 Hello, everyone. We're just going to give all do get started with intros and as we give folks another minute to sort of file into the virtual zoom room. But for those of you who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting my name is Kendra Albert. I'm the director of the initiative for representative first amendment if Ra, which is the host organization for this panel today. And I'm so so excited to be hosting this conversation and basically getting to sit back and learn from this incredible group of panelists. And I want to just sort of like open with a couple of thank yous and then sort of tee off our topic and then I'll turn it over to often to actually run that run the conversation. First, before I get started want to thank call it be doing enough son or a goat who provided both like logistical as well as substantive support for planning this event really grateful. Really grateful to them for making sure that we knew could pull together this incredible incredible group. And I wanted to sort of say a little bit about if for us at how excited we are about this event and our support of this event, you know when the sort of more recent social media censorship of pro Palestinian voices was happening. It was not surprising to folks who had necessarily worked on social media censorship or surprising to folks who had worked on pro Palestine issues advocacy before, but it, I think, resonated for the first time with a new group of people about how this might impact advocacy and who was being heard. But of course this work goes back a long way I remember when I was actually sort of researching for putting together this panel finding Palestine legal report from 2015 on seeing some nuts on what they called the Palestine exception to free speech law. And so our goal with this event is to sort of maybe I don't think in one hour we're going to remedy the Palestine exception to free speech law. But to bring to folks who may come at this from more of a First Amendment angle. So the issues and questions and concerns that folks doing pro Palestine advocacy have seen around social media but also offline speech censorship. And to do that I'm super thrilled to introduce Ahmed Abuznit, who is the executive director of the US campaign for Palestinian rights. And he'll be moderating today so I'm going to get it to take a backseat and listen and learn. And I'll just be wrapping up at the end, like with all if for events please put questions in the Q&A box and, although we have such amazing panelists that may only have time for one or two questions. We'll see if we can get there, but over to you. Thank you. Alright, thank you Kendra. Thank you to Khalid be doing a jazz shot. And everyone who's been a part of putting this together, really excited for this conversation. Once again, I'm Ahmed Abuznit I direct the United States campaign for Palestinian rights, aka us CPR and one of the reasons I'm most excited about this conversation is I feel like we've had it. You know, a bit segregated we've talked about offline stuff and we've talked about online stuff and today we have a collection of individuals that are going to help us put it all together and understand what's at stake for advocates for the Palestinian cause for Palestinians themselves. And in the many ways we're seeking to, you know, disrupt this oppression by advocating for justice. So we're going to go around and actually ask for our panelists to introduce themselves. What I'd like is for each of our colleagues here to say their name, where they're, you know, communicating to us from and then a little bit about their organization and the work, so that folks can have the background context, needed for when we get into these questions. And so I'm going to ask that we start with Della first, and then we'll go to Radhika, and then Nadine. Hi, so just introduction time everyone my name is Della Shammas. I'm a staff attorney at the Center for constitutional rights were illegal and advocacy organization based in New York. I've been in a range of issues at CCR but sort of generally at the intersection of what's called national security law and and sort of human rights law or immigration law. A lot of my work has been around Palestinian rights, whether it's defending Palestinian advocacy here in the US or working with Palestinians sort of on the ground in the West Bank Gaza and in Israel. Thank you Della Radhika. Hi everyone. My name is Radhika Sinoth. I'm a senior staff attorney at Palestine legal based in our New York City office. We work closely with the Center for constitutional rights and Della. For those of you who don't know much about Palestine legal. We are basically legal defense for Palestine activists in the United States. We provide legal support for people who are censored punished falsely accused for speaking out for Palestinian rights and I oversee our intake in casework. Thank you Radhika Nadine. Hi everybody my name is Nadine Nashif I'm the director of family family is a Palestinian digital right organization that works to defend and promote the Palestinian digital rights, basically through monitoring and researching the policies and actions of the different three governments, the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and the de facto Hamas government in Gaza Strip. We also do similar work in front of the internet companies specifically the social media companies and digital economy companies and their policies towards Palestinians. And we do work with the Palestinian civic society to empower them on digital advocacy tools. So, I'm going to actually stay with you here for this first question, and then we'll get get a chance to hear from Radhika Nadine what have we seen over the last few months that's felt different to you and what has been more of the same. So, before speaking about the different I think it's important to see the picture in general that there is ongoing fight fight and war on narratives. There is an ongoing in the last few years and attempt to suppress Palestinian voices on the online. And this takes in many shapes and forms but it's important to understand that there is a systematic effort that has been going on in the last few years. The government has been using different tactics and strategies to to implement this part of this is our legislation that criminalized human right defenders of Palestinian activists part of this of this is developing and encouraging a whole industry of