 Joining us, the wonderful and talented Marcy Winograd is out tonight and I am hosting in her place. For anybody who doesn't know me, I'm a Code Pink national co-director and the head of our Middle East campaigns and I'm thrilled to be with all of you tonight and to be talking about such an important issue as the attacks on Palestinian rights activists are and what we can do to address that and how we can support Palestinian rights activists who are under attack and dealing with silencing. So, I want to encourage everybody to become a Code Pink Congress liaison by clicking on the link in the chat, make sure that it's there. So, if you, there it is, if you click on that link there become a CPC liaison, we will help work with you on how to mobilize your district and community. And with that, I'm thrilled to have additional co-host tonight, Medea Benjamin, as well as Cole Harrison and Brian Garvey from Massachusetts Peace Action. And with that, I'd like to turn it over to Cole, if you can give us some updates on what MAPA is doing and what your current campaigns are. Yeah, thank you, Ariel. Mass Peace Action is happy to co-sponsor this webinar and this webinar series of four, this is the second in the series of four foreign policy topics that we and Code Pink are collaborating on. Mass Peace Action is the state affiliate of Peace Action, which is the nation's largest grassroots peace organization. Some of the issues we're working on right now, we actually have been working on the six NGOs significantly, we have a petition, you know, Massachusetts focused petition, but we've been working in Russia and Ukraine opposing the Menendez bill which would slap new targets on Russia and send significant military aid to Ukraine, and we favor diplomacy instead and we're supporting a letter by Peter DeFazio, which would require congressional approval for any military force, any use of military force in relation to Russia. So we've been working on the hunger crisis in Afghanistan. We were part of rallies nationwide yesterday, and there's been quite a lot of indignation at Biden's decision on Friday that was announced to take those $7 billion of Afghanistan's money half of it to the 9-11 victims and the other half supposedly to be used for humanitarian aid but with no plan or clarity about exactly how, and that is actually Afghanistan's money, it's the property of the Afghanistan Central Bank and Biden has seized it. We're working in Yemen war powers, the Yemen war is approaching its seventh anniversary and it has to be stopped. Democrats voted to stop it during Trump and now they're kind of dragging their feet on stopping it but Pamela Jaipal and Peter DeFazio have said that they're going to file a war powers resolution, which once they do that it will have to come to a vote in 15 days and Congress will have to go on record whether it wants to stop the Yemen war or keep it going. We actually have a rally at Seth Moulton's office on Friday on a related issue. Seth is trying to designate the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization which would immediately worsen the whole humanitarian situation because it would mean that, you know, US can't cooperate with any, you know, they can't allow any supplies to be translated through the Houthi controlled areas which is the bulk of the country and so on. We're pressing Biden and Blinken to return to the Iran deal and we're continuing to work on nuclear disarmament as we anticipate the nuclear posture review to come out any week now. So we got our hands full with some of these issues and now I'd like to turn it over to Brian to talk about tonight's action. And I have a little bit of good news actually to share with everyone. Cole was just referencing that effort by Congressman Seth Moulton who may be the biggest hawk up here in Massachusetts to put an FTO, a foreign terrorist organization back on the Houthis which would starve so much of Yemen. His letter urging the Biden administration to do so came out today. And it only got 17 signatures, which means that it was a dud considering that the Biden administration actually said that they were already considering it so that's that's a small victory for us there but to get to the action tonight. This is a great format that we're doing it's it's not just a webinar it's an action arts we're going to become educated but we're also going to take that education and channel it into advocacy. So, after we hear the speakers. She has organized some great easy to follow links that will let you send email messages as well as tweets if you use Twitter to your representatives and senators as well as the Biden administration. Tonight what we're going to be advocating for is HR 2590. We want to make sure that our tax dollars are not being used by the Israeli government in human rights abuses against Palestinian children. And we're also advocating of course for House Resolution 751 also introduced by Congresswoman Betty McCollum, and that resolution would make it a statement of Congress to condemn this designation that we're going to be talking about designating these six internationally recognized human rights organizations as as terrorists organizations is completely unfair decision and Congress needs to speak out on it. So, after we hear our speakers we're going to be taking those actions together. But right now I will turn it back over to Ariel Gold. Thanks so much. And I'm going to turn it right over to media, which I