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'Solidarity as a Crime': Report Details Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Protests Across West
"This trend," said one leader at the International Federation for Human Rights, "reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices."
Oct 14, 2025
A report released Tuesday by one of the world's oldest human rights groups lays out how, "from Paris to Washington, Berlin to London, support for Palestinian rights has been censored, criminalized, or violently repressed under the pretexts of combating antisemitism and protecting national security."
The International Federation for Human Rights, also known by its French abbreviation FIDH, published Solidarity as a Crime: Voices for Palestine Under Fire just days after a ceasefire began in the Gaza Strip, following over two years of an Israeli assault widely condemned as genocide against Palestinians.
FIDH focused on "violations of the rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression in the context of the repression of the Palestinian solidarity movement" in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
"This trend," said Yosra Frawers, head of the Maghreb and Middle East Desk at FIDH, "reflects a worrying shift towards the normalization of exceptional measures in dealing with dissenting voices."
The publication explains each country's history with Israel and other notable background, such as anti-protest laws, along with recent violations of the rights of academics, activists, advocacy groups, journalists, and elected officials.
For example, it points out that the US government has given Israel tens of billions of dollars in military aid since the war began two years ago, and "pro-Palestine solidarity activism in the United States has been met with repression, sanctions, and censorship for many decades."
"Since 2014, US federal and state lawmakers have proposed nearly 300 pieces of legislation aimed at repressing expressions of solidarity with Palestine, with over a quarter of the bills passing into law in 38 states and the federal government," the document details. "Over 80 bills were proposed in 2023 alone, with some as extreme as a federal bill proposing to expel all Palestinians from the US."
The report spotlights how US demonstrations against the genocide "have been met with significant suppression at the hands of the state," particularly the protests at universities. The Trump administration is still trying to deport foreign students who criticized the Israeli assault and the US government's support for it, and threatening higher education institutions' access to federal funding.
The section on the United Kingdom acknowledges that Palestine was previously "occupied by Britain under the mandate system," and the UK "has had a close relationship with Israel from the very beginning of the creation of the Israeli state" in the 1940s.
Over the past two years, the British government "has repeatedly minimized and legitimized Israel's atrocities in Gaza," and carried out a "sustained attack" on the right to protest, the publication continues. "Protests in solidarity with Gaza and against Israel's genocidal violence have been met with high levels of police surveillance and police violence."
Germany's relationship with Israel "is shaped profoundly by the history of the Holocaust," and the European powerhouse is now the Israeli government's "second-most important strategic partner in the world," behind only the United States, the document notes. It calls out "widespread bans on protests" and highlights how "Pro-Palestinian civil society organizations have been hit particularly hard by repressive measures."
France—which is enduring a broader political crisis—is also "a long-standing ally to Israel" with "a history of repression of expressions of solidarity with Palestine," according to Paris-based FIDH. "On October 12, 2023 the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin called for a complete ban on all assemblies expressing solidarity with Palestine."
"Despite the ban, mass protests went ahead in cities across France... These protests were met with police violence, including the use of tear gas and water cannons. Many protestors were arrested, often using disproportionate force," the group wrote. "Immigrants and foreigners have often borne the brunt of repressive measures."
FIDH's report—which features "vital" contributions from the Center for Constitutional Rights in the United States, Committee on the Administration of Justice in Northern Ireland, and Ligue des droits de l'Homme in France—concludes with recommendations, including specific suggestions for each country examined as well as civil society groups, media platforms, and academic, regional, international, and philanthropic institutions.
"States must guarantee everyone the right to express themselves and to mobilize peacefully, on all causes," said FIDH president Alice Mogwe. "The defense of human rights ought not to be constrained by political sensibilities."
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Top French Economist Says Ex-Prime Ministers Should Have Embraced Wealth Tax
"This blocking attitude is at the heart of the budget crisis and also, as a result, of the current political crisis," said Gabriel Zucman after another French prime minister resigned.
Oct 07, 2025
On the heels of France losing yet another prime minister, Politico on Tuesday published an interview in which world-renowned French economist Gabriel Zucman argued that the recently departed leaders should have supported his proposed wealth tax.
Zucman, who leads the EU Tax Observatory and teaches at French and US universities, has advocated for imposing a wealth tax of at least 2% for the ultrarich in France and around the world. However, Sébastien Lecornu, who resigned as prime minister on Monday, after less than a month in office, did not embrace that approach, the economist noted.
Former Prime Minister François Bayrou also didn't support the "Zucman tax." He was in the post when the French National Assembly voted in favor of a 2% minimum tax on wealth exceeding €100 million, or $117 million, in February—and when the Senate ultimately rejected the policy in June. He resigned in early September, after losing a no-confidence vote.
Before both of them, Michel Barnier was prime minister. He resigned last December, also after losing a no-confidence vote. He, too, didn't embrace the tax policy, despite polling that shows, as Zucman put it, "there is a very strong demand among the population for greater tax fairness and better taxation of the ultrarich."
