Metro DC DSA’s Anti-Zionist Pitch

In U.S.A., Israel boycotts you!

Militants in Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are trying hard to gain support from assorted pro-Palestine formations around the country. This can be a challenge because the latter can be entirely uncompromising when it comes to discussion of Israel. Of course, Israel’s current leadership and its fervent supporters in the U.S. are no less uncompromising. The difference is Israel successfully wages an ongoing blitzkrieg against Muslims in Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, and potentially Iran. At least for the moment, Zionism reigns militarily supreme in the Mideast and politically dominant in the U.S. Israel can afford to be uncompromising. This naturally leads to frustration and dubious politics on our side.

To this end, a new anti-Zionist resolution will be put up to vote this month in the DC chapter of DSA. I’m going to dissect it, in the interests of general public education. I’ve tried to link to the text, but I don’t know if non-members will be able to access it. (Update: I’m informed that this resolution has been withdrawn from consideration.)

Right off the bat, we have a failure of analysis, with the words “Zionism has always been . . . “ Sorry comrades, Zionism has not “always been” anything. This is ahistorical, in particular glossing over the motivations for Zionism among Jews themselves: centuries of pogroms and ethnic cleansing in Europe and Russia, culminating in the Holocaust and the failure of Western nations to offer any place of refuge. (Edit: I’m informed that this was not quite true after the defeat of Germany. There was an opening up of immigration to Jewish Holocaust survivors in the U.S. thanks to Harry Truman’s Displaced Persons Act of 1948. I am skeptical that such immigration would have gone forward to a great extent, but it’s reported that 140,000 were able to come to the U.S. In any case, it was too late for those who had already perished.)

This reality should not stricken from the entirely valid story that Zionism also was a brutal settler-colonialist project, first sponsored by British imperialism, now by the U.S. and its NATO allies. The impulse to deny this background, out of outrage and a desire to center Palestinian suffering, is understandable but juvenile. Similarly juvenile is a formulation like “the so-called state of Israel,” after acknowledging that Israel is an “ethnostate” (which indeed it is). It’s rookie politics.

The impulse to depict Israel as an “entity” rather than a state reflects a failure to understand basic international politics. Israeli Jews are not going anywhere. They couldn’t, even if they wanted to. Nobody would admit them en masse. Everybody understands that any resolution would be the result of a settlement among the parties, especially including the side with the nukes.

The ahistoricity parallels what I would call 1619 thinking, of anti-black racism as primordial, unchanging, and ingrained in the U.S., rather than a practice that evolves along with the economy and everything else. It is odd to see DSA lean to narrow class perspectives when it comes to African-Americans (it is not guilty of 1619 thinking) and lurch to the opposite pole in the case of Palestine.

Political cluelessness is on display with the criticism of Rep. Jamaal Bowman as maintaining a “commitment to Zionism” for his failure to adhere to Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) tactics. This sort of blundering helped lead to Bowman’s defeat. His Democratic replacement will be notably less solicitous of Palestinian interests than Bowman was. Who benefits from this fiasco?

The establishment of support for BDS as a red line isolates DSA from the broader population. BDS is not synonymous with rejection of Israel’s claims. It is a strategy, not the only form of allegiance to a free Palestine. And as Israel runs amuck in its region, is there any doubt that BDS is not working? Protesters and academics in the U.S. now find themselves with the need to defend their elementary civil liberties. In U.S., Israel boycotts you!

Then there are signs of recasting anti-Zionism as antisemitism, all the while insisting it advocates the contrary. One hint is the rejection of the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism as a “redefinition of antisemitism to include opposition to Israel’s policies or legal system, or support for BDS.” This is exactly the opposite of the intent of the declaration. Suggesting the contrary amounts to gaslighting. Another bad sign is naming J Street as an enemy organization. J Street is the strongest link in the U.S. between those critical of Israeli policy here and inside Israel itself.

The sponsors of this resolution in DSA want to establish better relations with pro-Palestinian organizations. The problem is that success in this regard will make DSA even more radioactive for serious progressive Democratic politicians. The Cory Bush debacle will be repeated, as opportunistic Democrats realize they can reap a huge harvest of money if they challenge those who reject unambiguous defense of Israel, all the while staying progressive on everything else.

Those in “The Squad” who have survived this foolishness thus far will be wise to keep their distance from DSA. Attacking Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will not do much to bring more recruits to DSA or arrest the current erosion of membership. Additional support from pro-Palestine groups will merely cement DSA’s political isolation.

The isolation dovetails with the efforts to divorce voters from the Harris-Walz campaign, or in the case of less-crazy precincts of DSA, to discount the importance of stopping the MAGA movement with a phrase like “tactical voting.” Blocking fascism is not a “tactic”!

What will these people say if Trump is elected and unleashes the Netanyahu regime, not to mention giving over Europe to Putin? Or when as president, Trump indulges MAGA goons physically smashing the next DSA street action? The mind boggles.