saw some people noting that she was on democracy now this morning talking both about the situation in Ukraine and the situation with the money with Afghanistan's policy that Biden is planning has announced that he's going to redistribute part of that to 911 families and so media you were fantastic on democracy now and if you could update us on both of those issues. Well, thank you to Cole and Brian for updating us on so many issues that we work on jointly. Just to say how advocacy is so important on this issue of the money for Afghanistan, when the Biden administration first came out and said, you know, we're taking this money that belongs to the Afghan people and should go to the central bank to shore up the collapsing economy, but instead we're going to channel it to 911 families and to humanitarian aid. They're starting to walk that back a little after there was a incredible backlash coming from all walks of life inside Afghanistan, both the Taliban and Taliban opponents and former presidents and and then here in this country, whether it was human rights organizations or humanitarian aid groups and legal institutions all kinds of people. And so it is interesting to see well, they're saying now well we're not sure exactly what's going to happen to the 3.5 million it might not be humanitarian aid maybe it will be some kind of for some kind of fiscal stability issue. And, and then they're saying for the three other 3.5 that we don't know what the courts are going to say. They're they're they're reacting now and that's because a lot of you have taken measures and I put a link to our petition maybe we could put it again. The more you sign it the better, and then you know when we're talking about Ukraine. I think we have to recognize that one factor in all of this is the opposition that's coming from within Ukraine within Russia within Western Europe, and here in the United States from people saying we've got so many other issues that we care about and war is not on our agenda. And I think it's causing all of these different leaders who have been using this incendiary rhetoric to start stepping back a bit from the brink. And let's hope that keeps happening, and that there is some kind of recognition, which seems to be coming from Zelensky in Ukraine now of saying, Well, maybe we won't be asking to join NATO. That would be a very positive thing. And all of the nonstop negotiations that's happening will hopefully come to some resolution, and we won't be facing a military conflict. But just in case we do we are working with our friends in Congress to say you can't get involved in military conflict according to the Constitution without going to Congress first. So that's another thing that many of us are working on. Thank you. Thanks so much, Medea. And with that I just want to also mention that things are heating up and I know we're going to be talk about this because this is our topic tonight, but things are heating up again in East Jerusalem. This is one of the far, far right, Cahanus, which is kind of like the Jewish KKK members of Knesset has reopened an office in Sheikh Jarrah just to incite the settlers to violence which it really doesn't take much to incite them to violence and so the settlers have taken over a backyard and it's getting pretty ugly there. And with that, Cole, if you would introduce our first guest. Yes, I'd be happy to like to introduce D'Ala Shamas. D'Ala is a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights. She was born in East Jerusalem, and she challenges government abuses perpetrated under the guise of national security, both in the United States and abroad. D'Ala the floor is yours. Thank you Cole and Code Pink and Mapa for spending your Tuesday evening with us on this on this topic. So, I'll try to be brief and pass it on to the others, but our organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights has been offering legal and advocacy support for Palestinian rights advocates as they respond to a range of assaults, both in and out of court. So as people participating on this call probably know, we're seeing concerning efforts to suppress human rights advocates at a global scale. And even the most basic human rights based criticism of Israeli policies have been met with significant and well resourced pushback. So, you know, one doesn't need to look any further than the attacks on the on the recent Amnesty International report for that was finding that Israeli policies essentially constitute apartheid. And I want to acknowledge also that the burden is most heavily borne of course by Palestinians in Palestine who are met with both physical and bureaucratic violence for raising their voices in opposition to Israeli policies. And to just acknowledge one example, there was a recent killing of an elder and the land rights activists in the South Hebron Hills, Mr. Suleiman al-Hadaline in late January, as he was engaging in protests as Israeli vehicles were confiscating Palestinian property over there. But we've also seen the long arm of this repression here extend to the United States. And that's probably what is of most relevance to this audience. So here in the US repression of Palestinian rights advocacy happens in a number of ways. And I think some of the other speakers will speak about the legislative assault. So I won't speak much about that. But one big feature of these attacks has been the promulgation of various anti boycott laws. I can say something about the area that I've been most involved in. And that's the abuse of the terrorism label and broad US anti terrorism laws to suppress and silence Palestinian advocates. And so I know that Brad will speak more about the recent designations of Palestinian human rights advocates as terrorists by the Israeli government. But my view has been that the designation there is just as much intended to have impacts here in the United States. Or so just, yeah. So, I'll just say a little bit more about that. So here in the US, many Israel aligned groups have sought to leverage expansive US laws on material support to terrorism to criminalize or deter support for Palestinian rights. So one big way they've done this is to pursue civil suits, basically filing or threatening to file litigation against Palestinian rights advocates, their supporters, including their funders in US courts. These are resource intensive suits, even when they are completely meritless. So we represent one US based human rights organization in one of these lawsuits, it was brought by a group of Israeli plaintiffs, including the Jewish National Fund, so the Israeli Jewish National Fund. It is meritless and the allegations are absurd. So one look at the completely implausible allegations makes it clear that the goal of the suit is to muzzle our clients advocacy. In fact, they refer to tweets and advocacy emails calls to call your members of Congress as their basis for claiming material support to terrorism. So these litigants are taking advantage of laws like the material support to terrorism statute and the provisions that allow for private actors to bring civil suits to engage in what some have described as lawfare. And as long as such expensive laws remain on the books and as long as we don't do more to challenge the overbroad use of the terrorism framework will continue to see this form of assault. CCR stands for the Center for Constitutional Rights were legal and advocacy organization based in New York. So in light of how broad the material support regime is in the range of legal administrative and regulatory consequences that it can trigger, including these kinds of private enforcement actions these lawsuits, it's really important that US officials, whether it's members of Congress or others in the administration, vociferously and publicly reject the Israeli allegations, but also we need to be thinking about reconsidering the reach of some of this legislation. I don't have any immediate calls to action on that point, but hopefully some will come down the pipeline and eager to think together with you all on it. But in the meantime, continued support for the advocates, including the six designated groups is the most important way to combat the isolation that the designation is intended to trigger so thank you so much for hosting this event with some of you know representatives of those organizations and others who can speak about it. I look forward to the Q amp a and I'll pass it back. Thank you so, so much and thank you for all the work that you do, and that CCR does our next speaker. Amal Fabac. I thrilled to introduce to you. Amal is the Michael Ratner justice fellow at Palestine legal where she challenges the sense censorship and surveillance of advocates for Palestinian liberation. Myself personally and code pink is an organization have used Palestine legal numerous times and we're thrilled to have you with us. Thank you so much Ariel and thank you to code pink mappa and and my co panelists I'm really excited to be a part of this conversation tonight. Thank you Diala for starting us off and providing that really great context. Just a quick sort of intro into Palestine legal where a legal advocacy organization. Our mission is to protect the rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom and challenge efforts to threaten harass and legally bully activists into silence and in action. Palestine legal has documented widespread censorship and harassment of Palestine activists over the years, featuring a range of tactics which I hope to touch upon tonight. Among which false accuses accusations of anti Semitism feature prominently. Diala mentioned you know people in the US who speak out for Palestinian rights are routinely censored punished and falsely accused of anti Semitism or support for terrorism based solely on their support for Palestinian rights and their criticism of Israel. And in addition to this abuse of mere material support laws as a line of attack against Palestine activists, we're also seeing a huge wave of legislative attacks. Last year, state and federal lawmakers introduced at least 31 legislative measures aimed at silencing condemning or punishing advocacy for Palestinian rights. These measures primarily included two types of bills the first targeting boycott divestment in sanctions or BDS. And the second being bills that adopt a distorted definition of anti Semitism in an effort to shield Israel from criticism. To start with bills targeting BDS and increasing number of people around the world are heating the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society to use BDS as tactics to pressure Israel to respect Palestinian rights and to comply with international law. And in response to this growing support for boycott campaigns, Israel and its supporters have worked to suppress such collective action to hold Israel accountable. We've seen this suppression play out in so many different ways, including