surveillance against Palestinians in the last few years have been a kind of a laboratory for the Israeli security establishment and Israeli companies to develop these technologies that actually later on are sold abroad, including to some of the Arab regimes. We know the infamous company of NSO and any vision and others. Other kind of tactics and strategies that they were used is basically to put heavy pressure on social media companies to adopt their own definition of incitement and their own definition of what is terrorism and what is kind of not legitimate speak on those platforms. Other tactics that have been used in the last years is to organize different groups. We kind of congos basically governmentally supported NGOs that are supported financially and also coordinated like act IL for IL and others that basically together they do mass reporting on Palestinian content, even without understanding what's the content about or knowing the language. And obviously, publishing lots of pages and content that is supporting the Israeli narrative as an opposite to all what they have been doing with the Palestinian narrative. So this is normally what's happening and this is the fight or the war that's happening in the last year on the narrative, but on the other hand, what we saw in May, it's the same war but in steroids. So basically, heavy pressure on the companies that Israeli cyber unit working. I mean, according to the director of that unit, they had seven times more requests of takedowns from the companies than what they are usually doing. So to understand that the Israeli cyber unit under the Israeli Ministry of Justice, through the different secretive agencies they are systematically as I mentioned, surveying Palestinian social media and basically asking for takedowns, or what's the voluntary takedowns without any due process regarding Palestinian content. And this is what happened in May basically was like, you know, as happening usually but in so many, on so much more cases, I mean, Hamlet Center alone documented 600 cases in three weeks. We assume that there were thousands of cases. So basically, everything was amplified in that in that time, and all of these kinds of directly from the Israeli government or whether it's like NGOs that are related and supported by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, or other groups were into intensifying their work to suppress the Palestinian voices in that time. Thank you Nadim and thank you for the work of Hamlet to be able to give us some data and some chances to learn from some of these tactics of suppression. So I'd love to shift over to, you know, our folks based in the US. Let's have the allegor first and then we could get to radical. And I'll just step back even one more bit because I'm not sure what level of familiarity folks in the audience have around this is general situation on on the ground in Palestine but it in some what we have been seeing in the in the late in the previous months has been fairly unprecedented uprisings in not just where we're sort of more used to seeing them whether it's the West Bank or Gaza but also in Israel right in in the what we call what Palestinians call 48. So areas where Palestinians who live there are citizens of Israel, and where we've been seeing, I think in many ways unprecedented connection of the, the issues that affect and impact Palestinians and Gaza Palestinians in the West Bank both occupied territory, and, and Palestinians in 48, and, and a sort of moving beyond the usual international law narratives that have really focused on the law of occupation and speaking much more about, you know, fundamental questions of equality and justice so it feels like a really big background to to how what what we're seeing, and so it feels like an opening in many ways, and then with with new audiences to right people are hearing the message differently. Globally, so coming out of Palestine, and a lot of this was sparked by events in Jerusalem as the sort of process of the Israeli government policy of essentially what we call ethnically cleansing or removing Palestinians from neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, was reaching a fever pitch in a couple of neighborhoods share share provided sort of a neighborhood in East Jerusalem provided like a sort of particular example of this as they were facing some what are called eviction proceedings and forced eviction proceedings in Israeli courts, but also efforts to just massive marches by Israeli far right groups on to Jerusalem and then solidarity from Palestinians and Gaza. And, you know, in response to these or viewed our assaults on Palestinians in Jerusalem so that's all you know there there's there's been a lot of social media advocacy around these flashpoints right please like she's like the old city of Jerusalem and then of course, inevitably with the massive Israeli military assault on Gaza. civilian deaths. Seeing the sort of social media around that. So, with this increased attention you see the increased repression of efforts to go beyond to have Palestinian voices reach you know outside of the usual mainstream media those efforts feel successful, considering the amount of repression that's faced and generally how these voices really make it to more mainstream media channels and so I think that a lot of the suppression that we're seeing is in direct response to that kind of increased attention. Another thing that seems different has been known and D mentioned the way that social media companies have been removing contents in large part at the request of, you know, organized efforts by the Israeli government. What we've seen on the US side is how these efforts to get the sort of. I mean this is a to summarize really like to mean to mean like directions that this has taken. One is, and they're both long standing but again as Nadine mentioned kind of on steroids more recently. The use of the sort of anti Semitism framework as a way, and particularly the pushing of particular definitions of anti Semitism that equate any criticism of Israel with anti Semitism and hoping that social media companies and third parties, third party platforms adopt this definite redefinition of anti Semitism. Oftentimes we'll hear about it referred to as the IHRA and hoping right if I can get into that a little bit more. And so that's kind of one way in which this is done so we're seeing you know very active efforts to get these social media companies to adopt these these definitions, which then justify the removal of contents that is critical of Zionism and Israeli government policies and so on. And then the other direction that we're seeing, again, increase is the use of anti terrorism laws or regulations and the weaponization of these US anti terrorism regulations to remove content from social media platforms in the only ways and I'll talk a little bit more in in the ways in which anti terrorism laws are being used online and offline to suppress Palestinian speech but I just kind of want to flag these two things. Thank you so much DL a radical, you're up. So you know, sort of along the lines of what DL mentioned, you know, in Palestine right so you have a situation where Palestinians for over 70 years have been living in a situation of, you know, colonialism and apartheid and ethnic cleansing. And here in the United States, you know people have been speaking out in support of Palestinian rights and against, you know, ethnic cleansing and, and the political ideology of Zionism and what we've seen in Palestine legal over the past few years, you know, we started in is that the movement for Palestinian rights has largely been student led. And this makes sense. If you know, if you think about sort of US history and who leads social justice movements from the Civil Rights era to the Vietnam anti anti war movement to the anti apartheid movement in South Africa in the 1980s. So these students were on the sort of cutting edge of activism and sort of free speech right. And so when Palestine legal started, you know, we started to be here for anyone who's whose free speech was censored because of principled speech supporting Palestinian rights in the United States. But we've, what we found was that about 80% like the vast majority of people who came to us were either students or professors. And, you know, in some ways this really made sense, you know where where change is happening where where where the activism was was also where the suppression was. And so you know, in some ways it's exciting to see this growing movement of Palestinian rights you know I just want to like zoom out a little bit and not be all negative like it is incredible to see how how I feel like the tide is changing in the United States you know I'm really like so positive living in the United States when it comes to policy and freedom. And I will just say you know I've been an activist on this issue for almost 20 years now I lived in Palestine during the second in Tabata in 2002 2003 for about a year and a half I lived in Gaza for a few months as well. So I've been involved in this issue for for a long time now so what I've really noticed in the past, you know, since May. Some things that have changed here in Palestine legal that we've been seeing is that people are speaking out more and it's not just people who might call themselves activists it's not just those student activists or those progressive groups it's lefty professors purely, you know we track incidents of suppression. And since 2014 when we started tracking these numbers we've responded to over 1700 incidents of suppression. And that by that I mean it's just really what people come to us and report. So that's just really just the tip of the iceberg. We've seen some patterns over time but what we really saw recently is is sort of what I'm going to call regular people getting censored and punished. So it's not like just leftist or people who kind of know what's up when it comes to speaking up for Palestinian rights in the United States. You know we've been getting calls from farmers from, you know, doctors and healthcare workers. You know people who work in in fashion and beauty, I mean, big law like private sector publishing media like you name it. Because people come to us confidentially I can't share with you all these stories but some of them are really high profile to just sort of you know regular people trying to go about their daily lives, who are really upset and horrified by what is happening in Palestine and maybe are new to the issue and hadn't really understood what what was happening there and felt compelled to speak out about it on social media, often, or sometimes it's really just in their workplace. And then they're called in by their bosses they're told you need to delete all of your tweets supporting Palestinian rights, or they're fired or they're told. You know, in a couple cases, we've had people who deal in mental or health services. And, you know, in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the uprisings last year. They found that their employers you know put out statements in support of black lives, or in the wake of the hate crimes in Atlanta the anti Asian hate crimes. And so their offices were trying to be supportive of their Asian clientele. And so they were like, Oh, you know now I have the space to do this for Palestinians, some of them are Palestinian Palestinians themselves. And then they find that, Oh wait, there's this Palestine exception to free speech right now there's complaints. And so they call us. So so so those are some of the changes that we're seeing here and you know the move from like sort of like public censorship, which is still very much there, you know I don't want to say it's not there. But we're really seeing sort of like regular people get involved in in in speaking out for Palestinian rights, and getting censored and punished for that so that's one trend we're seeing. Thank you so much. So radical we're going to stay with you. And we'll have you lead off answering this next question which is, what are some of the ways we've seen success in defending freedom of speech on the issue of Palestine. We're just getting that message out that there is a free speech issue and talking about Palestine. Right and I just want to say the report that Kendra mentioned the beginning we co authored it with the Center for Constitutional Rights so it wasn't just Palestine legal but that did come out in 2015. So six years ago, and that was like, no one had used that phrase, like I think you know Palestinians knew what was up and some you know people really, you know, involved in the issue as far as the censorship and how hard it is to talk about Palestine in the United States, but I feel like that's in the lexicon now more not. I mean we need to really need to get that that message out more. There's still a lot of problems, a sort of a