Palestine Legal is a left-of-center, pro-Palestinian advocacy group that represents individuals and organizations who allegedly suffer legal repercussions for their support of a Palestinian state. ¹ Palestine Legal defends and supports college protesters, college groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and other pro-boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) groups. ² It claims that the 2023 to 2024 Israel-Hamas War is a campaign of “US-backed genocide” of Palestinians. ³

Palestine Legal is a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center, a left-of-center 501(c)(3) nonprofit established to manage the Tides Nexus’s fiscal sponsorships. ⁴

History

Palestine Legal was founded in 2012 with financial sponsorship from the Tides Center and help from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CRC), a left-of-center advocacy group that supports the boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movement and blamed the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, on “Israeli Colonial Domination.” ^{5 6} Palestine Legal also works closely with the National Lawyers Guild, a radical-left association of lawyers. ⁷

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) also helped found Palestine Legal. ⁸ AMP is an ardent anti-Zionist organization that is under investigation by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) over allegations of funding terrorism. ⁹ AMP is also being accused of being a front for the Islamic Association for Palestine and the Holy Land Foundation, two dissolved organizations with ties to Hamas. ¹⁰ In 2015, Palestine Legal changed its name from Palestine Solidarity Legal Support to distance itself from these organizations. ¹¹

Services, Reports, and Legislative Efforts

Palestine Legal has several initiatives. ¹² It provides litigation support and constitutional rights training to college students and grassroots activists who incur legal repercussions for protesting and other pro-Palestinian activities. ¹³ The group also maintains a database of incidents where Palestinian rights advocates have been allegedly silenced for their work. ¹⁴

In May 2024, Palestine Legal published a report titled, “Anti-Palestinian at the Core: The Origins and Growing Dangers of U.S. Antiterrorism Law,” which argues that American anti-terrorism laws have always targeted Palestinians. It also published “Distorted Definition: Redefining Antisemitism to Silence Advocacy for Palestinian Rights,” a report which opposes the efforts to redefine anti-Semitism to protect Jews and Israel. ^{15 16} Palestine Legal also produced a report called “Reverberations of October 7,” which claims that the United States is repressing grassroots activism in the “Mobilization Against Genocide.” ¹⁷

Palestine Legal opposes state and federal legislation that allegedly silences Palestinian advocacy efforts in the United States. ¹⁸ This includes bills that are anti-boycott, that redefine anti-Semitism, and that secure state contracting or investment with Israel. ^{19 20} Of the 293 bills Palestine Legal deems unconstitutional, 23 percent have become law across 38 states. ²¹

Legal Activism and Controversy

In March 2024, Palestine Legal joined the New York Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit against Columbia University for closing the campus chapters of two left-of-center activist groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). ²² Palestine Legal argued that this was a civil rights violation and demanded the groups be reinstated. ²³

In January 2023, Palestine Legal signed a letter to the American Bar Association rejecting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism. ²⁴ Palestine Legal said the definition aimed to suppress “non-violent protest, activism, and criticism of Israel and/or Zionism” rather than defend against anti-Semitism. ²⁵

In 2014, Palestine Legal sent a letter to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demanding the university reinstate its offer of employment to Professor Steven Salaita. ²⁶ The offer had been rescinded after Salaita posted a series of anti-Semitic tweets during the 2014 Gaza War, including one which declared that anyone defending Israel was “an awful human being,” and another which said “Zionists” had been “transforming ‘antisemitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.” ²⁷

The Center for Constitutional Rights helped Salaita reach a settlement wherein he received $875,000 in exchange for releasing his claims to breach of contract. ²⁸

Leadership

Dima Khalidi is the founder and director of Palestine Legal. ²⁹ She received her J.D. from the DePaul University College of Law and her M.A. in International and Comparative Legal Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. ³⁰ She has a B.A. in History and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan. Prior to studying law, Dima worked at Birzeit University in the West Bank, conducting research on the Palestinian legal system. ³¹ Khalidi was born in Beirut and raised in the United States. ³²

Financial Sponsorship

The Tides Center is the fiscal sponsor of Palestine Legal. The center is a left-of-center nonprofit created to manage the fiscal sponsorship services of its “sister” organization, the Tides Foundation. ³³

In 2022, the Tides Center reported $281,474,772 in revenue, $415,897,054 in expenses, and $361,875,198 in total assets. ³⁴

From 2016-2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund donated $425,000 to Palestine Legal through the Tides Center. ³⁵ This includes a 2023 grant of $240,000 to be spread out over three years. ³⁶ The Tides Center directly granted Palestine Legal $25,000 in 2016. ³⁷

The Kiblawi Foundation donated $5,000 to Palestine Legal in 2022. ³⁸

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