Last week Mondoweiss published ‘From COINTELPRO to Project Esther: The evolution of domestic counterinsurgency in the U.S.’, an article by writer and organizer Carrie Zaremba on how counterinsurgency against U.S. social movements has evolved since the 1960s and how it’s being used against the Palestine movement.
We spoke with Zaremba for this week’s newsletter about how the recent history of repression of social movements in the U.S. has led to the current moment and the attacks we’re seeing against the Palestine movement. You can read the piece on our site.
In the piece, you talk about how the 1967 war marked a turning point in the surveillance of Arab-American political activity. Can you talk about that moment?
Zaremba: I identify 1967 as a turning point for two reasons.
One is the rise of many Jewish Zionist institutions. These are civic institutions that are wielding more power. You also have more Arab-American organizing and it’s getting more visible
A lot of the justification was the 1972 Munich Olympics attack, but this really predates 1972 and goes back to the late 60s. You had a lot of Arabs attending university in the United States and joining Arab Students Organizations. A lot of them weren’t necessarily Arab-Americans, but Arab students from abroad studying in the U.S.
There was this fear of subversion and a paranoia about espionage. So, the inclusion of Arabs into COINTELPRO was largely a byproduct of that mindset. COINTELPRO is mostly associated outside of the campus context because that’s where most operations took place, but there were a lot of campus-based interventions.
I was trying to draw attention to this in this piece: the role of the student, the Arab student in particular, in stoking these fears of Third World anti-imperialist politics that were emerging at the time.
Organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Jewish Defense League (JDL) obviously stoked many of these fears. You could already see the early beginnings of these civic counterinsurgent groups at the time, but most of the counterinsurgency was done by groups like FBI.
You mention a specific case in your article, Operation Vulgar Betrayal. What was that story?
There was a whole host of FBI operations through the 80s and 90s that targeted Arab-American communities.
Chicago, which has a huge Palestinian population, was definitely a hotspot for a lot of this. Operation Vulgar Betrayal focused on a specific neighborhood, Bridgeview, Illinois, which is a Palestinian suburb just outside of Chicago.
For over a decade, mosques, and community centers were infiltrated and individuals were subjected to extreme FBI surveillance. This was all done under the guise of terrorism financing and trying to trace relationships that Palestinians in the U.S. had to organizations abroad. One of prime targets of this operation was Muhammad Salah, who was a Palestinian Bridgeview resident and the first citizen ever to be placed on a terrorist watch list.
That designation was challenged and ultimately withdrawn in the courts, but we still see that even before 1993, it is often listed as a turning point.
Long before this, there was a really comprehensive and intensive surveillance apparatus wielded against Arab and Arab American communities, but 1993 is also really important because it was the year of Oslo Accords. So there’s this convergence that made it a prime moment for surveillance and infiltration.
Let’s fast-forward to the aftermath of 9/11 and the “War on Terror” policies. You write about how, in some ways, it was a continuation of existing policies, but there also were some notable changes. What remained the same? What was different?
A big difference is that the project of domestic national security became a truly national one. It wasn’t isolated in one specific FBI agency. You have the NSA, the FBI, the CIA, and new departments. You have the Department of Homeland Security being created and developed specifically for counterterrorism.
The language of counterterrorism is also a big distinguishing factor about 2001. A lot of the allegations and the arguments against people who were subjected to COINTELPRO were based on them having alleged connections to subversive movements abroad, but the language of counter terrorism wasn’t necessarily being used. The new framework made it more about being “anti-American.”
It was also a lot more coordinated. You had cross-agency coordination now between surveillance technology firms, intelligence, federal departments, and research centers.
The Patriot Act made everything a free-for-all in terms of what the government is allowed to do in terms of surveillance. And so there was no getting permission, not that they ever got permission or anything like that, but it really unlocked a new level of surveillance. A lot of tactics remained the same, but after 9/11 you had cooperation across a bunch of federal, municipal, citywide agencies that were all working together under this larger banner of counterterrorism.
You also saw the increasing digital surveillance, which is obviously a huge difference between the COINTELPRO era and what has basically defined counterinsurgency in our current moment, is the use of digital tools to surveil and repress.
We see this new wave of anti-Palestine repression under Trump with things like Project Esther. What’s different this time around?
I think there are multiple differences. One, in the 2010s, you see the rise of all of these different groups like Canary Mission, or Stop AntiSemitism Now. These groups that are essentially civil society actors who present themselves as non-state actors, as neutral, but they’re engaging in this project of what I call civic counterinsurgency.
It’s an entire network of NGOs, lawfare firms, private tech contractors, and university administrators engaging in this project of repression, which is more decentralized, it’s more diffused, it’s taking place on multiple scales and from multiple actors. It’s not just state repression.
There’s this whole industry that has been created and developed over time to suppress pro-Palestine activity in the U.S.
I think more people are now aware of the reality that we are at war against the state because of what the lessons of the post-9/11 era have taught us. I think people are more attuned to the extent to which the government and this host of civic actors will go to suppress anything pro-Palestine because they’ve seen the momentum of the movement and how much it has grown. I think there’s more urgency on their end.
I think, for awhile, the repression would target individuals with the Canary Mission style of doxing, but now they are using lawfare tactics to get at organizations and trying to cut off entire networks from each other. I think it’s a lot more sophisticated. I think they have really studied the movement and I think they know exactly what weak points they can target.
