the outside agitator

a new radical tradition

This year, they will call us terrorists

more, again, and louder. 

by dagwood and friends

The coordinated Zionist campaign to quash the Palestine solidarity movement (an anti-imperialist, anti-apartheid, anti-genocide movement) will escalate this year through the tactic of designating Palestine solidarity activists, groups, and networks as terrorist. Through this designation, the state will extend itself carte blanche power to discredit, repress, imprison, and destroy the Palestine solidarity movement. This move will be waged rhetorically, discursively, politically, and legally. 

This year, they will call us terrorists. 

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‘Terrorist’ Lawfare

Now, this is by no means novel. It is the same playbook that Zionists in the U.S. have been running since the First Intifada: discredit, isolate, and destroy Palestine solidarity networks through lawfare, specifically, “counterterrorism” and “anti-terrorism.” As Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights present in their briefing, Anti-Palestinian at the Core: The Origins and Growing Dangers of U.S. Antiterrorism Law, the origins, trajectory, and application of state ‘counter-terrorism’ efforts are structurally anti-Palestinian. 

From the first time the term “terrorism” appeared in federal statute to block funding for UNRWA in 1969 to the first and only time Congress declared a non-state group as a terrorist organization with the PLO—terrorist as enshrined by the US legal system exists to target, disorganize, and demobilize Palestine solidarity organizing. 

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Material support statute

One of the most concerning legal statutes is the ban on material support for Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), which was signed into law in 1996 following the Oklahoma City bombing by a domestic white nationalist (read: not foreign). Zionist organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) exploited the attack as a pretext to further criminalize Palestinian solidarity efforts in the U.S. 

“The material support statute is the most commonly used criminal charge in terrorism cases and is overwhelmingly employed against American Muslims. The Supreme Court in 2010 upheld very broad interpretations of the material support statute to include even advocacy and humanitarian aid if deemed to be carried out ‘in coordination’ with an FTO.” (15, PalLegal)

In October of 2023, the ADL sent a letter to 200 university presidents to demand that they investigate campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine under this statute, alleging a violation of the material support statute. 

Simply: this is an act of lawfare, an effort to wield the legal system against those exercising their rights to speech, association, and protest. In other words: an effort to intimidate and criminalize Palestine solidarity organizing. 

At UNC-Chapel Hill, the US Congress has already condemned UNC SJP by name for protected, political speech, and Board of Trustee Dave Boliek, now North Carolina State Auditor, said in a May 2024 interview (notably with 207 views of which I make up a few) of the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment: “Over the weekend it escalated, and there are a lot of outside agitators funded by far left groups mainly from New York and from overseas that are paying organizers to ramp up and radicalize students on our campus, and we gotta put a stop to it.” (At the 6 minute mark)

Here, Boliek promulgates an antisemitic trope by claiming that mOnEy iS cOmiNg fRoM nEw yOrK and continues by alleging without evidence in his role as a public official in conversation with another public official (NC state representative Jason Saine who resigned to pursue “to spending more time with his family, which includes a teenage son“) that UNC SJP is being funded by foreign groups. Saine assents, further accusing demonstrators of being “mostly paid activists but certainly professional activists.”

These are unevidenced claims promulgated on mass platforms; these are lies intended to deceive. 

Such actions are not contained to unpopular radio shows with uncharismatic hosts but fit well within a pattern of behavior reflecting UNC-Chapel Hill’s current leadership. On May 3rd, university administrators – including Nate Knuffman (Vice Chancellor for Finance and Operations, salary as of 12/31/24: $432,667), Amy Johnson (Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, salary as of 12/31/24: $363,374), and George Battle (Vice Chancellor for Institutional Integrity and Risk Management, salary as of 2023: $348,0171) – sent a university-wide email insisting that UNC SJP and the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment were a threat to the safety and well-being of the campus community, claiming that the tactics of occupying a university quad was proving, “that [the encampment] was not interested in a peaceful demonstration. Their actions and rhetoric prove [the encampment] are willing to escalate their tactics to the point of putting everyone in danger.” In addition to these mischaracterizations, they lie. Later in the email, Nate Knuffman, Amy Johnson, and George Battle strongly imply that UNC SJP made an arson threat against a Jewish fraternity. This is a lie, and they know it.  

Through a public records request, it appears that the “threat” was a screenshotted post from Yik Yak emailed to South Building administrators.

The Yik Yak post reads, “Curious why the tent people haven’t burned down AEPi yet. Do they not know?” To which someone responds, “Wait what did aepi do,” which is met with, “it’s bc they are Jewish.”

Clearly, this is not a threat, and obviously, the above non-threat is not connected to the encampment or UNC SJP. 

