Steven De Castro analyzes the Democratic Socialists of America’s response to recent events in Palestine, as well as the generational politics at work within the organization regarding the Palestinian liberation movement.
Let’s look at the Democratic Socialists of America before October 7.
DSA had just wrapped up a successful national conference in Chicago and was feeling quite good about itself. DSA boasted of having elected several members and supporters in Congress, in State Houses, and in City Councils across the country. DSA pushed key legislation, notably the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA) in New York State. DSA leaders in the National Political Committee succeeded in keeping anti-imperialist demands — kryptonite in the neoliberal Democratic party — out of the spotlight. The pro-labor, domestic-focused members believed that by growing their electoral influence, and building coalitions with Democrats, we could achieve progressive goals such as canceling student debt, a 15 dollar minimum wage, abortion rights, green new deal, and progressive taxation.
The pre-October 7 outlook may have looked optimistic, but in the big picture, DSA, and the progressive movement in general, was in jeopardy. Progressives got very little done under Joe Biden, even in 2020, when the Democrats held the White House and both houses of Congress. Progressive Democrats in the House not only failed to pass the 15 dollar minimum wage, they failed to even discuss or push it in any meaningful way. While the progressive minority in the Democratic party floundered, a small minority in the Republican party, led by Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boeber, gained national influence by pushing Congress to the brink of a government shutdown, and making U.S. history by engineering the ouster of the House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. So while DSA won elections, prioritized the domestic agenda, and outmaneuvered the anti-imperialists in their ranks, they had nothing to show for it.
And then there was October 7.
On October 7, 3,000 Palestinian militants initiated a devastating multi-pronged attack by thwarting a very elaborate surveillance system, crossing the illegal security wall bounding Gaza, and engaging some of Israel’s most elite battalions. Hamas and other groups killed 318 IDF soldiers who guarded the Gaza security fence. Hamas’ unbelievable guerilla victory was overshadowed by acts of reprehensible terror and murder leading to the death and abduction of hundreds of innocent civilians. The Israeli Defense Force, stunned and disorganized, failed to organize a ground counterattack for several hours, allowing Hamas fighters to transport hundreds of hostages back into Gaza. Nevertheless, the IDF immediately began bombarding Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians.
Given its penchant for committees and bureaucracy, DSA moved with astonishing speed to endorse an “All Out for Palestine” rally on October 8 in Times Square. This caused the New York Post‘s editors to lose their shit with the headline, “Democratic Socialists of America cheer murder and kidnapping of Israelis at hands of Hamas terrorists.” This rally received major coverage around the world, and the condemnation of millions. What is most notable about all the condemnation is that no news outlet ever seems to quote any statement made at the rally which would match the headline. It appears that the very act of holding a rally alone with the theme of supporting Palestine should be condemned. It is not even clear that anyone from DSA made a speech at the rally.
Nevertheless, DSA National Political Committee (NPC) issued an apology, saying that they merely “tweeted a promotion of a rally in solidarity with the people of Palestine.” Since the Hamas attack was, for some, a “moment of profound fear and grief,” DSA is sorry for the “confusion” and regret that some people were “shocked by the timing and the tone of this message.”
Quite predictably, DSA’s apology had no effect on stemming the outrage. New York Post responded with the headline, “DSA’s fake apology for pro-Hamas rally can’t hide its moral depravity.” Bronx Representative Ritchie Torres told the same paper: “The DSA, despite the name, is not democratic. It’s despicable, detestable, disgraceful, and disgraced. The same can be said of anyone who enables them.” It should be said that Ritchie Torres receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from pro-Israel PACs and Represents the Poorest District in the US. But He Mentions Israel 236% More Than He Mentions Poverty.
Others condemned DSA but held their ground on Palestine. Assembly member Zohran Mamdani (D-Astoria, Queens) told The Post: “My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life. I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally yesterday seeking to make light of such deaths.”
Many of DSA’s elected officials tried to prove their fealty to the Democratic party by denouncing their own organization. Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) publicly quit DSA over the rally. Most notably was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y), who said, “The bigotry and callousness expressed in Times Square on Sunday were unacceptable and harmful in this devastating moment.” Again, notice the failure to quote anything that was said at the rally. Further, notice that the left’s criticism of DSA always involves the timing of the rally, which was held one day after the Hamas attack. That is why DSA’s apology addresses people who were “shocked by the timing” of the rally.
All the leftists who criticized the rally’s timing, failed to suggest what would be an appropriate time. Did the Israel Defense Force observe a period of mourning before pummeling residential neighborhoods in Gaza with artillery, or shutting off lifesaving water and electricity to the community? No, the Israelis were already killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians by October 8, and then cut off the water and electricity the day after that.
Given the timing of Israel’s war crimes, it seems that DSA’s National Political Committee perhaps owes its membership an apology for its apology. Rather than apologize for standing up, DSA member Ben Grove seems to capture the mood of the membership in his Cosmonaut article Don’t Say Sorry, DSA!, where he states: “To speak the truth, plainly and openly, about the genocide that is brewing in the massive concentration camp that is Gaza. That is what I hope DSA membership will find the courage to do, and if we face slander or harassment or even the threat of violence, then let us face it, together.”
For a moment, DSA was the national scapegoat for those who sought to pillory the Pro-Palestinian movement, not because DSA was first, but because DSA had direct links to elected officials in the Democratic party. It is, of course, unforgivable for the Democratic party leadership for anyone to side with the Palestinians against Israel. Pro-Israel lobbies gave tens of millions of dollars to congressional races, and American Israel Public Affairs Committee-backed candidates won midterm races following big spending by group’s super PAC. Standing up against Israel is to interfere with the money trough for almost every member of congress. So when it comes to supporting Palestine, politicians will not forgive, nor will they forget.
Weeks Later, Stopping Palestinian Genocide Is Now the Moral Imperative of the 21st Century
Now in mid-November, the mood of the United States, in fact, throughout the entire world, has shifted dramatically against Israel. Netanyahu’s brutality has been so blatant that the entire world seems to have shifted from overwhelming sympathy with Israel to overwhelming condemnation. In the first week of the war, Israel dropped 6000 bombs in Gaza, which is almost as many as the United States dropped on Afghanistan in one year of the war. Afghanistan is 1800 times as large as Gaza.
Of all the dark news we have received in the last few months, the bright spot is the new resolve in the Western world to protest Israel and call out their genocide. Millions of people are protesting right now. Major cities, including New York, London, Paris, Baghdad, Karachi, Berlin and Edinburgh, witnessed large marches on November 11. Since DSA received unfair criticism at the start, perhaps it receives undeserved credit now.
Brainless President Decries Headless Babies
The upswell of support for the people of Gaza comes despite the corporate media endlessly parroting Israeli propaganda. For example, CNN, as well as other news sites and newspapers around the world, reported that journalists who had visited the kibbutz of Kfar Aza had seen 40 beheaded babies. A CNN host on live television then tearfully announced that this was “confirmed by the Israeli government.” President Joe Biden went further, and said that he had seen photographs of the beheaded babies, although it was later discovered that he hadn’t. After this story made the front pages around the world, the journalists on the Kfar Aza visit all denied the story, and the reporter who spread the information, Sara Sidner, had retracted her statement and apologized.
Once the whole world began seeing images of dead Palestinian babies pulled out of the rubble, Biden the Gullible turned into Biden the Skeptic, refusing to accept the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s reports of the Palestinian dead, which span 150 pages, and includes long lists of people with the same last names, indicating that entire families have been wiped out in Israeli attacks.
Yet despite the overwhelming tide of Israeli propaganda that constantly appears, unfiltered, in the Western media, regular citizens across the world are withdrawing support for Israel and joining huge demonstrations for Palestinian rights.
DSA’s Crisis . . . and Opportunity
Currently, DSA members are actively working with Jewish Voice for Peace and Palestinian organizations to organize strong opposition to Israel’s genocide. DSA has lost members but has gained members as well. Nevertheless, political strategists within our organization will not see this period as good. Being an anti-imperialist greatly curtails DSA’s acceptance in the Democratic party, threatening a rupture in the two-party system itself. How are we to understand this phase in DSA’s history?
I learned professional organizing as a community organizer for ACORN in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, where I eventually became head organizer. In that capacity, I worked with organizers from the tradition of Saul Alinsky and Si Kahn. Later, I learned from my experience with the Philippine Communist Party, from village-level organizers and cadres of the New People’s Army.
Based on my Philippines experience, I see that DSA is clearly going through a typical rectification phase. It is handled differently, because, as a social democratic organization, DSA does not have a mass line, and therefore, does not do purges of members. But this rectification works the same way, because members who no longer follow the new direction will purge themselves.
In Arkansas, I was trained to understand that organizing involves recruitment and rapid expansion, followed by consolidation. Applying this knowledge, DSA is going through a consolidation phase. Consolidation involves a reduction in membership. As the organization’s direction becomes clear, some will decide that they do not belong in the organization. Consolidation is just like it sounds. It involves some shrinkage, in order to harden the membership into an effective fighting force. I think that these concepts — rectification and consolidation — apply to DSA today.
From the River to the Sea; Controversy Within Our Ranks
The current movement for Palestine is a clean break from earlier activism on the Israeli issue. That break is entirely embodied in the protest chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
This slogan causes two controversies, one of which is external and the other internal. In both cases, the slogan is considered offensive. The power of the slogan lies in its ability to offend, because it offends those who should be offended.
I will briefly describe the external controversy. On CNN, panelist David Axelrod gave the unchallenged party line that it means “the elimination of Israel.” So it is currently acceptable for a national network to allow him to smear millions of his fellow Americans, saying that we want the elimination of an entire people. No one on the panel even mentioned that the operative word of the slogan is “free.” Why would advocating for the freedom of people necessarily mean the elimination of others?
Zionism is a pseudo-theory similar to eugenics which is designed to establish a moral superiority over the Palestinians as a justification for taking their land. The heart of this theory is the premise that Palestinian have no rights. The moment that you say that Palestinians deserve freedom, the entire fragile framework of Zionism falls apart. The only solution for zionists is to promote an Orwellian mind trick, “freedom=terrorism” which must be condemned as anti-semitic hate speech.
Many people come to a rally for many reasons, and certainly a slogan can have a range of meanings. Activists are not responsible for what every person at a rally says or does. But the reason that this slogan frightens the current system is because it speaks the unspeakable: freedom for the Palestinian people.
Having addressed the external controversy, we now turn to the internal controversy, that is, the controversy within DSA, in that “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free,” offends and frightens the previous generation of Pro-Palestinian activists, those who stood up for Palestine in the 20th century. In the National Political Education Committee, we have had to contend with older activists who insist that we not organize a workshop on zionism, that we not discuss any challenge to the right of Israel to exist, and even that we should not mention the word “Palestine” in our educational program. This last suggestion harkens back to the years when zionists convinced most people in academic institutions that Palestinians do not exist as a people at all. It should be said that this same older generation of activists absolutely oppose apartheid, support a cease fire, and have worked for many years for Palestinians to have their own state. So if they are not arguing on behalf of Israel, what are they arguing about?
These activists are uncomfortable with the new language of protest. In the 20th century, the language of protest was defensive, an attempt to not be labeled as anti-semitic at a time when people would lose their jobs, their tenure, and their friendships by offending zionists.
But protecting Israel means justifying genocide, which currently takes the form of dropping thermite bombs on babies so that they die slowly of full thickness burns. Today’s generation does not believe conciliatory language to be appropriate to the historical moment. What’s needed is a language of confrontation.
The older activists should understand the necessity of the new language of protest. Nevertheless, they are still uncomfortable with “From the river to the sea.” What is holding these people back? By the way, I am an older activist, and so I feel very qualified to make this criticism.
