Dima Khalidi in Al Jazeera English on Pompeo's Anti-BDS Attacks

Following Mike Pompeo’s announcement that Trump’s State Department intends to defund and label as "antisemitic" groups that support boycotts for Palestinian freedom, director Dima Khalidi spoke to Al Jazeera English on the larger context of attacks on Palestine advocacy:

Dima Khalidi, founder and director of Palestine Legal, a US-based legal advocacy group, said the measure aims to stifle advocacy for Palestinian rights.

“This is one more step in a much larger and broader assault on a human rights movement globally, but also in the US – and that started long before [US President Donald] Trump,” Khalidi told Al Jazeera in a phone interview.

Palestine Legal has documented more than 200 proposed bills that aimed to restrict Palestine advocacy in dozens of states across the US alone. Only 25 percent of those motions have been successful, but the group says 30 US states currently have laws on the books.

Khalidi said the measures to curtail pro-Palestinian organising in the US have evolved over time, with the most recent wave being an attempt “to distort and politicise anti-Semitism to include any and all criticism of the State of Israel”.

The intent has been the same, however, she said: to prevent Palestinians from speaking out about rights abuses and holding Israel accountable for its policies.

“The fact is that all of these efforts are fundamentally an attack on our ability to dissent, on our right to engage in protest,” Khalidi said.

For her part, Khalidi said Biden has a “real test” in front of him to demonstrate “his willingness to stand up for human rights and for freedom, and to really reject what is, in essence, a Trumpian smear.”

“We know that Biden has been no friend to Palestinians. He has stated very clearly that he intends to back Israel and its continued occupation and to preserve the unconditional support for Israel that has been the US’s position,” she said.

“But it’s imperative that we expose what is really at stake here … and to reject this effort to conflate what is a movement for freedom with an ideology of hate.”

Read the full article here and visit our new site tracking legislative attacks against Palestine advocacy here.