both sides, sort of framing of it which is, which doesn't recognize the power and balance at all but I think I think those are some successes as far as just lawyers successes. But I also want to just bring it back to the activists because like, you know, we're lawyers we try to defend activists but I just really think, you know, you know, Palestinians have done amazing, as far as just like, continuing to resist and I think the activists in the United States are really just growing the movement and just getting the message out and I think we should be, we have a long way to go but I feel like the growth has just been exponential. And especially if you look at like the younger generation like millennials and younger on college campuses, like, there's just been a sea change. Absolutely. I share your excitement, Radhika. We are shifting hearts and minds and thoughts daily. So Dela, you know, Radhika touched a little bit about legal and activist success we've seen but particularly on the legal strategies. You all have served as counsel for the US campaign for Palestinian rights and we were obviously being sued. We spoke about material support and terrorism so you know what are some successful ways that we've been able to battle. You know for this freedom of speech on Palestine and in particular you can touch a little bit of on the lawsuit that would be great. And let me talk a little bit about that lawsuit, because it's pretty emblematic of what one form of the many forms of attacks on Palestinian advocacy that we've seen. And just noting because in the chat there's a lot of talk about, you know, the sort of the fact that there's plenty of Jewish Americans who are also being attacked. When we talk about Palestinian advocacy, I think we're talking about advocacy for Palestinian rights and the speakers are oftentimes not just, you know, Palestinian they're all sorts of speakers right. So that's a really important point to note but the US campaign lawsuit is a really interesting one for several reasons in addition to the fact that we have an amazing client. It was brought by the Jewish National Fund, which is and as well as some other individual plaintiffs who are all Israeli individuals. The National Fund is sort of in Israel it's a quasi state agency in other words it has legislatively acquired status where it sort of acts as a partial partially in control of significant swaths of land around 10% of the land in in Israel, the part that was established in 1948. And so they have also international fundraising branches I'm sure people are familiar with a little blue boxes across across the US very familiar in many Jewish communities. And the statute under which the, the lawsuit was brought is a US material support to terrorism statute, which is a criminal law, and then the civil provisions of JASTA JAS TA the justice against sponsors of terrorism act I believe, which allows individuals to bring civil suits against, among others, folks who are who the plaintiffs accused of providing material support to terrorism. So, under this theory, which we've seen a lot being used by banks, Iranian banks, Lebanese banks, by victims of terrorism. That's kind of been like the first gen of a lot of that litigation and it's still very much ongoing and it's pretty big multimillion billion dollar industry probably the sort of next gen of these lawsuits are being brought against organizations like the US campaign. So the allegations are meritless, and in fact a judge agreed with us. The Jewish National Fund claims harms to some of its trees that have planted along the Gaza border. The firm has come from the incendiary kites and balloons that Palestinian protesters and marchers in Gaza launched as part of the Great Return March which was a series of marches planned by by sort of vast swath of organizations and individuals in demanding the right to return of the refugee, the right to return of Palestinian refugees. And that some of those incendiary kites and balloons and rockets launched from Gaza into Israel have burned some of the Jane of trees and some of the plaintiffs property. And so that is a harm that is alleged. So this is the US campaign which is a DC based advocacy organization that does all sorts of amazing work had physically sponsored the boycott committee, which is based in Palestine. Through through a six degrees of separation theory. They are trying to sort of ping liability for the trees that were burnt. The Jane of trees that were burnt on to the US campaign. So I tried my best to give the summary of what is a fairly elaborate and frankly absurd set of allegations. The purpose of these lawsuits and this is kind of to the broader point is to silence and to chill and to deviate resources away from the important work that organizations like the US campaign are doing to sort of defending and putting them in a posture where they have to sort of address these various terrorism allegations and that is the crux of what we're seeing in so many contexts right sort of constantly lobbying these allegations of terrorism against anything that Palestinians say or do and distracting from the real issues on the ground that Palestinians are trying to talk about right to this position of their lands or historic dispossession. And, and there's their quest for justice. So, after you know we file the motion to dismiss. The judge agreed and granted the motion to dismiss. And of course because this is about exhausting resources. The JNF, how the motion to reconsider that is pending and so we continue to move forward we're pretty confident, but that doesn't take away from the, the distraction and their resources. And that's really kind of the point of these, these laws and sort of the material support to terrorism, civil provisions. So the ability of any kind of individual to bring a claim and lodge a complaint in a federal court that sounds and terrorism which is one of those like boogeyman words it's very scary it takes the air out of the room when people hear it. It's a big problem because even though not a lot of these cases aren't necessarily making it to court, but CCR and Palestine legal and many others know that organizations working on Palestinian rights donors who are trying to support Palestinian rights. And all this are, you know, folks who are basically being targeted by this network of Nadim called gongos right organizations that are like NGOs that are sort of affiliated closely with the Israeli