US surveillance of pro-Palestinian speech has a direct line to the 1960s | Chip Gibbons

The pretext of counter-terrorism as a reason to investigate Americans started with red squads', Huac and J Edgar Hoover

On Monday, 13 May, the Israeli historian and professor Ilan Pappe landed in Detroit, Michigan. Upon his arrival, agents from the US Department of Homeland Security detained and interrogated him for two hours. According to Pappe, DHS asked him whether he was a Hamas supporter, whether he believed Israel was committing genocide and what his solution" to the Middle East conflict was. Agents also reportedly asked him to identify his Arab and Muslim friends in America".

During his interrogation, DHS agents held a long phone conversation, which Pappe speculated may have been with Israeli officials. Pappe was eventually admitted to the US, but only after DHS copied the entire contents of his cellphone. (Initially, Pappe reported he had been interrogated by the FBI; he has since clarified that it was agents of the DHS.)

Chip Gibbons is the policy director of Defending Rights & Dissent. A journalist and researcher focusing on the US national security state, Gibbons is currently working on The Imperial Bureau, forthcoming from Verso Books; based heavily on archival research and documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, it tells the history of FBI political surveillance and explores the role of domestic surveillance in the making of the US national security state