a large focus being on for example getting students spelled or workers fired from their jobs. Last year 58% of the incident that Palestine legal responded to targeted students and scholars at campuses across the country. Most of these efforts failed but still caused harm to those impacted and have a chilling impact on speech and support of Palestinians. Alongside this private repression lawmakers have also advanced legislation that stifles First Amendment protected boycotts for Palestinian rights in order to shield Israel from criticism. And again this is often at the urging of the Israeli government and Israeli advocacy groups. In the past eight years 33 states have enacted such anti boycott laws, despite strong opposition from civil liberties groups that argue political boycotts are constitutionally protected. And in fact none of these laws have been upheld on their merits when challenged. Most recently, for example, anti boycott legislation rose up in Virginia, Nebraska and Tennessee with local state and state activists mobilizing to protect the right to speak out in support of Palestinian freedom. Just last week, Palestine legal sent a letter to Virginia lawmakers urging them to oppose a new anti boycott bill that targets advocacy for Palestinian rights. These bills if enacted chill free speech rights by effectively dictating that a position supporting human rights is unacceptable. These bills intimidate individuals and businesses from adopting ethical political stances regarding Israel and Palestine, because these individuals know that their decisions based on human rights concerns could result in a denial of a contract with the state. And although these bills typically apply only to public contracts, if enacted they will likely chill other expressive activity. For example, similar laws have been invoked in order to chill student and community activism and support of Palestinian human rights to prevent public talks at universities to censor school teachers and to cancel cultural events for example. So even when these censorship efforts have failed, confusion over the scope or deliberate misapplication of these anti boycott laws did in fact chill, punish or attempt to punish speakers supporting Palestinian rights. And in fact, the impact of legislation targeting Israel boycotts goes far beyond chilling advocacy for Palestinian rights anti Israel boycott laws have become a model for other types of anti boycott legislation targeting protests and support of other social justice issues. A dozen of states have introduced or passed anti boycott legislation for example, targeting efforts to address climate change, gun violence, and even a global pandemic. However, despite the rapid spread of these laws, they've been met with widespread opposition both from grassroots activists who support the movement for Palestinian freedom and equality and from civil rights groups and legislators who recognize these laws as a violation of the First Amendment. Secondly, in addition to these anti boycott laws, anti semitism accusations have been a primary tool to discredit critics of Israel for decades. And alongside the senior tactics, there have been significant efforts to turn these accusations into a legal weapon to force institutions and governments to censor and punish. And that's where the codification of the IRA definition of anti of anti semitism comes into play or the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance is definition. This controversial definition of anti semitism threatens Palestinian rights advocates and free speech by design the definitions focus on branding all criticism of Israel's anti semitic makes it a tool to silence Palestinians and shield these really government from accountability. And now we're seeing this large legislative assault to codify this politicized redefinition and get it to be applied to censor Palestine speech. Just last month 10 states have announced that they're adopting the IRA working definition of anti semitism. And this, you know, follows the large wave of anti boycott laws that I mentioned earlier that we've seen in 30 plus states, which which is still ongoing. And this IRA definition is is really controversial because it's dangerous and it fails to identify the true nature of anti semitism or or through causes and white supremacy by conflating anti semitism with legitimate criticism of the state of Israel. We are effectively weakening the definition of the term and shifting focus away from actual bigotry and hatred. Lawmakers therefore should reject, you know, attempts to codify the IRA definition or reject using it as a guiding factor in law or policy. And that's why I personally go we're standing up for the right to advocate for Palestinian human rights by mobilizing to defeat repressive bills, challenging these unconstitutional laws in court and pushing for affirmative legislation that protects the right to dissent. And I will pass it back to you, Ariel. Thank you so much. And we're going to move on to our next speaker Brian would you like to introduce Brad. You're absolutely and I just want to thank them all for your work what you do helps us advocates do our work and defense our free speech so I just want to thank you for that. It's my privilege to introduce Brad Parker, he's a senior policy advisor at Defense for Children International. He advocates for Palestinian children's rights and an end to Israel's torture of child prisoners. Defense