government have a explicit mandate and purpose of a silencing support for Palestinian rights. Lodge threat ladder is constantly right there's a very active. And this doesn't make it on a court's docket so you're not seeing it necessarily but we're hearing a lot about it because people come to us, frankly, panicked about, you know their potential liability, and they're not used to hearing the words material support to terrorism. And they certainly have nothing to do with any of that but they are simply trying to advocate for Palestinian rights. And so, so it ends up being a lot of time and resources simply doing this defense work of advising people what to do trying to make sure that everything that people are continuing to continue to be able to, to whether it's fundraise or advocate or travel and do the things that they want to be doing to keep highlighting the sort of injustice on the ground in Palestine, when faced with these kinds of allegations and these lawsuits and a lot of these kinds of these lawsuits are also on the minds of in house council at every social media company that you all know about. And, you know, recently you all probably heard zoom removed events by by that involved a number of Palestinian speakers. Likely, and we don't know this but you know this this this idea that you're going to be maybe sued or maybe found liable under some various laws is sort of like in the back of everything. It's really surfaced and explicitly addressed when it is and when it has been. It's always been shot down by courts right and I think I'd love it if right it could say more about the sort of equivalent pattern we're seeing in the anti BDS legislation right I mean, it's it's not something the chill is way more significant than the actual concrete impact of legislations and lawsuits. It's the fact that people know that it's out there but they haven't really fully had a chance to understand the sort of details of it. And that makes people want to not even approach or touch the the whole issue. Yeah, thank you Dela. I will see you all see we have brilliant counsel and I'm thankful. Radhika. Do you want to address that point right now before we head over to Nadine. On the legislation side of things. Yeah, I mean, you know, since 2014 220 bills have been introduced in the United States. Targeting speech supporting Palestinian rights, most of them targeting the boycott movement for Palestinian rights. Now, most of those failed actually only 23 of those bills actually pass no I'm sorry about 23% of those past. But we right now in the United States we have 31 states with bills in effect, which is kind of nuts right. On the other hand, you know boycotts are protected First Amendment protected speech in the United States. In 2001 NAACP, the clear Claiborne hardware where the Supreme Court made that crystal clear right. So, because of that, you know, when we first saw these bills being introduced, you know they tried to do things like anti Palestinian groups tried to do things like you know if you allow an academic organization to pass a resolution supporting the academic boycott of Israel. You can defund your entire state school system of all funds like they were these really crazy things right. And you know, thanks to organizing efforts, including with like teachers unions and different kinds of groups, including a lot of Jewish groups like Jewish groups, those bills are increasingly watered down to where we right now have these bills which are just like, I mean here in the state of New York, for example, Governor Cuomo signed an executive order which says, Oh, you know, all companies who support BDS, you know we're going to make a blacklist and then New York's not going to do business with them. And if you look at the blacklist this is in 2016 it's like 10 companies they're all European. It's not really heard of them. It's not really clear if they do any business with with New York. It's not even clear if they engage in BDS. No, you know, and, and everyone in New York who wants to support boycotts for policy rights can continue and go about their business and do it as they should because it is their their free speech right to do that. But I will say at the beginning, people were really confused and we got a lot of calls and even today. We got a lot of calls and usually maybe it's, you know, from people who are newer to the issue or community members policy and community members that are not sure. And I think that's really the purpose behind passing these laws, or bringing these lawsuits as dialla mentioned, there's all kinds of complaints that are that are being brought in various contexts that have lost, and one of the architects of the process one of these bringing civil rights complaints to stop Palestinian rights his name is Kenneth Marcus. He was formerly in the Trump administrations as the head of their office for civil rights. And back before that, before he was in that position he was he wrote an op ed in the Jerusalem Post where he said you know it might seem demoralizing that we anti Palestinian groups are losing all of these complaints, but rest assured I'm paraphrasing here he said you know there's still these complaints are still having their purpose because no one wants to be the target of a civil rights complaint. And because we're bringing these these these complaints you know people are afraid to join students for justice of Palestine and they're afraid to speak out. And I think really ultimately at the end of the day, that is what these groups are trying to do they're trying to scare people from speaking up for Palestinian freedom and show people, because it can be scary to be a target of these types of lawsuits that are accused of terrorism or anti Semitism for taking a principal position for policy rights. Thank you, thank you and so just for everyone before I moved to Nadim. These are organizations well worthy of your donation, the Ella and CCR have obviously served as counsel for us. And of course for pal legal I've reached out to them several times personally when I was being defamed and targeted by different, you know, Zionist outlets so we're going to go ahead and shift to Nadim Nadim you posted a report for us here in the chat that I shared with everyone. I'm wondering if you want to talk a little bit about the report and also some of the successes that Hamlet has seen in engaging this issue over the last few months. Yeah, so so basically in the last few months we have been documenting all these kind of takedowns that I was talking about. And this report basically covers them and cover how the companies also react to our appeal. So basically Hamlet is a trusted partners of the social media companies as you know so the social media companies normally they need different stakeholders from the civil society and the different countries they operate and they want people whom they can consult. And basically we try to document all these cases and to appeal and try to put them back. But also in the same time I want to share with you another report which we basically did during this time together with actually an Israeli company. We were also observing the incitement and what was happening on the other side basically because what's happening is that there is this feeling that this is not being addressed at all. So it's a situation where basically the cyber unit like 95% of their work in the Israeli Ministry of Justice is to track and to monitor Palestinian content and to try to take it down as much as possible. And we know that there are these kind of very extreme right when fascist groups who are organizing these attacks and mixed cities like Haifa, Ramle, Lead, Aker and other places that the ILA mentioned earlier. So these attacks were organized and synchronized through these chat applications and through this Facebook. And there was this huge amount of racism and insight that basically this kind of is free basically I mean the message that the Israeli government is sending is that if you are an Israeli Jewish you are allowed to to incite as much as you want because nobody will really like the law enforcement would not happen with you all the time that you are inciting as Palestinians and Arabs. So out of the million 1 million 90 conversations that we monitored in these three weeks, there was around 183 conversations around 80% basically of the conversations that mentioned Arabs and Palestinians in these three weeks were including hate speech racism and incitement. So you can imagine like the high level of volume of this hate speech that nobody really deal with or address. On the other hand, I also want to speak about the issue of like the successes and the shifts that we are seeing in this period as a person who was following social media content moderation of these different platforms. I think that there is a change I mean things are not the same as they were in 2015 and 14 were basically we had like total. I mean, they totally ignored us and these platforms. And specifically in the last period in the last aggression the Israeli aggression I mean we saw lots of Arab and international influencers on the social media who were stepping forward and saying and being vocal about Palestinians and justice that should be happening on the social media so lots of also different people organizing themselves and speaking out and trying to be there and to influence in different languages. We saw international solidarity more and more. And from the global South, not only from Europe and the US. That was happening which is was not the case for example if I compare like 2014 etc. These phenomena is hardly existed. There was much more by the mainstream media coverage specifically regarding the content moderation policies articles and reports that were criticizing Facebook and other companies that they were talking about these kind of mob lynches in the streets of the mixed cities. I mean this was covered by the New York time and reports in Washington Post and other mainstream media outlets which was hardly existing before. So all of this, I think created the pressure certain pressure on the social media companies and specifically I can speak about Facebook that they were much more apologetic than before they were trying to excuse things and to explain things. So we saw, for example, the phenomena of shadow banning. This phenomenon where the reachability of the account and the pages want to dropping suddenly when they start speaking about Palestine. That was not happening before, especially with influencers. And about the hashtags that disappear. For example, on Instagram disappeared for three days. So later on the head of Instagram they published this PR communicates saying that there was a glitch and there was a technical problem and it's a global one. It's not related to Palestine etc. Which obviously was not true. It was the issue of them speaking about what's happened and trying to explain and having these meetings with different stakeholders, and then having meetings with Israeli officials but then after that having meetings with the Mohammed state the Palestinian Prime Minister. So all of these things that normally do not happen, they happen now and we see a shift now. It's obviously not the breakthrough that we want. I mean we really want to adjust transparent policy of equal policy of content moderation and not just, you know, kind of excuses. And we're not there, but I, we see that there are changes that are happening that are small, they're slow, but things are changing at least comparing for with couple of years ago. Thank you Nadine. So appreciative of the work Hamil is doing I think just the big the ability to be able to talk about it with the data to back it up is incredibly helpful for us as advocates. So we had a question come through the Q&A that actually situates perfectly with a question we wanted to ask so I'll lift up the question from the audience member, and then tie it in and I'm going to hand off to Diallo. So the question was, can one use material supports terrorism against settler funding fundraising organizations like the JNF, you know, such as they were doing against US CPR and so we also had a question we were going to engage with around, you know, how do we develop an offensive strategy or how do we go on the offensive against all of these mechanisms so I'm going to hand off to Diallo, and then we'll get to the rest of our colleagues. Diallo. It's my favorite kind of question, both because it allows us to talk about some of the problems with the using the terrorism framework right and not wanting to strengthen it. Like, I, you know, ultimately, material support to terrorism laws and various US terrorism laws are, if you look at the way that they're being deployed, widely being deployed against communities of color enforced in ways that are discriminatory and chilling, right. So if you look at the material support