Labor Zionism and DSA
DSA has had a long and confused history with Zionism. For its first decades, Israel was dominated by labor zionism, and subsequently, this labor zionism permeated DSA. DSA’s founder Michael Harrington lived in a kibbutz and sided with Israeli “doves” when such a term existed.
Labor zionists like David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir created the Israeli Defense Force and oversaw the violent expansion of Israel into Palestinian lands. But the doves among them believed that this process could be done with restraint, and that Zionism would eventually enter a phase where Israel would not want to expand anymore, and would see it in its interest to allow Palestinians to live on the leftover land. This would be the two-state solution, proposed by the labor zionist and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The hope was that once the Palestinians accepted the arrangement, the world would accept the State of Israel and would normalize relations.
Looking back at it, the idea of colonizing someone else’s land in a “socialist” way, or in a way that respects the dignity of the conquered people, is ridiculous. A thousand years of European colonization demonstrates that the indigenous population will resist. Therefore, every colonial project involves some pseudo-religious or pseudo-scientific theory of moral and legal superiority over indigenous people, to justify the force it will eventually take to accomplish colonization, which is not just violence but systematic genocide. The labor zionists thought that they were innovating a kind and gentle approach to colonization, but they in fact spilled the most blood. They thought they were socialists, when in fact they were terrorists.
When one realizes that the American left was permeated by labor zionists, we can understand why the pro-Palestinian movement accomplished virtually nothing in 70 years. Because in the West, the opposition to Israel was only a loyal opposition. It was never debating Zionism, it was a debate between one type of Zionism and another.
Labor zionism no longer exists in Israel. It was defeated by right wing zionists who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and illegally created settlements in the West Bank, thereby sabotaging the Oslo Accords and dashing the dream of a two-state solution. Israel further poisoned the well by destroying the democratic structures in the occupied territories by financing Hamas from 1980 to 2000, and possibly beyond. Netanyahu continued the Hamas support and publicly defended the policy as late as 2019. Israel’s rationale was that supporting Hamas would prevent a two-state solution, because the West would refuse to negotiate with a violent sunni Islamic fundamentalist organization.
Labor zionists have virtually no influence in Israel. Support for a two-state solution in Israel is at 28.6%, which is unbelievably low, since Israel already signed the Oslo Accords, and completing the plan for two states would require almost unanimous support.
You can infer the universal influence of the right wing in the revolting lack of sympathy reflected in Israeli public opinion for Palestinian children dying of bomb attacks. According to a recent poll, “57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza.”
Although labor zionism is dead in Israel, labor zionists are still to be found in DSA, still promoting a two-state solution, and still being protective of the State of Israel. In fact, the labor zionists of today often identify themselves as anti-zionist, which is fitting, because right wing zionism is now equated to zionism itself.
These activists are our reliable allies in the fight for Palestinian rights, who oppose apartheid, support a cease fire, and uphold human rights. But when you dig further, you will see that labor zionists fully support the State of Israel. They are not bothered by the theft of land, they just want Israel to be kinder and gentler. They don’t want “From the river to the sea,” they want from the river to the highway.
When this older generation of activists insist on a two state solution, I am suspicious that they are leading us into distraction. I suspect that they have an outdated idea of Israel as an agricultural paradise spotted with socialist kibbutzim, not a brutal urban apartheid state surrounded with concertina wire. The proper response to an activist seeking us to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist in a two-state system is to say, ‘Show us mass organizations in Israel who want a two-state solution, and then we will support it. If not, let’s not waste time on fantasies.’
Labor zionists (or ‘anti-zionist’ loyal opposition, however you can phrase it) can be worked with, and should be welcomed into this Pro-Palestinian movement. However, they should not be in the leadership of the movement. If we were to compromise the language of the pro-Palestinian protests and omit the demand of “From the river to the sea,” we would be reverting to the language of 70-years of failure. Instead, we should embrace the current historical moment and the language of confrontation with zionists, this genocidal scourge of humanity.
Two-State or One-State Solution?
Another misconception about “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is that it necessarily promotes a one-state solution. Certainly it could, but I don’t agree that it necessarily has that meaning.
