When Palestine advocacy becomes "terrorism"

A recent book offers frightening comparative context for what to expect from new legislation and the new administration.

The Intercept reported over the weekend that the House is set to vote Tuesday on the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, also known as H.R. 9495, which “would grant the secretary of the Treasury Department unilateral authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit deemed to be a “terrorist supporting organization.” In the law as written, “the Treasury secretary would issue notice to a group of intent to designate it as a “terrorist supporting organization.” Once notified, an organization would have the right to appeal within 90 days, after which it would be stripped of its 501(c)(3) status, named for the statute that confers tax exemptions on recognized nonprofit groups. The law would not require officials to explain the reason for designating a group, nor does it require the Treasury Department to provide evidence.”

Pair such power with the push over the last year to equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism and to declare virtually any form of activism or speech against Israel’s war in Gaza as support for Hamas, and it’s easy to see how quickly this could lead to stripping the tax-empt status of virtually any educational institution, philanthropic organization, publication or NGO which is deemed critical of Israel by anyone who has the administration’s ear. The Intercept article makes clear that Israel/Palestine will be a primary target from the outset, in case that had been in question. As I’ve repeatedly argued, it wouldn’t stop there — but Palestine and Israel will, as ever, be the leading wedge for criminalizing a wide range of critical speech, activism, academic research and organizing. The ACLU and a wide range of other civil liberties organizations have been trying to draw attention to the ramifications, but given the wide margins by which it passed the House last time and the intensive lobbying efforts on its behalf, it doesn’t look good. (Spencer Ackerman has more on this over at Forever Wars).

For a sense of what this might mean in practice, it’s worth reading Lisa Bhungalia’s recent book Elastic Empire (Stanford University Press), which details the effects of American material support for terrorism laws on the NGO sector in the West Bank and Gaza. Elastic Empire details how security logics shaped foreign aid governance in the Palestinian territories, especially after 9/11, and traces the intended or unintended effects of terrorism lists on the ability of NGOs to deliver services or trainings. Bhungalia traces the current regime to the Bush administration’s Executive Order 13224 (September 24, 2001), which “created a list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, froze their assets, and banned all transactions with them.” That EO “conferred especially broad powers on the US Treasury to target the financial support infrastructure of global terror networks, casting an ever-expanding net on who and what could be prosecuted by the US security state.” Those targeted had little opportunity to contest the charges, or even see the evidence against them. Sound familiar?

The application of such laws to Palestine of course long predates the war on terror. Bhungalia connects the regime governing Palestinian NGOs to the Oslo Accords, and the Clinton administrations EO 12947 (January 1995) which identified twelve organizations as Specially Designated Terrorists. Every Palestinian organization which received US funding had to sign an “anti-terrorism certification” paper which attested that they did not associate or work with any person or entity on the terror list. That list was broad and elastic. The OFAC terrorist database included not only Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also leftist organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In practice, it meant that Palestinians — both U.S. citizens and humanitarian workers in the West Bank — placed on the terrorist list were swept up in unprovable allegations, unable to either see or contest the evidence against them, with massive impacts on their employability (at the least) and putting them at very real risk of imprisonment or deportation. Channeling funding to municipalities and organizations not on the list had significant material implications, with resources and opportunities going to a set of organizations willing to make political compromises with the Israeli occupation even if they lacked real popularity or capacity.

Elastic Empire shows the long history of intimate connections between the Israeli security regime and the application of these material support laws on Palestinians, from the case of Mohammad Saleh (arrested in 1993 while delivering aid to Gaza on allegations of Hamas connections and tried in 2006 based on secret evidence and forced confessions) to the Holy Land Foundation (the largest Muslim charity in the US at the time, designated in December 2001 over alleged support for Hamas). The book spends a lot of time on the wide range of effects of “extreme vetting” on ordinary, lower profile NGOs inside of Palestine, detailing the manifold ways in which humanitarian workers are forced to find ways to operate within the bounds of a capricious and unchallengeable terrorism list — in an environment in which many Palestinians disagreed that particular designated entities were actually “terrorist” and in which the most circumstantial evidence (the presence of someone from a proscribed group at a funeral) could be grounds for designation. And she shows how even the most committed nationalist organizations over time might come to comply with the rules in order to survive and continue with their vital operations. Independent organization and critical analysis continues, but under ever more difficult material conditions and with ever more draconian legal restrictions with ever more intense potential repercussions for those placed on the lists.

These practices have long since been transnationalized and internationalized. Such designations have been at the center of recent Israeli efforts to dismantle UNRWA and to push Europe to declare a number of leading Palestinian human rights NGOs as “terrorists.” Long before October 7, 2023 transformed the political environment (and so much else), Bhungalia presents a wide range of examples of such Israeli efforts to pressure NGOs which work to document human rights abuses and war crimes through allegations of association with terrorism — particularly those organizations collecting evidence for cases to be put to the International Criminal Court. Well before 2023, Israel pushed to extend the definition of terrorism to include advocacy for BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) in order to push for defunding human rights organizations.

