The Israel First Amendment

The political establishment doesn’t want a First Amendment. They want an Israel First Amendment. A left-right alliance using VotePact might challenge this and allow America to be.

I went to the White House today to see a demonstration against the Gaza genocide as Trump met with Israel’s prime minister, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court. But Lafayette Park in front of the White House was fenced off.

I’d gone largely to see if I could spark a group of activists to point their bullhorns at the media assembled outside the White House since the protest was happening during the evening news — a strategy I outlined in a recent piece. But that was made impossible by the protest being kept a block away by the fencing.

Upon arriving home, I saw this post by Mosab Abu Toha: “This is what Hell looks like. These are the tents Israel bombed on the grounds of a school shelter in Bureij — while Netanyahu was arriving at the White House. It is not clear yet how many people and families were killed in this air strike.”

There’s now a substantial body of work documenting how the US government support for imperial Israel is suffocating the First Amendment.

Still sitting in jail for writing a single op-ed

Should Sharing Information About Israeli Businesses Get You 20 Years in Prison?

Did Columbia University Violate the First Amendment?

Does the First Amendment Come with an Israel Exception?

Is the Targeting of TikTok Actually About Israel?

The “Palestine Exception to Free Speech” and its Predecessors

Government Compelling Private Universities to “Pledge of Allegiance” to Israel; Universities Disciplined Students for Rallies

Support for Israel Drives Anti-Muslim Sentiment and a New McCarthyism

Pro-Israel Senators Show Their Hand By Opposing Free Speech Protections in Now-Delayed Antisemitism Bill

And I was carried out of the State Department briefing room for having the temerity to ask serious question about Israel’s genocide.

Britain has no First Amendment, but its latest attack on Palestine Action and anyone who supports it — treating the group like a terrorist organization, as Israel actually is — is an especially outrageous one:

The political establishment doesn’t want a First Amendment. They want an Israel First Amendment.

The courts occasionally do their job here, but a real solution to this is to upend the political system: Exploit the fact that the objections to this come from both the left and right such that people join together from across the political divide. That’s my VotePact.org strategy: