Last week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) teamed up with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law to send a letter to nearly two hundred colleges and universities, warning them that the pro-Palestinian organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had “escalated significantly” its anti-Israel “rhetoric and activity,” and demanding that they open investigations into chapters on their campuses. The ADL wanted the chapters scrutinized over their funding, possible violations of school codes of conduct and state and federal laws, and, most seriously, whether they might be materially supporting terrorists, a charge that can bring a maximum sentence of between ten and fifteen years of prison, or even a life sentence in certain circumstances.

The demand from one of the country’s most influential pro-Israel organizations to have pro-Palestinian student groups prosecuted under a federal anti-terrorism statute is alarming. But it’s only a dramatic escalation in a rising wave of political repression aimed at pro-Palestinian voices and those critical of Israeli policy ever since the brutal Hamas attacks on October 7.

“The backlash we’re seeing against people in the US speaking out for Palestinian liberation has become a new McCarthyism,” says Dylan Saba, staff attorney at Palestine Legal.