First of all, as activists in the West, we should be careful to suggest that we have the right to dictate any solution. We have a responsibility to speak out about the injustice that our support for Israel has caused, but I do not believe that we should see it as our responsibility to provide the solution. The best solution the United States can provide to Palestine is to cease being the problem. We should end all military support for Israel.
The goal of Zionism is to provide a pseudo-intellectual justification for defeating the individual freedoms of an entire people in the homeland of their birth, and to hand over their land to Jewish Westerners. “From the river to the sea” refers to the injustice of creating border fences and checkpoints where Palestinians’ movements are restricted and their dignity is constantly denied, whereas Jews in that area receive the privileges of human beings. We are saying that regardless of where they are, and what their religion is, Palestinians have the same rights as Israelis and everyone else on the planet.
In response, Zionists are correct to point out that they define Israel as a Jewish state. As such, they wish to enforce apartheid to prevent them from losing their identity in a democratic system where Jews and Palestinians have an equal vote. Therefore, the zionists point out that if Palestinians were to have freedom equal to Jews, then there would be no Israel.
If one were to insist that Israel should be defined as an apartheid state, then all freedom loving people would wish for the day when Israel ceased to exist. We do not call for the elimination of a people, we call for the elimination of an oppressive ethno-state system. Eliminating apartheid will not destroy Israel any more than eliminating apartheid destroyed South Africa. Zionists! Apartheid does not assure your survival, it leads to your destruction!
Why Does Today’s Generation Sympathize with Palestinians?
Obviously DSA has very little to do with the massive upswelling of Pro-Palestinian protest around the world. But DSA’s membership reflects the demographic trend which stands staunchly against Israeli genocide, and should be proud of their role in this movement. Pro-Palestinian protests have exploded exponentially in 2023, but the sparks of this explosion did not arise on October 7. To understand this generation’s skepticism of Israel and sympathy for Palestine, we have to look beyond 2023, back to 2019.
According to a Gallup Poll, Millennials (born 1980-2000) have clearly diverged from older Americans, showing a dramatic increase in sympathy toward Palestinians over a five year period. Whereas GenX and boomers favor Israel by a whopping 32% and 46% respectively, the Millennials favor the Palestinians by 2%.
Consider the Millennial Child
To understand the Millennial generation, let’s take a moment to imagine a person who was born in the year 2000, from a working class family in the Midwest, let’s say Ohio. Our Millennial baby was born 33 years after the 1967 Yom Kippur War, that mythic underdog story about how poor little Israel faced invasion on all sides, but somehow emerged triumphant against the Arab aggressors. This Millennial child has never heard of the Yom Kippur War. She has never heard of Yassir Arafat, nor has she ever heard of Yitzhak Rabin. She never knew that Arafat and Rabin stood in the White House and shook hands in front of Bill Clinton to usher in the Mideast Peace Process. She’s never heard of the Mideast Peace Process. The only Israeli leader she has ever heard of is Benjamin Netanyahu.
This person who was born in 2000 gets all her information from TikTok, Youtube, and Reddit. When she sees a movie, it’s not about terrorism or the Middle East, it is usually a bunch of buff people with special powers who wear capes and go to fight monsters in outer space.
She has never seen a 1980’s movie featuring the clever Israeli Mossad intelligence agents, Nazi hunters with silenced pistols and hearts of gold. She has never heard of the PLO or that they were vilified as the universal bad guys in a hundred racist Hollywood movies. In short, our Millennial child has missed out on all the extreme cultural romanticization of Israel that permeated the West in the 20th Century. But what she didn’t miss were several key events in the 21st Century.
During 2018 and 2019, the world saw one of the bravest acts of civil disobedience, perhaps in all human history. This protest is known as the Great March of Return, and it happened in the Gaza strip.
