Inside The Federal Crackdown On Palestinian Terror Networks Threatening America

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The U.S. Department of the Treasury followed in the United Kingdom’s footsteps on Wednesday, designating Palestine Action as a terrorist front. Acting under the authority of Executive Order 13224, Treasury has confirmed what analysts have documented for years: that a transatlantic network of cells, funders, and ostensible grassroots organizations has been waging coordinated violence against defense infrastructure, intimidating Americans through civil terrorism, and providing material and ideological support to designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

The Palestine Action designation is also the latest in a systematic effort to chip away at transnational organizations aiming to subvert American interests through crime and intimidation. Treasury sanctioned the sham nonprofit Samidoun, which had been raising funds for the Marxist FTO Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in October 2024. It has now identified Palestine Action and Masar Badil (another Samidoun front) as extensions of the same enterprise. Next, we must recognize that these groups serve as hubs connected to dozens of spokes — funders, partners, and footsoldiers — each of which poses a danger to our national security and the integrity of our republican system of government.

A few actions would keep Treasury’s momentum going.

First, Treasury and the State Department should designate Unity of Fields as an alias of Palestine Action UK. Unity of Fields was once known as Palestine Action US, and has been a force of destruction stateside — attacking banks and other businesses in acts of violent intimidation. Founded by the same network, funded by the same sources, and acting for the same cause, Unity of Fields has left little doubt that it, too, materially and ideologically supports terrorism.

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Treasury should move quickly to designate Unity of Fields as an alias or successor of Palestine Action, ensuring that it is considered toxic under American law. Its funds should be frozen, and its leadership should be investigated promptly. (Then-Senator Marco Rubio already recommended that the Department of Justice investigate Unity of Fields for domestic terrorism.)

Which brings us to action item number two: Individually designate Calla Walsh. Walsh co-founded Palestine Action U.S. alongside centimillionaire failson James “Fergie” Chambers, faced criminal charges for engaging in civil terrorism, and remains a key figure in the organization’s operational apparatus. She is a founding member of the Babochki Collective, which controls Chambers’s grant-making, alongside multiple members of the Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee.

Walsh is an obvious terror mouthpiece. She has praised the October 7 Hamas attacks as “the glorious Al-Aqsa flood,” publicly called on activists to “build our own people’s war,” expressed support for Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah, and questioned why there were not “100 more” attacks on Israeli diplomats. In July 2025, she traveled to Iran and delivered a speech chanting “Death to America! Death to Israel!” She has since relocated to Beirut, where she contributes to Iranian state media. She has been arrested twice and served 60 days in jail for vandalism and criminal trespassing connected to her activism. An individual Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designation under E.O. 13224 is overdue and could help pry open even larger networks of bad actors connected to Walsh.

Third, press the Chambers prosecution and open investigations into his network. Chambers faces a federal indictment alleging he transferred approximately $7.5 million out of the United States in material support of Hamas. His extradition from Spain should be pursued vigorously. But Chambers did not operate alone. The Babochki Collective funneled donations far and wide within the permanent protest ecosystem. Among many other suspicious items, Chambers’s grantmaking funded legal defenses for activists arrested during A15 Action’s April 2024 civil terrorism campaign, which shut down the Golden Gate Bridge, O’Hare International Airport, and Tesla’s Fremont manufacturing facility, among others.

Digging into the astroturfed demonstrations backed by Chambers reveals a constellation of actors who tend to show up, or lurk behind the scenes, whenever far-left demonstrations turn criminal. A15 Action directed its bail fund through Community Justice Exchange, fiscally sponsored by the Tides Center, and coordinated legal support through the National Lawyers Guild. Federal investigators should map every organization that received Chambers-linked funds and assess whether they maintain links with a now-designated terrorist organization.

Fourth, Congress should show that this is a priority. A bipartisan letter from the relevant Senate and House judiciary and intelligence committees — endorsing Treasury’s designation, calling for the Unity of Fields alias action, and requesting a full accounting of the network’s domestic financial infrastructure — would send the important signal that lawmakers across parties recognize these criminal enterprises for what they are. These are not dissenters or even partisans, but participants in a terrorist enterprise that has coordinated with Iran and explicitly called for violence against American institutions. Neither party should have any interest in doing PR for these groups by calling them by the common euphemism of “protest.” Palestine Action doesn’t think it is a protest movement, and neither should we.

Treasury is leading the way, using the powerful tools at its disposal to neutralize what it rightly perceives as a serious threat. The question is whether the full weight of the American enforcement apparatus — investigators, prosecutors, and policymakers alike — will act before these subversion networks can take any more steps forward.

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Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute.