“He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.”
With these words, US President Donald Trump did not merely insult Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer – he exposed something far more insidious. In Trump’s world, Palestinian is not just a nationality. It is an accusation, a sentence of exile, a mark of delegitimisation.
Schumer’s crime was questioning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s increasingly authoritarian government. Schumer, a staunch Zionist who has long positioned himself as one of Israel’s most unwavering defenders, dared to suggest that Netanyahu’s extremism was harming Israel’s future.
That alone was enough for Trump to strip him of his Jewishness, to brand him as something else – something meant to be demeaning.
This is not the first time Trump has wielded the word “Palestinian” as a slur. He has used it against former President Joe Biden, against Schumer previously, and indeed against anyone who dares to question Israel’s policies.
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The message is clear: to be called Palestinian is to be cast out. Your voice no longer counts. Your legitimacy is revoked, your rights erased.
Had Schumer not been Jewish, Trump would have called him antisemitic. But even that category is losing its meaning. This is not about identity. It is about obedience.
Because in this new political order, anyone can become Palestinian.
Erased from history
To be Palestinian in Trump’s world is to be without rights. A Palestinian can be starved, bombed and expelled. A Palestinian can be erased from history – just as Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, did when they engineered the Abraham Accords, bypassing Palestinians as though they did not exist.
A Palestinian can be stripped of legal protections, even if they hold US residency and have committed no crime. Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student, is facing deportation for nothing more than expressing his political views.
The same institutions that once championed open debate are now being forced into policing thought
A Palestinian can be arrested for protesting, fired for speaking, or blacklisted for dissenting. And now, anyone can be treated as one.
This is the real warning in Trump’s attack. You don’t have to be Palestinian to be punished like one. You don’t have to be Arab or Muslim. You only have to step out of line.
Even Jewishness is no longer protection. Your identity has become conditional, your history disposable. You can be declared a traitor, an enemy within, someone who has forfeited their place.
The moment you question Israel, you become Palestinian – not by birth, but by decree. Because in this world, a Palestinian has no rights, nor does anyone who defends them.
A new McCarthyism is taking hold in America, and this time, it is not communists in its crosshairs. It is anyone who refuses to fall in line with Israel’s agenda.
Historical purge
In the 1950s, repression was justified as a crusade against subversion, a purge of those deemed enemies of the state. Today, the same machinery of silencing is at work under the guise of combating antisemitism. But this is not about protecting Jewish people from hate; it is about criminalising criticism of Israel.
It is about silencing students, journalists, academics, activists – anyone who speaks out against occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.
And the hypocrisy could not be more glaring.
Trump and his allies have built their brand on railing against political correctness. They claim to be defenders of free speech, warriors against censorship. Just a few weeks ago, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, stood at the Munich Security Conference and scolded European leaders for restricting expression. He lamented the West’s supposed retreat from free debate.
And yet, in the US under Trump and those who champion his ideology, free speech does not apply if the topic is Israel.
Pro-Palestinian students are arrested, expelled and stripped of their degrees. Professors who challenge Israeli policies are pushed out. Journalists who report on Israeli war crimes are blacklisted, harassed and silenced. Films documenting Palestinian suffering are cancelled. Human rights organisations are smeared as terrorist sympathisers.
Universities and colleges – once bastions of free inquiry – are under siege, with the Trump administration threatening to strip their federal funding if they do not suppress pro-Palestinian activism. The same institutions that once championed open debate are now being forced into policing thought.
The consequences extend beyond campuses. The US Department of Education, which is supposed to protect students facing discrimination, has been ordered to prioritise antisemitism cases – some of which are politically motivated – over the needs of vulnerable children.
Parents of students with disabilities are struggling to access the support to which they are legally entitled, because civil rights resources have been diverted to police speech on Israel. A system meant to safeguard the marginalised is now being repurposed to shield a foreign government from criticism.
Witch hunt
Another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has also been redirected – not to combat human trafficking or drug smuggling, but to hunt down students who express solidarity with Palestine. ICE has reportedly paused key investigations so that its agents can monitor social media, tracking and flagging pro-Palestinian students for their posts and likes. This is not law enforcement. This is a witch hunt.
And now, the next step: legal oppression turning into outright state violence.
Trump is prepared to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime measure that allows the president to detain and deport non-citizens without due process.
Under this law, green-card holders, students, spouses of US citizens – anyone without citizenship – can be rounded up and expelled at the president’s discretion. It was designed for times of war, for use against citizens of enemy nations. But Trump is repurposing it, transforming immigration status into a weapon of political control.
And this process has already begun. Trump just deported Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese transplant specialist and professor at Brown Medicine, a legal resident on a valid H-1B work visa. There was no alleged crime, no hearing and no due process. A respected doctor was expelled at the stroke of a pen because she fits the regime’s profile of the unwanted.
This is not a legal system. This is ethnic and political cleansing disguised as immigration enforcement.
Who will be targeted? We already know: Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims. Those who have protested, who have spoken out, whose very existence is now treated as subversive. The crackdown is escalating. First slander, then blacklists – now the threat of deportation without trial.
This is how rights are destroyed – not all at once, but in stages, each step paving the way for the next. It begins with one group, then it spreads. Soon, dissent itself is an act of defiance punishable by exile.
Crisis for democracy
History has already shown us how this unfolds.
McCarthyism began with communists, but it did not stop there. It spread to journalists, academics, labour organisers, civil rights activists – anyone deemed subversive. Lives were destroyed, reputations ruined, entire fields purged of independent thinkers.
The same pattern is unfolding now. It starts with Palestinians, then students, then professors, then journalists, then public figures, then anyone who refuses to pledge unquestioning loyalty to the state of Israel.
Today, it is Palestinians who are denied their humanity. Tomorrow, it is anyone who dares to dissent
This is not just a crisis for Palestinians. It is a crisis for democracy itself.
Israel and the US were not content with trampling on international law to wage their genocidal war on Gaza. Now they are trampling on hard-won rights and freedoms at home to silence criticism of their war crimes, erode democracy, and criminalise opposition.
They are dismantling free speech in the name of combating antisemitism – when, in reality, they are weaponising it, reducing it to a political tool. And in doing so, they fuel the very antisemitism they claim to fight, conflating such repression with Israel and Jewishness itself.
The moment we accept that criticism of Israel is a crime, we open the door to something even darker. Today, it is Palestinians who are denied their humanity. Tomorrow, it is anyone who dares to dissent.
Because in a world where the mere act of speaking out is enough to strip you of your rights, your identity, your place in society – then anyone can become Palestinian.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
