PAL-Awda NY/NJ Condemns DOJ Lawsuit Against Attendees of Stolen Land Protest and the Ongoing Coordinated State Efforts to Criminalize Such Protests.
For years, PAL-Awda has protested stolen Palestinian land sales alongside people of conscience in New York, New Jersey, and across the US, condemning such “real estate” enterprises in our neighborhoods as essential to the illegal and violent settlement of Palestinian land. These ethnically-restricted events violate US and state civil rights and fair housing legislation, as well as international law.
In NYC, we are regularly arrested and brutalized by the NYPD at such protests, even as we are violently attacked by Zionist counter-protestors.
Now, we are witnessing a coordinated escalation of a crackdown by every level of government on our First Amendment right to demonstrate against these illegal real estate events. We recognize this repression as a desperate attempt to protect the organizers of such sales, further criminalize our protest, and stifle the movement for Palestine.
The federal government, through the U.S. Department of Justice, is suing several anti-Zionist organizers and attendees of a stolen land protest that took place in November 2024 in West Orange, NJ.
The DOJ is suing these organizers under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, based on the absurd claim that the protest was intended to interfere with or threaten religious activity.
One of the defendants is a movement elder, and one of PAL-Awda’s own: a 76-year old Jewish anti-Zionist who has been on the forefront of Palestine organizing for decades.
At the 2024 protest, two Zionists were arrested after they bashed a pro-Palestine protestor in the head with a metal flashlight and pepper sprayed several attendees from close range. The two Zionists, including Moshe Glick, an organizer of the stolen land sale, were later indicted on felony charges of aggravated assault and bias intimidation.
Months later, while the criminal case against Glick was pending, the DOJ initiated this lawsuit against Glick’s victims, alleging a blatantly fictional narrative of the protest.
And last week, in his final hours in office, NJ Governor Phil Murphy pardoned Glick, resulting in the immediate dismissal of all charges against Glick.
The FACE act was passed by the Clinton Administration as part of a greater effort to expand policing and surveillance nationwide. Trump’s DOJ has now all but proclaimed its intention to halt any use of the FACE Act to prosecute anti-abortion activists, instead using it exclusively to prosecute those protesting at houses of worship. Most recently, the DOJ charged protestors and journalists in Minnesota for their involvement in and documentation of a protest in a church whose pastor was an ICE official.
At the same time, both the New York City Council and New York State legislature are advancing “buffer zone” bills to criminalize any protest near places of worship — without even the FACE Act’s requirement to assess protestors’ intent.
Each of these bills is backed by a number of Zionist organizations that have a vested interest in protecting and promoting the sale of stolen Palestinian land in our city: the UJA Federation of New York, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) New York / NJ, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.
We are under no illusions: The criminal legal system is not designed or intended to pursue justice, even under hate crimes legislation and other legislation purportedly passed to protect the most vulnerable.
Nonetheless, the coordinated efforts to ensure that Zionists are not prosecuted for violence — whether that violence be the organization and facilitation of stolen Palestine land sales, or the assault of protestors — is a stark reminder that every system at the disposal of the state will be wielded against the people, in service of empire.
Protesting stolen land sales, which are a desperate attempt to funnel settlers and their funds directly from the US to occupied Palestine, is the bare minimum for those of us in the belly of the beast resisting imperial violence.
We will actively oppose the prosecution of protestors under the FACE Act, organize against buffer zone proposals, and continue to protest the sales of stolen Palestinian land. We will continue our fight, in every arena, until Palestine is finally free, from the river to the sea.
Join us in these efforts. Learn more about how you can get involved in preventing New York’s protest buffer zone proposals.
Follow @palawda and @nycforabortionrights to learn more and keep up with the campaign against protest buffer zones! NYC for Abortion Rights
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