Gaza First Amendment Alert

U.S.-Backed Genocide in Gaza Resumes as Trump Faces Pressure for Anti-Diplomacy Purge; Trump Administration Uses Immigration Law to Escalate Attacks on Free Speech

U.S.-Backed Genocide in Gaza Resumes as Trump Faces Pressure for Anti-Diplomacy Purge
In the early morning of March 18, 2025, Israel resumed its genocidal bombardment of the Gaza Strip. As Israel pounded the already badly destroyed Gaza, it killed 400 Palestinians, including 174 children. Since the ceasefire went into effect Israel has routinely violated it. Even before Tuesday’s early morning massacre, 150 Palestinians were killed by Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement. Since early March, Israel has blocked all humanitarian aid into Gaza and cut electricity to Gaza’s desalination plant.

President Donald Trump is following in Biden’s footsteps in arming Israel and greenlighting their military action. Early in the bombardment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox News to state Trump had advanced knowledge of the attacks, and to lob threats against Iran and Yemen’s Houthis. The ceasefire appeared to be the product of the Trump team’s willingness to do what the Biden administration wasn’t and impose an agreement on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s lead negotiator Adam Boehler has come under intense fire after Israel leaked that Boehler had direct talks with Hamas. Israel has been lobbying for Boehler to be sidelined, and the White House has withdrawn his nomination to serve as the special envoy on U.S. hostages. Boehler also received ire after stating during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, “We’re not an agent of Israel.”

Boehler is not the only figure in Trump’s orbit targeted by pro-Israel groups. After it was revealed that Lt. Col. Danny Davis, a prominent anti-interventionist conservative, had been selected to serve as Deputy Director of National Intelligence, a smear campaign was unleashed conflating his opposition to U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza with antisemitsim. The Trump administration quickly caved and withdrew his job offer.

Trump is quickly making clear that he will be reliable for Israel’s genocidal war and that his administration is not only willing to expand U.S. military action in the Middle East but to ramp up the war on the First Amendment at home.

Trump Administration Uses Immigration Law to Escalate Attacks on Free Speech
Donald Trump was elected on a Republican Party platform calling for the deportation of student activists. In the weeks before Israel’s full-scale resumption of its genocidal bombing of Gaza, the Trump administration dramatically escalated attacks on free speech. On March 8, 2025 plainclothes officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil. As a U.S. permanent resident, Khalil has the same First Amendment rights as a U.S. citizen. In spite of a campaign by right-wing media and pro-Israel groups to portray Khalil as a terrorist, the Trump administration has failed to allege any criminal conduct by Khalil. Instead, they are using a McCarthy-era provision in U.S. immigration law that allows the Secretary of State to order a deportation if s/he determines the target’s presence in the U.S. could have adverse foreign policy consequences.

Khalil’s abduction and detention has sparked widespread condemnation by civil liberties groups, as well as members of Congress. The official social media account of Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats posted “Free Mahmoud Khalil.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sent a letter signed by 14 House Democrats to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem calling for Khalil’s release. Democratic representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), and Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) sent a letter signed by 103 House Democrats to both Noem and Rubio demanding answers about Khalil’s detention. Recent attempts by high-profile Republicans to posture as being pro-free speech aside, Congressional Republicans have been either vocal in their support of Khalil’s detention or silent.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, has pledged more arrests and deportations are coming. Another Columbia student, Ranjani Srinivasan, left the country after her visa was revoked. She appears to have been targeted for liking social media posts about Palestine. Secretary of Homeland Security Noem used her official social media account to share a video of Srinivasan at the airport leaving the country, labeling her a “terrorist sympathizer.”

The Trump administration has also deported Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and Brown University professor on a H1B visa. This is in open defiance to a judge’s order. The Department of Homeland Security has taken to attacking Alawieh on government social media accounts and have accused her of supporting Hezbollah and even attending Hassan Nasrallah’s funeral.

Trump Administration Withholds $400 Million in Federal Funding from Columbia University
Acting as members of a Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, the Department of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, and the General Services Administration has paused or cancelled $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University, accusing the university of violating federal civil rights law and allowing “illegal” protests. In fact, as Columbia students peacefully protested calling for their school to divest from Israel, the administration called police to arrest their own students.

In a disturbing follow-up letter The Guardian referred to as a “ransom note,” the government agencies outlined steps Columbia could take to receive federal funding again. These steps include “meaningful” discipline, like expulsions or multi-year suspension for Hamilton Hall protesters; the implementation and enforcement of time, place, and manner restrictions; and empowering campus security to arrest students. They also demanded the Middle East, Asia, and African Studies department be placed under receivership for five years.

In response, Columbia made a series of concessions to Trump’s demands, including expelling or suspending several students and rescinding degrees of graduates.

More Journalists Killed in Gaza
In clear breach of the ceasefire agreement, Israeli airstrikes on Beit Lahiya in north Gaza killed at least nine people, including three journalists who were accompanying the aid workers with the Al Khair Foundation. The reporters and photographers killed were “documenting humanitarian relief efforts for those affected by Israel’s genocidal war,” the Palestinian Journalists’ Protection Center said in a statement.

After the killings, which have been widely condemned by rights groups around the world, the Israeli military claimed they had targeted “several terrorists, including terrorists who were operating under the guise of journalists,” without evidence.

Separately, the Forum of Palestinian Journalists announced that journalist Alaa Hashim has died from injuries sustained in earlier airstrikes on Gaza City. The Forum denounced the killings and international silence over them, saying journalists must be able “to perform their professional duties in accordance with international laws and humanitarian conventions.”

More journalists have been killed in Gaza than in any war in modern history, according to Committee to Protect Journalists data. Last summer, Defending Rights & Dissent co-organized a coalition of press freedom groups and more than 100 journalists to demand an immediate U.S. arms embargo on Israel.

Mayor drops threat to evict Miami Beach cinema over “No Other Land” screening

Steven Meiner, mayor of Miami Beach, Florida, has dropped his threat to evict O Cinema, a city-owned nonprofit movie theater, over its screening of Academy Award-winning documentary “No Other Land.” Earlier in the month, Meiner had said he would ask the City Commission to vote to end the theater’s City Hall lease and revoke planned grant funding, but at a meeting on March 15, a majority of the six-member commission made clear they felt the eviction proposal would amount to government overreach.

The film, made by two Palestinians and two Israelis, depicts the Israeli military forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes in the Masafer Yatta community in the occupied West Bank. Meiner has characterized the film as antisemitic and said the theater’s programming should better reflect Israel’s perspective. Hundreds of filmmakers around the world have written to Meiner in support of the cinema’s artistic independence.

Most speakers at the commission meeting criticized Meiner for attempting to stifle the theater’s free speech, and he ultimately had to withdraw his resolution to evict it.

Sign up here to receive future Gaza First Amendment Alerts in your inbox.