In January 2018, a Palestinian journalist and poet Ahmed Abu Artema created a Facebook post, calling on Palestinian refugees in Gaza to gather peacefully near the fence with Israel and attempt to return to their pre-1948 homes. Thousands of unarmed protesters, mostly children, came to the fence every Friday. These protesters stood as bullets whizzed past their heads yet they kept returning, again and again, every Friday, for two years, marching toward the illegal border wall separating Gaza. Here, the Israeli government could not justify violence with their usual excuse that armed militants were using the civilians as “human shields.” Shielding what? There were no armed militants near these protests at all, and therefore, no justification to fire weapons.
Knowing that the protesters were unarmed, Israeli soldiers stood out in the open, teaching each other marksmanship with high-powered rifles. They are on video, shooting children and then laughing when they hit a human target. Not only did they shoot protesters, but they shot medics and any volunteers who came to carry away the victims to safety. Within the first year, 266 of these brave protesters were killed and over 30,000 injured.
Our Millennial child was 18 at the start of the Great March. She might not have even heard of the name of the protest. But like a billion people on the planet, she saw images on her timeline of the committed Gaza protesters facing off against Israeli soldiers. She saw children in Gaza holding up signs and getting shot for standing up peacefully for their rights. And since the Great March lasted for two years, this Millennial woman has scrolled past these images many times.
And then in 2022, the world learns that Shireen Abu Akleh, an Arab American journalist was assassinated while covering a protest. Our Millennial woman, now 22, sees it as typical that Israel would lie and cover up the fact that an Israeli sniper killed Akleh with a shot to the head.
By the time Israelis began dropping bombs on hospitals and schools in October 2023, Israel’s reputation had already been decaying for five years. Our Millennial woman, born in 2000, has seen Israel’s oppression all her life, has almost never seen a positive image of Israel, nor any peace initiative from Israel. When hosts on CNN, Fox News, or MSNBC talk about how Israel is doing everything it can to limit civilian casualties, our Millennial woman thinks it’s all bullshit. Now she is attending protests. Move over boomer, the Millennials aren’t buying it.
Young people’s attitudes towards Israel are pushing the needle in party politics, regardless of the almost universal pro-Israel consensus among the elites of both parties. The graph below shows an amazing trend: within the Democratic party, sympathy for Palestinians now exceeds sympathy for Israelis for the first time, by 49% to 38%. Remember that this is before October 7.
This type of demographic trend doesn’t go away. As the older generations die out and the newer generations take up more of the voting population, they take their sympathies with them.
Currently, adopting pro-Palestinian views seems dangerous. Establishment media figures are vilifying protesters as anti-semitic and pro-Hamas. But these smears are a product of the attitudes of older generations, and will fade over time. Based on the demographic evidence, anti-Israeli sentiment will inexorably grow as a legitimate position within United States discourse.
No One Can Predict the Future of DSA
They say it’s always darkest before the dawn. In this period, DSA is facing its most challenging period yet. It feels like a long cold night, and no one can predict what the day will bring.
DSA’s pro-Palestinian activity will more clearly define its identity. Some members will adjust to the new reality, and others will see fit to leave the organization. Still others will join. This consolidation process should be seen as healthy and necessary to the organization.
As DSA finds its identity, so does America. The United States must finally confront its complacency and enabling of Israeli genocide.
I believe that history will look back on the last generation to support Israel as the genocide generation. Their moral blindness will be treated as an oddity, such as people stuck in the past who tolerated the genocide of Native Americans, tolerated African slavery, tolerated restrictions on gay marriage. Eventually, zionism will be understood as a dumb self-serving pseudo-theory of superiority, like eugenics or phrenology.
At the October 8 rally, DSA stumbled onto the cusp of a large global shift toward empathy for the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. Turning to the project of electing progressive public officials, DSA may find itself too far ahead of its time. The democrats are organizing to destroy DSA, using Palestine and Hamas as a cudgel to squeeze democratic socialism out of the political power system. No one knows whether they will succeed.
But remember that the 2023 Gallup poll shows that more Democrats sympathize with Palestinians than they do for Israelis for the first time. Eventually the Democratic party will learn to change. If not, we may live, not only to see the end of Israeli apartheid, but the end of the US two party system.