for Children International is one of the six NGOs banned from Israel for its objections to child detentions in the occupied territories. Brad, thanks for being with us. Thanks Brian. Hi, it's welcome. It's great to be here. It's also great to see a mall and Diala. We have a CUNY law school connection with the three of us so it's always nice to have that pop up. So I work with Defense for Children International Palestine it's one of the six organizations designated by Israel as a terrorist organization in October. I just sort of give a bit of context on the specific designation so the process. There's sort of a lot of things that have happened so I'll just try to like break it down so people understand kind of where it started and and where we are now. So in October under Israeli law 2016 anti-terrorism law that's under the Israeli civilian law, the Ministry of Defense designated the six organizations as terrorist organizations under Israeli law. And that law doesn't apply to us as organizations in the occupied Palestinian territory where Israeli military law is applicable. So in November that the military commander in the West Bank issued a military order, essentially, deeming us as organizations, banned organizations under the Israeli military law. That's that's sort of the legal foundation. What that means is that we are outlawed banned criminalized right this this terror label means that we could be closed at any moment assets could be frozen staff can be arrested and prison charged simply for the act of working with or a banned organization. So the Allah sort of touched on the material support statutes this is an identical sort of usage of legal tools to criminalize sent to criminalize politically disfavor groups. And that's exactly sort of what what's happening in this moment. We filed an objection this month, under the military law process, essentially demanding the cancellation of the military order that that deems us a banned organization. So that's kind of the update on where things are now. We, we are, you know, to say that we're hopeful that this this designation gets rescinded I think is, you know, that's not the case. In the past decade or more. The government of Israel and sort of affiliated right wing civil society organizations inside Israel and elsewhere have worked to delegitimize and attack the work that we do to document killings fatalities injuries of Palestinian children. As a result of Israeli forces conduct. We provide legally to Palestinian children charged in Israeli military courts. We document and expose the violations, such as torture to process violations, etc. That's really the motivation in the designation is that all of the delegitimization campaigns that have come before have failed. We've had strong partnerships, we've had solidarity from folks like you. Our work has continued to grow specifically in the US right this is the third congressional session where we've had a bill introduced in Congress. It gives us a long term term organizing vehicle to bring in further exposed the violations of Palestinian children face that are just inherent in Israeli military occupation and Israeli military rule of Palestinians. One side by side with that work is increased right the the attacks and the repressive tactics by the government of Israel have have escalated against us and other Palestinian human rights organizations. So, what we've sort of done in the immediate sort of aftermath of designations with mobilized members of Congress. We introduced House resolution 751. We should all read it. One of the actions I know is to encourage your Congress to close on sort of that resolution. And that resolution essentially condemns the designation in the act by the Israeli government to outlaw us and the other five organizations. And, you know, in the large scheme of lawmaking policymaking, it doesn't really mean a lot. It's not going to pass right it's not going to be adopted by Congress, but being able to muster co-sponsor show support have lawmakers on the record in this moment is hugely important and can help at least make Israel think about how fast and how quickly they escalate to sort of the next stage, because I think that will happen. And the goal right now is to just slow things down, build a movement pushing back against this and, and hopefully continue to expose the violations that are inherent in Israeli government rule of Palestinians on a military occupation. So I'll stop there. Thank you Brad so much for that overview we appreciate it. Next up I'd like to introduce Cynthia Franklin. Cynthia is a professor author and member of the organizing committee. Sorry, the organizing collective of the US campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel. She's also an activist with against canary mission and with Jewish voice for peace. Cynthia. And to code pink. And it's an honor to be on this panel with everyone who has spoken so far. I'm personally indebted to Palestine legal on many occasions and also have huge respect for CCR and defense for children. So I was asked to speak today about the project against canary mission, which was spearheaded by organizers who may a lot as a way to counter canary mission. And I worked on this project as a member of us actually so first I just want to say a few words about canary mission. It was launched in 2015 under the cloak of anonymity. There's thousands of photos and profiles of students and faculty who support