Nate Knuffman, Amy Johnson, and George Battle lied to the entire university community to cast the on-campus Palestine solidarity movement as anti-semitic and violent, thereby manufacturing consent for the police violence, disciplinary punishments, increased surveillance, and widespread repression that immediately followed. 

Discursively, statements such as those made by Boliek, Knuffman, Johnson, and Battle operate to link UNC SJP and other US-based pro-Palestine organizations with foreign groups and violence. This is a xenophobic and misleading effort to other and exceptionalize their/our work and by doing so, discredit our demands: disclose, divest, boycott, end the genocide now, arms embargo now, end the apartheid regime now. Notably, these demands are not radical. The majority of Americans want an arms embargo. For decades, the majority of the world has supported Palestinian statehood for decades. The demands by the Palestine solidarity groups at UNC-Chapel Hill are not foreign-funded2 nor fringe no matter Boliek’s unsubstantiated allegations. 

Playbook Rerun

The plan to intimidate, criminalize, and chill Palestine solidarity efforts in the US is available for your perusal on the Heritage Foundation’s website under the name Project Esther published in October of last year (Read it right here from the Zionist horsemouth.). This is likely the plan of action under the Trump administration come inauguration, though we have already seen some of its tactics employed under the Biden administration. 

The Heritage Foundation claims that any group supporting Palestine and Palestinians are part of the “Hamas Support Network” (HSN) or “Hamas Support Organizations” (HSO) (the acronym is a syntactical move to legitimize this specious, stupid idea). According to the Foundation, these organizations are also terrorists:

The virulently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-American groups comprising the so-called pro-Palestinian movement inside the United States are exclusively pro-Palestine and—more so—pro-Hamas. They are part of a highly organized, global Hamas Support Network (HSN) and therefore effectively a terrorist support network.

From their perspective: criticizing Israel = supporting Hamas → supporting Hamas = supporting terrorism → criticizing Israel = terrorism.

Their stated objective is to: “Dismantle the pro-Hamas support network’s infrastructure across America, including but not limited to propaganda, organizations, funds, access, communications, platforms, and people.” 

In other words, their stated objective is: to repress Palestine solidarity-related speech, protest, press, and association. 

To promote buy-in and further incentivize their stakeholders to contribute to this anti-Palestinian, McCarthyian project, the Foundation presents Palestine solidarity as an existential threat to America (ohmyfuckinggodtheyaresuchlosersicanteven):

How do we simultaneously neutralize the domestic tension placed on the U.S.–Israel relationship and counter the related rise in antisemitism across the United States, which threatens not just the American Jewish community, but America itself?…While arguments may be made to expand and include other antisemitic problem sets, no other antisemitic organization or movement threatens American Jewry and Western civilization more than the HSN does at this moment in time.

In their report, you can peruse their “Desired End States,” “Desired Effects,” and “Necessary Conditions” which are functionally an unconstitutional, Zionist laundry list of authoritarianism.

In short: Project Esther seeks to deny Palestine solidarity organizations political and social rights; criminalize, ostracize, and fracture Palestine Solidarity organizing; further criminalize protesting on behalf of Palestine; chill speech; deter mobilization; destroy organization.

The means in which they seek to accomplish these aims are diverse; however, the legal system is a core mechanism. They write: 

To exploit specific HSN and HSO vulnerabilities, we must conduct legal, private research and investigation to uncover criminal wrongdoing. We must conduct audits, both academic and financial. We must conduct information campaigns that are designed to illuminate and expose—“name and shame”—to undermine HSN and HSO members’ credibility. We must wage lawfare.

[To consume this information in a digested podcast format see: TrueAnon’s interview with Palestine Legal]

Zionists have already begun using lawfare to target Palestine solidarity activists in North Carolina—from campus groups such as SJP to community groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace. From the mass arrests of protesters exercising their constitutional rights to a recent spate of reactionary legislation, including the SHALOM Act (HB942) and the Anti-Masking Bill (HB2373). The state is wielding the criminal justice system to suppress the grassroots mass movement for a free Palestine.

From the mass arrests of protesters exercising their rights to speech, assembly and protest to state legislation such as 

Internationally, the efforts to suppress, criminalize, and isolate Palestine solidarity networks have led to significant repression against Samidoun, a Palestinian prisoner advocacy organization, which was banned by Germany in 2023 and deemed a terrorist entity by Israel, the EU, the US, and Canada (nightmare blunt rotation). In 2024, Samidoun’s Youtube and Instagram were shut down. 

