![Easton Amjad Waz, 5, holds a sign during a vigil for Wadea Al Fayoume at in Plainfield, Illinois on October 17, 2023 [File: AP/Nam Y Huh]](https://i0.wp.com/azagil.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/i-am-not-a-threat.webp?fit=770%2C513&ssl=1)
27 Dec 2023
An Islamophobic smear campaign aimed at silencing pro-Palestinian voices is inciting hatred and violence against our communities.
- Osama Abu Irshaid Executive Director and a board member of Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
Aljazeera – For 80 days, Israel has been waging war on the Palestinians in Gaza with full diplomatic, economic, and military support from the US government. The Israeli army has killed 21,000 people, carrying out what legal scholars agree amounts to genocide and committing countless other war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Yet, rising moral outrage in the United States and across the world is being met with dangerous smear campaigns that weaponise racism to silence the Palestinian freedom movement.
Fuelled by and fuelling Islamophobia and anti-Palestinianism, extreme rhetoric has abetted unprecedented violations of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim American civil rights and even deadly violence against members of these communities.
But the negative repercussions of this bigoted repression are not limited to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims; rather they threaten fundamental moral and civic values that are the basis of democracy.
