Palestinian solidarity in Britain ‘being silenced and criminalised’

Palestinian solidarity is being “silenced, criminalised and sanctioned”, according to an advocacy group that says it has recorded more than 900 examples of repression across Britain in the last six years.People had been targeted with smears, disinformation, harassment, doxing (having private or identifying information published online), visa cancellations, financial blacklisting, loss of employment and arrest, according to the European Legal Support Center, which, along with the research group Forensic Architecture, has created the “index of repression”.The ELSC said such consequences had been justified by allegations of antisemitism or terrorism support, with the main “actors of repression” being Police (220 incidents), educational institutions (192), pro-Israel advocacy groups (141), and journalists and other media actors (141).At a press conference on Wednesday, Bob Trafford, of Forensic Architecture, said: “The data, painstakingly gathered and verified by ELSC, reveals the operation of a system, not something which is centrally directed, of course, but something which is organic, multipolar, self-reinforcing and mutually exacerbating.“A system which seeks to raise intolerably the personal cost to any individual who speaks or acts in light of their conscience … seeks to reduce civil society’s capacity to call out genocide and to demand at the same time robust action by our governments.”Students, academics and teachers (336 incidents) appeared most frequently on the index as targets of repression, followed by activists and organisers (229). The report says they are often targeted in different ways, with artists and cultural workers often having events cancelled (71 incidents).Sajja Iqbal, a teacher and member of Redbridge Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told journalists how she lost her job after she and others went into a local Sainsbury’s and removed Israeli goods from the shelves, put them in a shopping trolley and covered it with a Palestinian flag. The protesters also handed a letter to the store manager explaining their actions and calling for the supermarket to boycott such goods.She said her name and school were plastered across the press, affecting her physical and mental health. “This is what they do to silence me and all the workers that speak out,” said Iqbal. “I have not committed any criminal offence but simply exercised my democratic right.”She said she intended to take legal action with the help of ELSC. The advocacy group said it had not individually assessed each case in the index.Tara Mariwany, the senior monitoring officer at ELSC, said: “It is not our role to decide what is and what isn’t antisemitism or support for terrorism or any of the other allegations you’ll find in the database. It’s simply our role to document it and to show that it doesn’t matter if you wear a watermelon sticker on your shirt, that might give rise to the allegation of antisemitism.“It’s simply about showing the scale of it and that should give enough of a cause to question the allegation itself and question the smearing itself. We ourselves don’t decide what is and what isn’t fitting within a category.”