The translation from the Israeli occupation to the United States might not seem to be smooth, but the framework and structures are already far more in place — and were already reached farther into the US legal system and national security state than most people realize. That offers some perspective on what American academic institutions, NGOs, advocacy organizations, and protest organizers may be looking at very soon in a political environment shaped by the extreme backlash against the Gaza protests, the rapid push towards passing new legislation such as HR 9495 and anti-BDS laws, and the clearly stated intention to target higher education and advocacy organizations by people likely to be leading the Trump administration. And far too many people who would otherwise fight against such massive expansions of weaponized state power seem to be just fine with it when it’s directed against pro-Palestinian advocacy. Beyond the high profile Congressional hearings over the handling of Gaza protests by elite universities, our surveys have shown that vast majorities of Middle East Studies academics have felt the need to self-censor since October 7, and have faced a wide array of administrative restrictions and pressure from external advocacy groups. In our most recent poll, 71% said that this has been the worst period of their academic careers; it’s probably about to get a whole lot worse.

Elsewhere in the MENA Academy

For new subscribers (welcome!): every week, in addition to discussing a recent book and offering my own commentary, I round up notable new journal articles in the broadly defined political science of the Middle East. This week, we feature a reflection by Nermin Allam on the complexities of researching gender in Egypt, the “ontological insecurity” of Syrian refugees in different national contexts, the politics of shuffling governors under different regimes in Turkey, the cyber dimensions of UAE-Israeli cooperation after the Abraham Accords, the fate of Tunisia’s Ennahda Party, and two articles on rebel governance and cohesion.

Nermin Allam, ““Like Us, but Not Quite Us”: Researching Gender Politics in Autocratic Contexts,” Perspectives on Politics (November 2024). ABSTRACT: What challenges do researchers encounter in authentically engaging with the field site and academia when certain aspects of their true identities diverge from the established norms within those domains? Using the case of female political scientists who conduct research on gender politics in the Middle East and North Africa, I highlight the ethical, logistical, and epistemological challenges of carrying out research in a politically and socially closed context. Few studies have investigated how the research process and the knowledge it produces are affected by the intertwinement of authoritarianism and patriarchy, and by the researcher’s positionality within this context. This study fills this gap by drawing upon interviews with feminist political scientists who were born and raised in the region but are based in Western academic institutions to examine the impact of authoritarianism, patriarchy, and the researchers’ insider/outsider positionality on the research process. The analysis shows three key findings. First, researching gender politics is a contentious topic that places researchers on the radar of the state. For scholars who are originally from the region, the issue is compounded by the fact that they are sometimes viewed as traitors by the regime in their country of origin, which accuses them of tarnishing the image of the government and scrutinizing its gender policies. Second, within the wider society, the politics of representation also impose certain limitations and expectations on female scholars. Such limitations include gendered restrictions on their access and mobility in the field. Finally, feminist researchers share how the knowledge they produce, which centers social justice demands, is not always valued in the discipline of political science. The article contributes to this discipline by expanding our understanding of the interplay between identity politics, fieldwork practices, and knowledge production in complex political and social settings.

Sefa Secen, “Between Worlds: Ontological Security among Syrian Refugees in Germany and Turkey,” Journal of Global Security Studies (November 2024). ABSTRACT: Sometimes physical security may come at the cost of ontological security for refugees. They may struggle to develop stable narratives of identity and fail to situate themselves within their new social environments. States often prioritize addressing refugees’ physical security needs to facilitate their integration, but largely overlook the importance of identity security. This study argues that ontological security is crucial to integration processes, and refugees reestablish it by engaging in various forms of identity backlash, lowering their interest in the politics of the host country, and heightening their desire to return home. In other words, identity backlash, political disinterest, and an intensified desire to return home function as ontological security-seeking mechanisms and anxiety responses. The study contributes to ontological security theory (OST) by introducing a novel and nuanced framework that defines a set of indicators for the emotional and narrative-oriented aspects of ontological security among refugees. It takes a micro-level approach examining ontological security at the individual level for Syrian refugees in Turkey and Germany. The specific findings of this study are threefold. First, I find a significantly lower level of narrative-oriented security among Syrian refugees in Turkey than in Germany. Second, the results indicate that narrative-oriented ontological security among Syrian refugees is strongly associated with identity backlash, low political interest, and a willingness to return to the home country. Third, the results show that physical security and ontological security are not always correlated. Overall, this study demonstrates how OST can provide insights into the complex interplay between perceptions of security, identity backlash, political integration, and willingness to return among refugee communities.