Palestine. And on the basis of that support it labels them as racists as anti semites as supporters of terrorism. The website claims that every profile individual has been carefully researched and asks visitors to report instances of anti Semitism. The dossiers include quotations taken out of context, and the site conflates any support for Palestine support for violence and anti Semitism. It also mixes in a few profiles of people who truly are white supremacists and anti summit and anti Semites, which I think is a probably an effective tactic on their part. Canary mission has been shut down twice as Twitter for its Twitter feed, but it keeps popping back up the Twitter feed further foments hatred and harassment. I experienced this firsthand when canary mission sent out a tweet based on my opposition to Israel's practices of stealing water in the West Bank. It was just one tweet and I, I received just a stream of death threats that were misogynistic, and also charging me with anti Semitism. And that was not surprising because Zionism is regularly accompanied by sexism and homophobia as well as Islamophobia and racism. And I can just only imagine how draining this is for those who are regularly featured in canary missions Twitter feed I just have this one. Within a year of its establishment canary mission included over 1800 profiles. It particularly targets students of color who are active with BDS students for justice in Palestine and Muslim student associations. So this profile, this profiling is materially as well as emotionally harmful, and Liz Jackson of Palestine legal is quoted in a 2018 intercept article where she notes quote targets of canary mission have been not been denied entry to Palestine fired from jobs interrogated by employers and university administrators, and targeted with death threats and racial homophobic misogynistic harassment from canary mission followers. We know one person who has denied a bank account. This is just some of the important work how legal doesn't documenting and defending people who have experiences. The site is used by law enforcement in Israel and the US, and a particular concern is how Israeli border officials have made use of the site to deny Palestinian Americans entry to their homeland. So this really creates a chilling effect in addition to those who are denied denied entry. And that includes how especially Palestinians and also anyone on record and supportive BDS. The site works in tandem with other Zionist entities and there's a documentary that some of you might know the lobby that reveals Israel Israeli lobby. He's a senior finance here in real estate mogul living in California now, Adam Milstein as the funder behind the site he also his foundation funds a panoply of anti Palestinian organizations, including the Israel on campus coalition and stand with us and the Israel initiative. In 2018 under the leadership of then NSJP students who may have a lot who's currently director of strategy at Adelaide justice project, a group of us from NSJP us actually JVP power legal and I am you worked on the project against canary mission and I'll drop the link for that in a minute. NSJP pulled students who had been profile on canary mission, and based on their responses of formation of this website emerged as one way to offer support to the students. And here I want to really stress that in addition to the ways Israelis use the site to prohibit travel the site is really harmful to students who often when googled by potential employers or grad student emission committees might have little that appears beyond their their canary mission dossier. So we designed the site not only to resist canary missions tactics of harassment and intimidation, but also and more importantly to celebrate activists supporting Palestine liberation and to expose Zionist practices of settler colonialism apartheid and occupation. As a compliment to against canary mission we also worked on an open petition signed by over 1000 academics who vowed to oppose canary mission smear tactics. Canary mission would not exist where it not for the success of grassroots organizing for Palestine. And I think that against canary mission is further evidence that there is no silencing those organizing against injustice, however well funded and powerful Israeli and US propaganda campaigns are and they do have a lot of money. We will never be powerful enough to defeat those of us who are working collectively for decolonial futures. And I want to quote here from Sumerian a lot and Bill Mullen, who wrote about who wrote in Manda wise announcing the arrival of the against canary They say our website is a virtual landmark to this moment in history and electronic festival of the people who have put Palestinian liberation at the forefront and in the mainstream of global discussions about human rights against canary mission also stands with Palestinians everywhere. Including the West Bank and Gaza under constant surveillance restriction of movement trampling of human rights it exists to respect the martyrs of Palestine, murdered by the state of Israel, like those killed in cold blood during the March of return on land day. And they end by inviting people to participate in this project and by asserting a free Palestine depends on many things, including that we never cease to sing freedom songs and tell stories about heroes in the movement for Palestinian liberation. I want to echo them here and invite those of you