to terrorism statute. So as it currently stands, after the United Supreme Court addressed a constitutional challenge and holder versus humanitarian law project. Essentially plaintiffs in that case were a number of mostly humanitarian and peace building organizations saying we would love to we want, we want to be engaging with sort of providing legal training to organizations that are on the US terrorism list like the Tamil Tigers right so can we provide them training on international law and how not to run afoul to international humanitarian law for example. But we're afraid to do so because there's this law in the books and to us it feels like we might be running afoul to this criminal law and the Supreme Court, unfortunately in a very unfortunate decision upheld the constitutionality of that statute and essentially kept this really broad definition of material support to terrorism, which has largely chilled certain forms of charitable work important crucial life giving forms of humanitarian work in areas where where the where organizations that are designated by the US government as terrorist organizations operate so Afghanistan Somalia, certainly Gaza with Hamas and most Palestinian political parties are designated under the US terrorism system so anything that props that up is up is is generally some things that I would seriously question. In fact, a lot of our work and one of the things that I think we really need to be engaging with as, especially if there are folks here who are interested in sort of the First Amendment in civil liberties and sort of putting their legal minds to work around these issues is how do we start dismantling that regime, because of how how silencing and damaging it has been to some communities and not others. Now that is not to say that we shouldn't be thinking about creative ways to hold accountable a lot of these groups and these individuals and these organizations that are directly involved in violating Palestinian rights. And, and that's really where I want us to be spending our time and we're stuck doing the defense work, unfortunately, but I'd like to at least be doing 50% of my time of also kind of keeping the focus on where we wanted to be and not just just not just defending against false accusations, but also turning the tables and putting the shining the light back on to where it needs to be which is on what Palestinians are saying and what Palestinians are demanding. And a big part of that has been. What are you in the US doing supporting all of these organizations on the ground and Palestine that are, you know, and in Israel and Jerusalem which is occupied that are driving the settler movement that are actively involved in this is possessing people from their homes and these are US individuals US organizations and so. So we're, we're very actively thinking about that, not using terrorism laws, because, again, we don't want to sort of prop those up and validate them. But there are various other laws that are underutilized right and certainly the US has international law obligations and I think now, even though some of this stuff may have fallen on deaf ears deaf ears. Is that right again, yes, my aims are sometimes off the, you know, some years ago now now we we have more of an audience whether it's whether it's in Congress, and I think also there's just the developments on the ground also make it so that we have just a very clear evidence of this kind of direct engagement. So, yeah, that's where that's that's my happier place. And I, I'm really glad for the question, but I do also just in terms of engaging folks around thinking of not just what do we need to be doing to defend Palestinian rights but also how do we dismantle a regime of basically the sort of post 911 war on terror world right how do we move on from that because if you look at the regulations and the laws that have been passed like the material support to terrorism law. They've been weaponized against advocacy for Palestinian rights and other forms of advocacy. And the charitable giving has been a huge area of concern for many civil liberties organizations for a long time and it's under these laws. Most folks who talk about it are like in the humanitarian space in the charitable space. And not so much in the cyber space and in the human rights space and in the like advocacy space and I think we need sort of start changing that, even though it sounds scary. The terrorism laws are scary like we have to be like looking at the their impacts on on the work on the ground. Thank you Diala. So, I want to say, shout out shout out to the Institute for representative first amendment because we have a great audience with us with a lot of questions sadly we won't be able to address them all but radical. And I think that's something that's lifted up that relates to this question is about the Florida, the Florida State lawsuit that power legal has launched. Can you share with us a bit about that effort. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, we sort of recently went on the offensive along those that those lines is that we're representing a Florida State University student named Ahmed Daraldic and he's Palestinian first Palestinian American to be Florida State Student Senate. Really incredible brilliant young guy. He got elected anti Palestinian groups, including mostly off campus groups dug through his social media profile, and found statements where he cursed Israel's occupation when he was a child. And other statements that he made as a child and he lived in Palestine was tear gas when he was a kid there like remembers having to protect a younger sister who had asthma when the Israeli army through tear gas canisters in their house. And so yeah, he cursed the occupation. And because of that, I mean he was subjected to just a storm of like incredibly racist harassing social media comments, mentioning his family and his aunts, and you know, the n word and just horrific things that no one should have to go through much less a student trying to support the community. And, and the administration, instead of helping him actually condemned his speech. And they put out a statement the President University put up a statement on FSU's website, first condemning him as anti Israel and then mysteriously and sort of quietly changed anti Israel to anti Semitic. And so you know, we, we, you know, we tried to help him for months. He eventually got removed and he got put back. And