The International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL) and the National Lawyers Guild Task Force on Political Repression were preparing to host a webinar on Friday, June 12, focused on the weaponization of sanctions and terrorist designations as tools of political repression. Among the invited speakers were two individuals who have been directly affected by these measures. Nearly 300 participants had registered for the event.
Yet, one minute before the webinar was set to begin, Zoom suspended the event on the grounds that it violated the “Violent Extremist Groups section of Zoom’s Acceptable Use Guidelines”. The decision prevented speakers and attendees from engaging in a discussion on a matter of significant public interest protected by the rights to freedom of expression, academic freedom, and participation in public debate. In doing so, the platform demonstrated the very phenomenon the webinar was convened to examine.
No unlawful speech had occurred. No argument had been made. No discussion had taken place. The event was shut down before it began because of who was going to be heard.
Nor was hosting this discussion a violation of the sanctions regime imposed by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Responsibility for such terrorism designations is shared by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. State Department.
If the mere presence of individuals associated with a designated or proscribed organization is sufficient to prevent a public discussion from taking place, then the claim that these regimes are about public security is exposed as untenable. What is revealed instead is their political function: to isolate, stigmatize, and silence; to prevent engagement; and to ensure that the public never hears the arguments of those targeted by such designations.
The Repression of Palestinian Voices and the Palestine Solidarity Movement
The cancellation of this webinar is not an isolated incident. It must be understood within the broader context of the escalating repression of Palestinian voices and the Palestine solidarity movements, both online and offline.
Across digital platforms, universities, workplaces, public institutions, and civil society, individuals and organizations advocating for Palestinian rights or challenging dominant narratives surrounding the conflict face censorship, deplatforming, shadow banning, criminal prosecution, sanctions, travel bans, bank account closures, professional retaliation, public vilification, or other forms of punishment.
The suppression of debate on Palestine is especially alarming because it targets questions that demand the highest level of public scrutiny, such as genocide, occupation, apartheid, colonialism, self-determination, civilian protection, and national liberation struggles. Excluding these questions and deliberations from public debate does not protect democracy; it weakens it.
The rights to discuss Palestine, criticize governments, debate armed resistance, challenge proscription policies, and contest dominant political narratives are not privileges granted by private platforms. They are essential components of freedom of expression.
Proscriptions and Designations as Tools of Political Repression
Against this background, the expanding use of sanctions, terrorist designations and proscription regimes to criminalize, stigmatize, and silence advocacy for Palestine is a matter of grave concern. These measures do not only affect those directly targeted. They isolate entire political constituencies and movements. They create fear, discourage association, deter inquiry, and narrow the space for democratic participation and political debate.
By conflating support for Palestinian rights with support for terrorism, authorities and private actors seek to delegitimize political demands firmly grounded in international law, including self-determination and liberation from colonial domination, apartheid and foreign occupation.
The Impact of Proscriptions on Public Debate
One of the most damaging consequences of proscription regimes is their effect on the range of narratives considered legitimate in public discourse.
When a party to a conflict is framed as a terrorist, discussion increasingly shifts from an examination of competing historical, political, and legal claims to the enforcement of a single authorized narrative. Perspectives that seek to understand, contextualize, or explain the actions of the designated actor become stigmatized, marginalized, or even criminalized.
A democratic society cannot function if people are permitted to hear only one side of a story. Public debate requires the freedom to engage with competing narratives, conflicting historical accounts, and opposing political perspectives.
In the context of Palestine, this problem is particularly acute. The proscription of Palestinian political actors, and particularly the designation of Hamas, has contributed to a profoundly unequal terrain of public debate. One side is permitted to explain and justify its actions through the language of security, self-defense, and necessity. The other is confined to the language of terrorism and may be discussed only through condemnation, stigma, or legal risk.
The Hamas Proscription and the Right to Debate
The terrorist designation of Hamas by a number of Western states has had consequences far beyond the organization itself, producing a chilling effect on public discussion of Palestine and, in particular, on the question of armed resistance. Yet whether specific acts should be understood as legitimate resistance or unlawful violence is precisely the kind of question that must remain open to legal analysis, historical inquiry, and democratic debate.
In any democratic society, people must be free to discuss Hamas, its actions, claims, objectives, and historical role, and to question whether its proscriptions is lawful, necessary and proportionate, or politically motivated, without fear of retaliation, stigmatization, or criminalization.
The cumulative effect of proscription, censorship, and political intimidation is the creation of a climate of self-censorship. Lawyers, academics, journalists, students, and activists increasingly hesitate to read, discuss, research, analyze, or publicly engage with certain ideas, organizations, or histories.
In this context, it is important to recall that, under international law, all designation and proscription regimes must comply with fundamental principles of due process, procedural safeguards, and the rule of law.
For all of the foregoing reasons, ongoing legal challenges to proscription regimes deserve close public attention, particularly the challenge to the proscription of Hamas in the United Kingdom.
Proscription cannot be treated as a political instrument beyond legal review and public scrutiny.
We encourage lawyers, academics, students, journalists, and all those concerned with civil liberties and the rule of law to read the Hamas deproscription application and engage seriously with the legal, historical, and political questions it raises: https://hamascase.com/ .
Resistance is not a crime
We urge renewed efforts to challenge the misuse of terrorist designations, sanctions, proscription regimes, deplatforming, censorship, and other mechanisms increasingly deployed to restrict lawful political expression and solidarity.
We refuse to accept a political climate in which the language of resistance is criminalized while the oppressive realities that give rise to it are ignored or even justified.
If proscription is used to silence debate, our response must be to expand debate. If censorship and intimidation are used to suppress solidarity, our response must be to strengthen and deepen solidarity.
And if the purpose of proscription and censorship is to prevent discussion of the right of oppressed peoples to resist colonial domination, occupation, and apartheid, then we must speak more loudly, not more quietly, about that right.
The more they seek to criminalize resistance, the more determined we must be to defend the freedom to discuss it, understand it, and advocate for the rights from which it arises.
We remain committed to holding our webinar on the “Weaponization of Sanctions and Designations” and to defending the right to speak, organize, debate, and advocate for Palestinian self-determination, liberation, and justice. We will announce a new date and alternative means of participation as soon as possible.