tuning in to uplift the stories of those featured as part of against canary mission, especially the students who I think show amazing bravery and do such amazing work, and also to invite those of you who have stories to contribute them to this site so I'll stop there and thank you so much. Thank you Cynthia. This is my favorite part of the program. This is where we take the what we've just learned and channel it into into action. So Shay I know that you have compiled the actions that we've created for people to take. I'm wondering if you can put those up on screen for us. I think we're going to do a little bit of Q amp a. I'm sorry Ariel. No no problem at all I'm going to start with one of the first one of the questions that we had. Are there any states where efforts to oppose anti BBS measures have succeeded in rescinding those measures or preventing them from being enacted one of our speakers could. I began to address this in the chat but absolutely we have seen successful challenges, notably in Arizona, Kansas, Texas, Arkansas and several other states. And our legislation website actually tracks all the different bills that arise whether they're defeated or in status or pending. So it's a really great site in which you can sort of track those different bills in different states but absolutely yes we've seen successful challenges to to these anti boycott bills. Wonderful. Thank you so much. This is a question to Brad. How did if you could let us know how representative McCollum got into this issue. A quick story. So, we're doing around the pill visits and I don't remember if it was late 2014 or early 2015 but the goal was to sort of get moving with the congressional advocacy campaign which then became the no way to treat a child campaign. I've met with a number of different members of Congress and you know the meeting with Betty was was unique in the sense that, you know, we sort of just laid out the documentation that DCIP collects, provided the stories, you know, of children's arrested, detained, ill treated by Palestinian or by Israeli forces. And she just said, like, how can I help. And it was really as simple as that. And then that sort of created this, you know, this, this relationship and ultimately a partnership that that grew and grew over the years. And, you know, it's is where it is now with her being a champion on on some of these issues and being very outspoken and, you know, willing to to bring it into places that folks may not be so happy to to discuss so that's it. It's really just a genuine willingness to help and kind of work in support of Palestinian rights. That's that's that's how that relationship started and that's why she's doing what she's doing today. Thanks so much. Moving on to a question about the terrorist designation. Can we hope that this terrorist designation represents a bridge too far for Israel, along with the amnesty declaration that that Israel's committing apartheid. The option to criticize Israel seems more alive in the long run. So if somebody wants to speak to that need glass half full on the terrorist declaration. I would say that I think it was, you know, the really robust pushback, globally, as soon as the designations became public was something I think that was a good thing. The situation right now is that the longer, you know, Germany, the US, France, the UK, all these different governments, sort of just give it a little time. Right. And they don't come out and strongly reject the the allegations, which, you know, it's already multiple times been deemed to be incredible by a number of European governments over, you know, the past year. These allegations aren't new, right. And I think the failure and sort of hesitancy of governments to, you know, to not just straight out reject them is problematic because we know that Israel will use that time and eventually escalate and create what they need to satisfy. You know, these other states because again, the main goal is to silence the work that we're doing, eliminate the work we're doing so that the violations that are happening on the ground aren't being exposed like it's as simple as that. Yeah, there's more to say but not so glass half full but I think it's an important and sort of crucial time right to be really galvanizing pushing forward and pushing back because as we've seen with with other things like once the attention sort of shifts focus. When it's sort of all crumbles. So it's, you know, it's incredibly difficult to keep sustained pressure on all the different agencies that we have but right that's that's that's really I think it's the important piece here. Thanks so much. I'm wondering if one of our legal experts could talk about some of the challenges to the anti BDS laws. I think this is really up house and legal Sally so I'll happily have you answer the question. Yeah, is the question just just to speak more about about the challenges. Yeah, what challenges that have been successful let's say or what strategies have been successful in dealing with the anti BDS laws. Yeah, for sure. So, for example, in October 2017 the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging Kansas is anti boycott law, which required prospective state contractors to certify in writing that they're not engaged in a boycott of Israel. On behalf of a math teacher who was chosen to participate in a like teacher training program in Kansas and in order to participate she was required to sign a certification