The Irish-language hip hop trio Kneecap is being investigated by British counterterrorism police following a controversial appearance where the group performed in front of the words “FUCK ISRAEL, FREE PALESTINE” during a music festival in the United States.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Zionist outrage over the incident led to a video being shared on Twitter by a man named Danny Morris who works for Community Security Trust, a British organization dedicated to supporting Israel in the name of fighting antisemitism. The video apparently shows Kneecap chanting “Up Hamas, up Hezbollah” at a London concert last November, which is the official reason the group is now under investigation.

By designating Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations and then passing laws against support for proscribed terrorist groups, the British government has effectively given itself the authority to stomp out any speech which can be deemed supportive of armed groups opposing Israel’s abuses in the middle east today, and has been using this authority to persecute journalists and activists in the UK.

This is just one of the latest incidents in the steady assault on free speech rights we’ve been seeing in the western nations that have aligned themselves with the state of Israel during the Gaza holocaust.

In Michigan the homes of pro-Palestine demonstrators are reportedly being raided by the FBI and by state and local police, with numerous activists detained and electronic devices seized under search warrants.

A new policy unveiled by the Trump administration’s National Institutes of Health bans researchers and university employees from participating in any activism involving boycotts or divestment from the state of Israel, or even advocating such measures.

New York Police Department officers are reportedly attending training on combatting antisemitism which teaches them that keffiyehs and watermelons are antisemitic symbols, and that phrases like “settler colonialism” and “all eyes on Rafah” are examples of antisemitic hate speech.

On Thursday a judge ruled that Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk shall be transferred to the state of Vermont as the Trump administration fights to deport her. Öztürk’s sole offense is having written an op-ed in the university paper mildly denouncing Israel’s atrocities in Gaza.

This all comes as a new poll finds that a majority of Americans oppose the Trump administration’s new policy of deporting foreigners for expressing wrongthink about Israel. They’re taking away the right of US citizens to hear what Israel’s critics have to say, and they are doing so directly against the will of the US citizens themselves.

There’s a video that Israel apologists are sharing around which they claim shows pro-Palestine activists blocking Jewish students from walking through the campus of Yale University, and it’s just so illustrative of the fake “antisemitism” crisis we’re being told necessitates the elimination of free speech rights throughout all of western civilization.

If you watch the clip you can see a student wearing a kippah being filmed by someone behind him and demanding to walk directly through what appears to be a relatively small group of activists in the midst of an anti-genocide demonstration. The demonstrators are heard telling him to walk around them, which is what any normal person does when they wish to be on the other side of a physical human body (or indeed any physical object), and you can clearly see people walking around them in the background of the video.

This is like walking up to a cheer squad in the middle of a human pyramid, demanding to walk through them, and then claiming they refused to do so because they hate your religion. It’s just so transparently bat shit insane, but it’s being shared around in all seriousness by Zionist pundits and politicians as a sign of an antisemitism crisis at a prominent university. This is the kind of evidence that’s being cited for the need to stomp out free speech in our society.

I’m going to keep saying it and saying it until the message gets through: Zionism is the single greatest threat to free speech in the western world today. Nothing is eroding people’s rights to free expression faster than the support that western governments have for the apartheid state of Israel and the atrocities it is committing.

This isn’t just about Gaza now. It’s not just about some strangers in the middle east. It’s about you. It’s about your rights. It’s about your right to tell the truth, even if the truth makes your leaders feel uncomfortable.

Even if you are not a sufficiently moral and compassionate person to oppose a genocide on its own merit, at this point you should at least be opposing the erosion of your own personal liberties for your own sake.

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https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/zionism-is-the-single-greatest-threat

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