In response to the terrorist designation, Samidoun wrote:


Samidoun is particularly targeted because of our political and vocal support for the Palestinian prisoners movement and the Palestinian people’s right to resistance. While the US and Canada are two of Israel’s biggest material supporters with weapons and money and repress the Palestinian movement in their own countries, their official outposts abroad have frequently sought to influence and direct Palestinian politics through conditional funding and similar colonial enterprises. Through these sanctions, the US and Canada wish not only to support genocide but to criminalize even verbal resistance to that genocide. The Palestinian people, like all colonized and oppressed peoples, have the right to resist to liberate themselves and their land from colonialism and occupation, from the river to the sea. Those who resist occupation and oppression — the Palestinian resistance — are not only heroes of the Palestinian people, they are defenders of all of humanity.

Buckle up and call their bluff. 

Palestine solidarity activists within the U.S. have relied upon the Constitution, and namely the First Amendment, for protection and as an avenue of recourse against repression. The recent dismissal of charges against many of those arrested at the Triangle Gaza Solidarity Encampment were on First Amendment grounds—the defense’s argument being that the protesters were engaging in political speech, the highest form of protected speech. The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther is a strategy for circumventing the obstacles posed by the First Amendment in their aim to chill, disorganize, and imprison the Palestine solidarity movement within the U.S.: void us of our rights and protections through terrorist designations4. 

The fundamental logic, value system, and Faustian bargain put forth within Project Esther align with that of mass incarceration, mass deportation, and previous counterterrorism projects: in exchange for the revocation of rights, the state will offer you, “tHe lAw aBiDinG ciTiZeN,” protection from the terrorists/criminals/aliens/insert Othered group here. However, we know that this is not the case: the loss of rights and protections of some are the loss of rights and protections for all. 

The goal of these efforts, the intended effect of labeling us terrorists, is to chill our speech. To get us to shut up, sit down, and be afraid. The tensile strength of our solidarity systems must be–will be–stronger than that. Our base must be smarter than that. Our organizational and support structures must be more durable than that. 

At UNC-Chapel Hill especially, do not forget: the actors which seek to destroy the Palestine solidarity movement on campus hate you too. The Palestine solidarity movement on campus is the force agitating for the acceptance and empowerment of the university community. It is the Board of Trustees and Chancellor Lee Roberts who marched out campus police officers from across the state to brutalize students for a jingoistic, masturbatory PR stunt. It was Trustee Marty Kotis who called the Palestinian flag a terrorist flag and whose anti-Arab racism conflates Arabic with terrorism. It is Trustee Boliek slandering UNC SJP through antisemitic dog whistles of being funded by New York money and counter-terrorist saber-rattling through invoking ‘foreign funding.’ It is Board of Trustee Chair John Preyer who demonstrates anti-Asian racism in his efforts to facilitate the admission of potential donors’ kids unfairly into UNC-Chapel Hill.

I hope John Preyer’s fear of Asians keeps him up at night. Sucks to suck

It is UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts and Provost Chris Clemens, who after being soundly rebuked by the Graduate and Professional Student Government in “a 33-8 with 11 abstentions and 32-9 with 11 abstentions” vote calling for their resignations, waltzed in the following Senate Meeting just to belittle punish graduate workers through threats of cutting graduate enrollment and withholding funding for PhD students after their fifth year.

These people hate us and you. They are lying to you, and they think you are stupid. Palestine is the bellwether where that becomes most apparent because it is the locus of Western hegemony in many different ways which all find their way to trickle down here to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. 

This year, when they call us terrorists, don’t be fooled by these six-figure scourges and authoritarian wannabes. 

Note on references

For comments, conversation, and criticism, email me: dagwoodcrabtree@gmail.com. Nothing is certain or resolved; tell me something I don’t know, really.

  1.  Battle left his position as Vice Chancellor of Institutional Integrity and Risk Management in July of 2024. ↩︎
  2.  Though, I am hesitant to spurn their aspersion of foreignness as I am aware of how it may implicitly reify the xenophobia underlying the claim. For more on the function of ‘the outside agitator’ narrative of which this allegation of foreignness is adjacent to, please see: The Outside Agitators Manifesto. ↩︎
  3.  HB942, colloquially known as the SHALOM Act, enshrine a definition of antisemitism which conflates criticizing Israel with antisemitism (notably signed into law by a Democratic governor) and HB237, colloquially known as the Anti-Masking bill, intimidates demonstrators who wear masks and increases penalties for impeding traffic (a tactic used by Triangle JVP to call for a ceasefire). ↩︎
  4.  Crucially, I am not holding up the law as some pure vehicle towards achieving a more just world. Law and legal structures are tools that are wielded. I am predicting how I think this tool will be wielded against us in the near future to inform and aid in strategizing efforts. Please refer to Notes on Lawfare. ↩︎