"The executive has so far remained completely deaf to both parliamentary work and popular democratic demands," Zucman told Politico's Giorgio Leali. "They didn't try to have a real dialogue with the opposition on this."
"The very wealthy individuals affected by this measure, and the media outlets they own, have spoken out very vehemently on the subject in an attempt to discourage the government from engaging in any form of reflection or discussion," he added.
On social media, Leali shared a quote from Zucman tying the former prime ministers' attitudes on the tax proposal and broader budget fight to the country's current political crisis—in which "increasingly isolated" President Emmanuel Macron faces pressure from across France's political spectrum to hold a snap parliamentary election or resign.
As Reuters reported Tuesday, "Resignation calls, long confined to the fringes, have entered the mainstream during one of the worst political crises since the 1958 creation of the Fifth Republic, France's current system of government."
Even Édouard Philippe—who, as France 24 noted, was "Macron's longest-serving prime minister from 2017 to 2020"—is urging him to step down, saying that the president must help France "emerge in an orderly and dignified manner from a political crisis that is harming the country."
After the anti-austerity "Block Everything" protests across France on September 10, Mathilde Panot of the leftist party La France Insoumise (LFI) announced that 100 members of Parliament endorsed a motion to impeach Macron.
LFI founder Jean-Luc Mélenchon said Monday that "following the resignation of Sébastien Lecornu, we call for the immediate consideration of the motion tabled by 104 MPs for the impeachment of Emmanuel Macron."
"Emmanuel Macron is responsible for the political chaos," he said, calling out "those in power" for failing to respond to not only the demonstrations on September 10 but also the union mobilizations on September 18 and October 2.
"The president is rejected by public opinion, which desires his departure, and he has lost the support of ALL the parties in his political coalition," Mélenchon added Tuesday. "Why does he remain? A return to coherence for the country requires his departure and a return to the voice of the people."
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Western Governments Recognize Palestinian State, But Continue to Fund Israeli Government Making It Inviable
"Instead of halting genocide and forced starvation... we are told to focus on a fantasy of statehood," said one critic of Western governments' response to Israel.
Sep 22, 2025
Multiple Western governments over the weekend, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, jointly recognized Palestine as a state for the first time.
However, many advocates for Palestinian freedom and self-determination have said that the official recognition of Palestine is only a symbolic first step and will not do anything to change the situation so long as these governments continue selling weaponry being used by Israel to level Gaza.
In a column written for The Guardian, French journalist Rokhaya Diallo criticized French President Emmanuel Macron, who is expected to officially recognize Palestine on Monday, for not doing more to hinder Israel's power to wage war against the Palestinians.
"Macron's 'solemn announcement' to the UN General Assembly on Palestine is planned for next Monday, 22 September," she explained. "Wouldn’t it be a better first step for France to announce concrete sanctions against Israel? Netanyahu is under an international arrest warrant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, yet he was allowed to use French airspace when traveling to the US in July."
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last year.
Writing in +972 Magazine, Palestinian journalist Alaa Salama similarly argued that recognizing Palestine would simply create "the illusion of action" unless Western governments take further steps to sanction Israel.
"Now, more than ever, symbolic gestures are worse than useless," he argued. "They buy time for the regime committing the crimes and drain urgency from the only remedies that matter: ending the genocide, sanctioning the perpetrator, isolating the apartheid system, and insisting without apology on equal rights and the right of return. This is not extremism. It is the bare minimum of justice."
Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding, told Al Jazeera on Monday that the actions of Western governments were still "utterly failing to stop the genocide" and that they needed serious sanctions in order to "stop Israel’s atrocities" in Gaza.
Since 2015, the UK has supplied an estimated USD $676 million worth of arms to Israel, making it the second largest supplier of weapons to Israel behind only the US. The Labour government suspended 30 out of 350 arms export licenses last year—but did not include F-35 fighter jet parts in the ban. The UK supplies 13-15% of the components of the jet, which are manufactured in the US and sent to Israel.
Inès Abdel Razek, executive director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, said in a roundtable discussion with Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka that Western nations' support for a theoretical Palestinian state were not the same as support for actual Palestinian self-determination.
"In this context, genocide in Gaza is met not with consequences but with ceremony," she said. "The [Palestinian Authority] clings to optics, and Western states embrace symbolic gestures, while Palestinians are left with neither justice nor statehood, only a widening gap between lived reality and international performance."
Yara Hawri, co-director of Al-Shabaka, argued during the same panel discussion that recognition of a Palestinian state at this point was pointless given that Israel has made Gaza unlivable and is moving forward with plans to annex the West Bank as well, with officials recently approving the E1 settlement plan that would cut off the key city of East Jerusalem from the rest of the territory and make Palestinian statehood impossible.
"We are a colonized, besieged, and occupied people facing genocide in Gaza," she said. "Any serious political engagement must begin from this reality, not from the illusion of a state that does not exist. Instead of halting genocide and forced starvation—much of it facilitated by the very states offering recognition—we are told to focus on a fantasy of statehood that no one is willing to bring into being."
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