of Mahmoud Khalil, all activists, all migrants, and all those unjustly targeted by the fascist US state. We also call on all universities to revoke their expulsions, suspensions and other repressive actions on those who have stood for justice for the people of Palestine. A united and militant peoples’ movement will overcome state repression and defend people’s struggle for a free Palestine and an anti-imperialist future.