Having said all that, we do see continuity. We see this “hub and spoke” strategy, where coalitions are fractured, individuals are targeted, and groups are isolated.
Nothing is covert anymore. It’s out in the open. They released Project Esther to the public. It’s legal, it’s civic, it’s algorithmic. It’s not just from the government, it’s done through lawsuits, media campaigns, campus regulations. So much of this counterinsurgency being taken on by civil society actors has created more legal ambiguity and it makes it harder to challenge repression directly when it is more diffuse and when it’s coming from a whole web of academic legal and social constraints rather than just state agents.
So yes, we’re at war with the state, but we’re also at war against Zionism and all of its manifestations, including in these civil society institutions.
University of California caves to Trump, bans BDS
This week marks the 20th anniversary of BDS. The movement continues to grow amid coordinated opposition.
The University of California just announced that it will prohibit student governments and organizations from boycotting Israel.
In a letter to chancellors, UC President Michael Drake said schools are obligated to make financial decisions that are “grounded in sound business practices,” which prevents them from boycotting countries.
Drake says such rules were already on the books.
“The right of individuals and groups to express their views on public matters is distinct from the responsibility of University entities to conduct their financial affairs in a manner consistent with University policy and applicable law,” he wrote. “This letter reaffirms both.”
However, Drake’s announcement comes less than two months after the Trump administration sent new antisemitism guidelines to federal grantees and the school is being investigated by the government over alleged antisemitism, i.e., an insufficient crackdown on campus protests.
In April, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, subpoenaed the school for the personal information on employees.
“Students already have little influence on how the university works and student government is one of the few places where they can really get involved and have their voices heard,” UC Davis undergraduate and UC Student Association president Aditi Hariharan told the Los Angeles Times. “Her organization represents students across UC campuses. “But this damages the support students feel in being able to elect their own people and have a say in their schools.”
Earlier this year, UCLA indefinitely expelled two Students for Justice in Palestine groups on campus.
“We will continue to uphold our policies to ensure UCLA remains a safe and respectful learning environment for all members of our Bruin community,” a spokesperson for the school said at the time.
Further Reading
- The National Education Association just voted to cut all ties to the Anti-Defamation League
- Middle East Eye: UK arrests 83-year-old priest for backing Palestine Action and opposing Gaza genocide
- The Telegraph: Roger Waters faces prosecution for Palestine Action support
- Jerusalem Post: University of California announces BDS ban across all campuses
University of California announces BDS ban across all campuses - NBC: Appeals court denies Trump administration plea to detain Georgetown scholar again
- ABC: Federal trial starts over Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activists
- Reuters: As Trump meets Netanyahu, protesters rally against Gaza war outside
An addition to further reading:
The Guardian has picked up on the New York Times bullshit – IMO there really is no other word – piece on Mamdani’s ‘racial identity’:
Is the New York Times trying to wreck Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid?….A recent New York Times news story immediately drew fire from readers – and for very good reason.
Headlined “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application,” the article centered on Zohran Mamdani, the candidate for New York City mayor who drew national attention recently with his stunning win in the Democratic primary election….Its gist was that as a high school senior in New York City, Mamdani – who was born in Uganda and is of Indian descent – checked a couple of different boxes about race when applying for admission to Columbia University….So what, you might ask. Why is this even a story, you might also ask.
Excellent questions.
Is the New York Times trying to wreck Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral bid? | Margaret Sullivan | The Guardian
I can’t get my head around the usage of the term “insurgency” in the article. Palestine was located in Arabia and was represented in the Ottoman Parliament by Arab representatives from Jerusalem prior to its Declaration of Independence by the Arabians. They were allied with the British and French that made the Anglo-French Declaration which promised them self-government. Then the British and French launched a coup to overthrow the Regliment Organique agreement and the OETA Arab government that had just adopted the Syrian-Palestine Union declared by their Arab Congress. Haj Amin al-Hussaini was a member of the Pan-Syrian Congress in Damascus in 1919. I assume the majority of Arabs in the USA were Palestinian and Lebanese Christians or Muslims, like South Dakota Senator Abourezk. He sat on “The colonization of the West Bank territories by Israel hearings before the Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, Ninety-fifth Congress, first session on the question of West Bank settlements and the treatment of Arabs in the Israeli-occupied territories, October 17 and 18, 1977.” So, were Strom Thurmond, Joe Biden, Orrin Hatch, Paul Laxalt, and Howard Metzenbaum were Palestinian insurgents too?
The Jewish Publication Society boasted about an American Sephardic Jew and a British one setting up an endowment for a charitable Wafq property to supposedly benefit the poor Arab Jews of Jerusalem. But Montefiore had always publicly stated the goal was to obtain Palestine for the Jewish diaspora instead. Touro made the posthumous gift for Montefiore to administer. The JPS explained they had evicted hundreds of poor Jewish Arab “claim jumpers”, and built homes for European Jewish colonists on land the Ottomans had only designated for Wafq use at the time.
Secretary of State Lansing noted in the FRUS that American Jewish lobbyists were demanding that President Wilson give Palestine to them. Lansing reminded Wilson that the USA was not at war with Turkey. Wilson agreed, but said he had already promised to deliver Palestine to the lobbyists. The American Jewish Zionist lobby were the insurgents who were plotting a takeover and were Justice Brandies, B’nai B’rith, and the ADL.