The West's crackdown on the pro-Palestinian movement: A case of punitive torture?

In response to the growing pro-Palestine solidarity movement following October 7, Western State authorities have adopted a strategy of political warfare to suppress dissent.

Utilising a multidisciplinary approach, the paper analyses legal documents, media reports, and firsthand accounts to identify patterns of repression.

State authorities have used smear campaigns, political policing, and lawfare to punish those who express solidarity with Palestinian rights, stifling and chilling the rights to free speech and assembly - a stepping stone toward the erosion of civil liberties and democratic values.

Our analysis suggests that using intimidation, administrative harassment, and State coercion to stigmatise, censor, and criminalise dissenters, Western States may have institutionalised punitive torture. The suppression of pro-Palestinian voices in liberal democracies can be hypothesised as a reflection of the colonial hierarchy embedded in the creation and maintenance of the structural oppression against Palestinians across historic Palestine and beyond, merely replicated to suppress solidarity.