Yusuf Magiya, Bogdan Popescu, and Gunes Tezcur, “All the Sultan’s Men: Regime Type, Insecurity, and the Shuffling of Governors,” Comparative Political Studies (November 2024). ABSTRACT: Why do some political rulers engage in frequent shuffling of their governors while others allow their governors to serve longer? We argue that shuffling of governors reflects the level of a ruler’s perception of insecurity. Building on perspectives about situational origins of distrust and paranoid cognition, we argue that democratic leaders, characterized by higher levels of existential security, practice less frequent shuffling of governors compared to authoritarian ones. We also suggest that governors in localities characterized by higher levels of ethnic conflict and poor electoral performance by a ruling government are more likely to be replaced. Utilizing an original dataset of all Ottoman and Turkish governors from 1875 to 2019, our empirical analyses show that governors last longer under more democratic governments, in provinces with lower levels of ethnic diversity conflict, and stronger electoral support for the government.

Bassant Hassib and James Shires, “Digital recognition: cybersecurity and internet infrastructure in UAE–Israel diplomacy,” International Affairs (November 2024). ABSTRACT: The 2020 Israel–UAE Abraham Accords normalized these states' relations, with heavy emphasis on digital technologies. International Relations theories of recognition, however, hardly consider the role digital technologies play in establishing recognition between states. What role, then, did digital technologies play in this landmark shift in UAE–Israel recognition? This article uses three aspects of digital technologies in the UAE–Israel case—cybersecurity cooperation, cloud computing, and subsea cables—to inductively develop three propositions regarding the role of digital technologies in state recognition. First, states use digital technologies—and private sector companies that own and operate them—as diplomatic lubrication: a means to navigate around and overcome difficult diplomatic relationships, building momentum towards recognition. Second, digital competition between states leads them to conform their national economic structures towards global technology companies in similar ways, thereby recognizing each other as equal participants in a global market—which we term market-oriented homogenization. Third, states involved in transnational internet infrastructure projects together develop technical working practices, interests, and dependencies that facilitate diplomatic recognition—which we term infrastructural integration. Building on these three propositions, we put forward an overall concept of ‘digital recognition’ to capture their common theme: the influence of digital technologies, their owners or their operators on state recognition.

Theo Blanc, “In the Tunisian Opposition (Again): Ennahda's ‘Renaissance’ Through Failure?” Middle East Policy (November 2024). ABSTRACT: Tunisian President Kais Saied's coup in July 2021 has confronted the Renaissance Party, or Ennahda, with a dilemma: Reassume the comfortable position of defending freedoms and maintain party unity, or implement internal reforms, including an overhaul of its leadership and platform. But the party is trapped in a vicious circle. The political context requires unity and is therefore not conducive to a messy process of internal change. However, reform is needed to restore Ennahda's relevance. The repression of Ennahda and imprisonment of its key leaders—including its president, Rached Ghannouchi—make it unlikely that the party's 11th congress, which had been due to take place in 2020, will ever be scheduled. This article examines Ennahda's ascent after the 2011 uprisings and its role both in the transition to democracy and in the events that led to Saied's takeover. It then analyzes critiques by current and former party officials to understand the internal debate over renewing the platform and installing fresh leadership. It also evaluates alternatives to the party, as it is likely to fade gradually. At stake for Tunisia more broadly is the representation of the conservative segment of the population and the return of a pluralist and competitive political scene.

Andres Uribe and Sebastian van Baalen, “Governing the Shadows: Territorial Control and State Making in Civil War,” Comparative Political Studies (November 2024). ABSTRACT: Under what conditions do rebels succeed in establishing functional institutions in state-dominated areas? Canonical theories of rebel governance and state formation insist that territorial control is a necessary precondition for the development of governing institutions. Yet despite growing recognition that this claim is empirically incorrect and theoretically limiting, we lack knowledge about the conditions under which rebels succeed in governing civilians in areas where the state dominates. We argue that low state governance responsiveness towards rebel constituencies enables insurgents to overcome the challenges associated with establishing institutions in state-dominated areas. Low state responsiveness increases popular demand for insurgent institutions, decreases the costs associated with governing, and enables insurgents to collude with civilians to hide their institutions. Case studies from Ireland, South Africa, and Algeria illustrate our propositions. Our findings deepen knowledge on how rebels govern and expand their territorial reach, and shed light on alternative trajectories of state formation.

Edoardo Corradi and Giampiero Cama, “Institutions, power-sharing, and the cohesiveness of rebel coalitions in the Syrian civil war,” Small Wars and Insurgencies (November 2024). ABSTRACT: Which factors contribute to the cohesion of alliances among rebel groups during civil wars? Through the case of the Syrian civil war, which experienced a high level of fragmentation and cohesion among rebel groups, we emphasise how the establishment and implementation of power-sharing mechanisms in horizontal wartime institutions ensure lasting cohesion in alliances. Moreover, we posit how the mere establishment of these mechanisms is insufficient, and they must be effectively implemented. The implementation of power-sharing mechanisms in horizontal wartime institutions increases the costs of defection, and it reduces the incentives for unilateral defection from an alliance by coalition members.