that she does not boycott Israel. And she refused to. And so in the year later a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking Kansas from enforcing the anti boycott law and affirming that boycotts for Palestinian rights are protected by the First Amendment. And this seems sort of very similar scenarios play out in Arizona also in 2017 in Texas in 2019 and most recently in Arkansas in 2018 with the ACLU and other legal advocacy groups filing lawsuits and challenging anti boycott laws. So, thanks so much and switching topics a little bit. We have a question about the Abraham Accords and the question is what the impact has been of other states in the Middle East normalizing relations with Israel what impact that has had on the Palestinian struggle. Anyone wants to jump in and take that one. Quick sort of take away. I mean I think for several years now Palestinians haven't been at the forefront in regional politics. When it comes to the Middle East and the Abraham Accords just further pushes the Palestinian issue and Palestinian self determination kind of further and further further down the list. And that's ultimately the goal. So I say that's sort of the reality of, you know, at least one sort of take away the Abraham Accords and maybe the more intended impact of it is to really sever the broader Arab world from the Palestinian issue as a way to just sort of divide and conquer even further right and sort of a settler colonial vision for Palestine. Thank you. Yeah, I agree with that. So, we're going to let our guests go and I would like to ask everybody on the call. If you could unmute and I think Shay is going to give you all permission to unmute. We can thank our guests and let them go and then we're going to take some. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're right behind you. Thank you. God bless you all. All right. Thank you, buddy. Thank you all so much. Thank you for having us and everything that you do. That's it. Wonderful. So before I hand it over to Brian to do tonight we're quite a different order to do both of our actions. I want to thank everybody who came today and invite folks to join us on Tuesday, March 1 for an update on the Ukraine crisis, and then Tuesday, March 15 for a look at what the United States is doing in Africa. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to you, Brian. Thanks, Ariel. And sorry for jumping the gun before, but this really is my favorite part of the program because, you know, we are here to do community education that's important, but it's one thing to know. But really what's more important is what you do with that knowledge, right? I'm just thinking about what Brad just had to say. He said he wasn't hopeful that this designation gets rescinded. You know, he said that, you know, his answer was not a glass half full. But what we're going to do now, I hope, is put some water in Brad's glass, right? We need to, we need to move the needle on this. We need to change. It's not easy work that we're doing, but it's necessary work. So, Shay, if you want to put up that webpage that you set up, Shay, set up a fantastic website for all of these actions in one place. And it's just, it's so easy. This link, we're going to put this link in the chat. And all you have to do is put your address in and it will automatically look up your senators, your member of the House of Representatives, and it will ask them to do what we were talking about tonight. It's going to ask for their cosponsorship of Betty McCollum's bills of HR 2590, which is going to make sure that our tax dollars are not going to repression in Israel. It's going to ask them to cosponsor this new resolution 751 that is going to come out strongly against this repressive designation of these internationally recognized groups. I mean, you heard them. Did they sound like terrorist organizations to you? No. No, absolutely not. But, you know, we can't allow that designation to go unchallenged, right? Because Israel gets, as I'm sure so many of you know, billions of dollars in unconditional military aid every year from the United States. That's what makes the Israeli government feel like it can do whatever it wants in terms of human rights abuses. And Dina, it is all right if you've already said, sent similar letters. Send them again, right? They need to hear from us over and over and over and over again. They need to know that we're not going to stop until the policies of the United States of America change, right? I've heard over and over and over again from the Biden administration, from prior administrations, that human rights is going to be at the center of our foreign policy. Well, it just ain't so. But we need to make it so. And it's not going to be easy, right? And it's going to take more than just 137 people that are on the call right now. Once you take the action and I promise you, it only takes a, it takes a minute. You just put your address in and it's sent, it draws up the form and you can send it out. You can change it, you can personalize it if you want. But it's, it's, yeah, less than a minute, Frank. It's, it's extremely quick. And then that second one, that second Bidley link, the stop attacks Twitter. If people have Twitter accounts, I know that's not everybody, but it's really useful. That will draw up tweets to the president of the United States, to your senators and to your member of Congress. And that's important because, you know, email messages are good.