In “The criminalisation of Palestine Solidarity in Toronto”, CPT highlights the work of the Legal Support Committee, which accompanies 105 people arrested in Toronto for their Palestine solidarity work since 7 October 2023. That day, “the ground shifted … Israel’s escalation of genocide in Gaza demanded that peacemakers, especially those in North America, rise up and take action. CPT joined the call.” The article documents a range of repressive police and judicial tactics used against those who challenge Canadian complicity in the genocide.
Reading it made me ask myself how the clampdown on Palestine solidarity connects with the war on migration. For years, incoming migrants have been framed as a demographic threat. But what about those who have already moved and made lives?
A generation or two ago, many people settled in countries that had intervened in their homelands. Their children recognise that their parents’ exile stems from the actions of the states they grew up in. And so they see in Palestine the experience of elders in Congo, Afghanistan, India, Trinidad, Iran. The past year’s genocide was matched by a year of resistance, but racialised groups who took action were questioned about their loyalty, stripped of visas, suspended from schools, subject to deportation. The Global North, unable to take the criticism of complicity in genocide, sent the message to its racialised population that they would only ever truly belong on condition of unconditional support. From this perspective, the attack on incoming migrants looks like an attempt to prevent further generations being born into states where they have every right to be and which, from another kind of loyalty, they have every right to condemn.
We can see this in the methods used to keep racialised groups down and out. In the days following 7 October, migrants in the detention centre on Samos island, Greece, organised a demonstration against Israel’s onslaught. Camp management used AI tech to put the camp on strict lockdown, collecting data on those present that could be used to influence asylum decisions; “behaviour flagged by the surveillance systems [is] potentially used as grounds for rejection.”
Our accompaniment continues. Since the January Gaza ceasefire, CPT Palestine has been documenting the occupation’s escalation in the West Bank: settler land grabs, demolition orders, attacks on cultural institutions. At the same time, they report on its people’s resilience. Meanwhile, in early February, CPT Aegean Migrant Solidarity reported on the case of A.H., a young man from Gaza who was arrested on arrival in Greece and accused of people smuggling. With the support of committed lawyers and the presence of local solidarity groups, he was acquitted. Our teams work to ensure that the “community and collective remains strong and that no person is left behind.”
