In writing about the Trump regime's fascist assault on foreign student anti-genocide protestors, a lot of what we talk about is the domestic social costs these authoritarian actions and a failure to oppose them produce. I don't mean to be callous, because injustice and repression against any part of the opposition to fascism, is injustice and repression that harms us all; to say nothing of the personal costs to the students targeted for having the audacity to think conducting an ongoing genocide in an open air concentration camp is morally wrong. If you want to know why the regime is pursuing these fascist, repressive policies however, and why the administration before them was happy to lay the groundwork that is today enabling Trump to target anti-genocide protests under the false banner of "fighting antisemitism," I must unfortunately conclude that the answer is "probably, because it's working."

How else can you explain political and military leaders in Israel all but admitting they intend to finish off the genocide they've been conducting against Palestinians in Gaza, without much notice in the American media environment, and amid a collapse in popular resistance to the genocide, even as polling indicates a strong shift in American sympathies away from Israel and its crimes against humanity in Gaza?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-to-remain-in-gaza

'Only Hellfire': Israel Says Lifesaving Aid, Troop Withdrawal Off the Table for Gaza

"Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Wednesday that the U.S.-backed genocidal policy of blocking lifesaving humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip will continue, and that Israel Defense Forces troops will remain in the embattled Palestinian enclave indefinitely.

"Israel's policy is clear: No humanitarian aid will enter Gaza, and blocking this aid is one of the main pressure levers preventing Hamas from using it as a tool with the population," Katz said. "No one is currently planning to allow any humanitarian aid into Gaza, and there are no preparations to enable such aid."

I want to be clear, I'm not saying there's no active resistance to the genocide going on in America, only that the regime's fascist repression is contributing to a climate of fear that's suppression discussion about and resistance to Israel's crimes against humanity in the broader culture. And let's be fair here, the still quite bipartisan nature of support of *this* particular application of fascist terrorism in the American ruling establishment makes opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza perhaps one of the most dangerous acts of anti-fascism a person can undertake in this political moment. When Trump kidnaps a Maryland father and traffics him to a torture prison in El Salvador, the oppositional political and media apparatus in this country are quick to condemn him and demand action. When Trump starts black bagging student protest leaders and shipping them to nightmare jails in politically favorable court districts, that same establishment equivocates, says nothing at all, or sometimes outright supports that repression. Take for example former Biden antisemitism Envoy Deborah Lipstadt:

https://forward.com/news/712297/students-deported-ice-antisemitism-deborah-lipstadt/

Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy

"I’m not opposed to the administration rescinding the student visas of some of the people that they’re rescinding the student visas of,” she said. “But I just think it should be done properly, according to the laws of the country.”

So uh, you got that? The fascism is fine, but god-damnit there are *rules* people! Please keep in mind that this woman is one of the foremost authorities in the world on The Holocaust, so we can presume she knows she's protecting fascists to support a genocide. I assume, but don't know, that she holds no special place in her heart for the Klepto Kaiser, so I can only surmise that she's just a hardcore Zionist and a big fan of bombing children and hospitals.

Look friends, I know that this is a really bad time to ask people to stick their necks out to oppose a genocide, but Israel just bombed literally the last hospital in Gaza and it barely made the evening news. The regime, and indeed much of the larger ruling class establishment that supports settler colonialism, and profits from the genocide by various means, wants to create an environment where speaking out against the genocide in Gaza and Israel's settler colonial massacres is just criminal and subversive enough to stop most of us from doing it. This will then allow them to easily pick off a much smaller number of people who are brave enough and otherwise able to resist the genocide directly. It is vital that we counteract that by keeping the genocide on our lips, and our outrage about crimes against humanity in the discourse; they can't arrest us all - and Gaza, is running out time.