this is you know, during, during, during the COVID pandemic. And eventually, you know, we filed a complaint recently and this is we just learned it was actually the first of the, it's kind of title six complaint, alleging anti Palestinian hostile environment. And so title six of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for those of you don't know, you know, came out of the civil rights movement and the idea behind that. This was during a time when, you know, black students in the United States were facing abuses and really horrific racist acts, so that they couldn't get an education right and so under this, under this law, a university can lose its federal funding if it allows a hostile environment to take place that's so severe and pervasive, a student can't get an education. But you know that that's really what happened here with Ahmed. And so we filed the first complaint on his behalf we're waiting to see what happens with that it takes a few it takes a month long process but you know what we're hearing more of from students. We're hearing, you know, this is a free speech issue we do believe that this isn't just about sort of Palestinians right. It's really anyone who speaks out for Palestinian rights in the United States is treated differently and is censored and punished and this number of people who come to us are also actually Jewish, and often Jewish Israelis. But I think what we're really seeing recently as Palestinians who are speaking out on behalf of their families who are talking about their lived experiences as Palestinians being targeted in particularly discriminatory and harassing ways and so we're trying to use this this this law this complaint process to try to get them relief and to draw attention to the situation so that universities don't think that they can just get away with with throwing Palestinian students under the bus because because of pressure from anti Palestinian pro Israeli groups. Yeah, and also as another Ahmed that went to Florida State University I really, really appreciate you all supporting young Ahmed there. So we have just a couple of minutes left I'm wondering if our panelists want to address anything they didn't get a moment to address and then maybe just point to things that people can do to support. So Nadim I'm going to kick it off to you first what can folks do to support this advocacy. So I think, I mean, in this world of online it's very important to take part and to share materials and to raise awareness. I think we saw this in the last period how much this was influential and how much we raised the voice and we were more vocal than the usual and we created enough pressure let's say also on the companies to think twice that there are usual policies of silencing us and colluding with the Israeli government wouldn't work as smooth as it usually does and that's why again I mean I think we all have the role in this and raising awareness and coordinating and organizing and putting more pressure on the companies. I think to share the materials and as things are really like I mean everybody can produce materials and follow the right pages with the people on the ground. I mean we didn't speak much about also the people who were on the ground and doing the life. For example if we speak about the Kurds family and others who created really waves of solidarity by just like filming what's happening and this is what's so powerful. So I think we all have the role in this and documenting and sharing just simply follow the people who are on the ground and share it with your surrounding with your cycles. That would be really important. Thank you Nadim absolutely continuous center those voices radical. I just want to echo Nadim's words, keep speaking out don't feel intimidated. If you are censored contact him I just want to say how many has been an incredible resource. People contact us about social media censorship or like column. So we're really thankful that they're there and and contact us as well for up for other kinds of censorship we're there we have your backs. Yeah, don't be afraid keep keep speaking out it's so important. Thank you radical and the other. Yeah, nothing to add I mean these are all great suggestions like, particularly not. If you're in the US and if you're at an academic institution which I think a lot of the folks in this audience are. It's rare to have these discussions and not be chilled and not be sort of not be taken by a lot of the sort of boogeyman language that is thrown around and out there so really big thanks to Kendra and the whole team for hosting this event. It's rare like for what we're seeing a bit of a crossover finally where Palestine and the issues affecting Palestinian advocacy are kind of coming into and being put on agenda as a folks who haven't historically paid attention and I think that's an incredibly important and I hope that it's not fleeting so symposiums law review articles and legal academic context is really important, as well as everywhere like in your workplaces right. So that's the best way to sort of counteract some of the siloing of this issue from many of the other important human rights and civil liberties issues that we all talk about so regularly. Thank you so much. Thank you Nadim, Radhika, Diala, wonderful colleagues and amazing perspective. I'll just say everyone you have a role here. So we can't tell you exactly. You know what your role is but you need to do some digging and thinking and strategizing and figuring out how you can contribute because your voice and your action is necessary. With that being said I'm going to hand it back over to Kendra Kendra thank you so much to you and the Institute for Representative First Amendment. Thank you so much. I feel like I was clapping and, you know, emoji harding and you know all of those things. So thank you so much to our incredible panelists to our ASL interpreters. And finally, to my colleagues and a civil gallon who did a lot of the behind the scenes work. I, they would. I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to tell you that in addition to finding the handles for our amazing panelists and their organizations you can follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our newsletter so you can find out about more of our events but thank you so much everyone and yeah solidarity with those folks in Palestine who are continuing to speak out. Bye everyone. Bye bye. Thank you all. Bye. Thank you.