Why Is the US Targeting Palestine Action AFTER It Disbanded? | w/ Asa Winstanley

A Palestine solidarity org that disbanded itself more than a year ago just got labeled a “global terrorist organization” by the US. Asa Winstanley tells Rania Khalek and Zoe Alexandra Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s designation announced last week was never really about Palestine Action, which never posed a threat even when it existed — it’s about Israel. The investigative journalist with Electronic Intifada recalls Marco Rubio’s July conference on “transnational far-left terrorism” was attended by Israel, which had already pushed the UK to ban the group last year.

So with no organization left to fund and no operations to disrupt, why sanction a group that’s already gone? Winstanley explains Palestine Action’s nonviolent campaign — shutting down four sites belonging to Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest private arms firm, including its drone factories — proved so effective that Britain’s Labour government, deeply beholden to the pro-Israel lobby under Keir Starmer, rushed to outlaw it entirely. The ban placed Palestine Action in the same legal category as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda under the Terrorism Act — a deliberate choice Winstanley says is part of a broader pattern of weaponizing antisemitism to silence Palestine solidarity on both sides of the Atlantic.

Scott Bessent just sanctioned a “global terrorist org” with no members, no operations, and no assets left to freeze.

@AsaWinstanley on the global campaign to criminalize Palestine solidarity through fake antisemitism