Ultra-Leftism Won't Help Free Palestine

My interview with Bashir Abu-Manneh & Hoda Mitwally on how US activists can more effectively support Palestinians

Two years after October 7, public outrage against Israel is widespread, yet the US grassroots movement in solidarity with Palestine is nowhere near as powerful as it needs to be. While Trump’s ceasefire plan might provide relief from Israel’s genocidal onslaught, Gaza has been decimated, and the proposed deal would codify a vastly deteriorated situation for millions of Palestinians.

To discuss how American organizers might more effectively fight to support Palestinians’ rights to freedom and self-determination, I spoke with Bashir Abu-Manneh, who is writing a book provisionally entitled Disposable Palestinians, and Hoda Mitwally, a member of New York City Democratic Socialists of America and LSSA/UAW Local 2320 speaking in a personal capacity.

Eric: I want to focus our conversation on the strategies and tactics necessary for Americans to effectively support Palestine, but we should first briefly address the current negotiations. We’ll see whether Israel again scuttles a deal, but as of this writing, it seems like we’re closer than before to a negotiated ceasefire agreement. What’s your impression of Trump’s proposal, reactions to it on the ground, and what the deal says about the relationship of forces in Palestine, Israel, and the US?

Bashir: This is an updated version of Trump’s 2020 Peace to Prosperity vision — basically a plan to formally ratify the Israeli occupation and the de facto annexation of swathes of the West Bank, leaving Palestinians in enclaved bantustans with a series of humiliating conditionalities to meet before calling the ghettos a “state,” if ever. Back then, it was seen as a total victory for Israel’s occupation and biblical messianic worldview, while providing no rights for the Palestinians.

Given that the architect of the 2020 vision, Jared Kushner, also drafted the current ceasefire proposal, it’s no surprise the new ceasefire declaration rehashes the same logic. There’s one proviso: now the conditions are infinitely worse for Palestinians after October 7. Gaza is flattened and destroyed, and the West Bank is dangerously edging toward Gazafication.

According to the deal, Gaza will be demilitarized. Hamas will either leave or surrender, with no guarantee Israel will ever withdraw from Gaza or stop military operations there. Under the guise of demilitarization, Israel will continue to target Palestinians when it deems necessary — just as it targets Lebanon today even after the ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, a far more powerful group than Hamas.

In fact, Hamas is expected to trade the hostages upfront for Palestinian captives and prisoners and thus forego its only remaining leverage, making it reliant on external players under the auspices of the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter of the future of Palestinians in Gaza.

The fact that Hamas has agreed to this U.S. ceasefire deal with a ‘Yes, but’ and is seeking to amend some clauses — after Israel tried to assassinate its negotiators just the other day — shows the extent of Hamas’s political and military degradation. October 7 produced the exact opposite of what Hamas dreamily expected to achieve: more occupation, not less; the destruction rather than expansion of the Axis of Resistance; genocide and the total obliteration of Gaza. The reason Hamas is negotiating is because it’s severely weakened and trapped.

What Palestinians in Gaza welcome about the deal is easy to understand: it promises an end to the mass bloodshed, it takes mass ethnic cleansing off the table for now, and it raises hopes for reconstruction. No doubt this is better than mass death, endless forced displacement, and population concentration in tinier slivers of Gaza. But no one pretends this is a good deal.

Eric: Right, though I imagine supporters of Hamas would argue that they partially achieved their goal of isolating Israel at a moment when it was normalizing itself in the Middle East.

Bashir: How to safeguard Palestinian humanity and defend Palestinian rights and presence in Palestine should be central to the principles and calculations of progressives. That’s the politics Palestinians deserve.

What is clear is that October 7 gave Israel the pretext for a genocide that has cost Palestinians at least three percent of the Gaza population and has obliterated Gaza — no education, electricity, homes, health, safety, security, or water. Mass trauma is a pathetically inadequate word for what Palestinians have experienced since October 7.

Israel is responsible for its barbarism in Gaza and elsewhere, and it has to be held accountable for its genocide. But I fail to see how all this human cost can simply be framed as collateral damage for the sake of achieving Israel’s increased isolation, especially since Israel has succeeded in decimating Gaza for the foreseeable future, jeopardizing the lives of multiple generations.

Eric: If a ceasefire is reached and upheld, I worry that Trump and establishment Democrats will say that “peace has been reached” and that we don’t have to worry about Palestinians anymore. And for Americans who don’t follow politics very closely, it might seem now that there’s no more need to pressure Israel since “the war is over.” Hoda, how do you think activists in the US could effectively keep up pressure in solidarity with Palestine in such a new context?

Hoda: That scenario you outline is a real possibility, and there’s a risk it could weaken our solidarity movement.

I’m not optimistic about the final details of the ceasefire framework and what it will mean for Palestinian sovereignty. The U.S. has been a dishonest broker for decades. While Trump may superficially appear to have pressured Netanyahu more than Biden, there hasn’t been a real shift in the U.S.’s overall posture toward Israel. And the agreement likely won’t contain any “sticks” to dissuade Israel from attacking Gaza in the future, attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, or attacking any other country in the region.

The onus will be on activists here to explain in the simplest possible terms that Trump’s ceasefire is not a real, comprehensive peace agreement. Some Palestine solidarity activists might wince at the word “peace” due to its disingenuous use in the aftermath of the Oslo negotiations. But I think the Left here needs to reclaim it to build a broader anti-war movement and to challenge establishment politicians. Our side really does want peace — and that can only come about by honoring the rights of all Palestinians. Israel doesn’t want peace: its status quo relies on daily violence and injustice against Palestinians, even if the bombs on Gaza stop for now.

Given the ongoing negotiation talks, there are other key points of pressure where we can be effective. The reconstruction of Gaza is going to be a major point of contention, and we should fight to ensure that Palestinians are provided sufficient resources to rebuild their lives. Palestinians in Gaza are facing the worst conditions imaginable: going forward, any US funds ought to be redirected to making Gaza livable for Palestinians again, not to a genocidal, apartheid regime that will likely try to further decimate Palestine if given the opportunity.

Eric: No matter what happens with this deal, it’s a real problem that the US anti-war movement is weaker as an organized force than one might expect given how unpopular Israel and its conduct has become. And especially if Gaza is no longer in the headlines, it will be more important than ever for large numbers of people to be talking to their neighbors, co-workers, and fellow students about why the fight is far from over. But we don’t yet have that type of organized reach.

There are obviously huge external factors explaining the movement’s relative weakness: repression, entrenched interests, and the long-standing reluctance of Democratic Party centrists and aligned groups to ever talk about Palestine. But even if we acknowledge all those outside dynamics, there’s still a question for our side: Have tactical or strategic errors prevented us from maximizing bottom-up pressure to stop the genocide and cut off US funding for Israel?

Hoda: You’re right to point out the external factors — they’re very real. But I don’t think that’s the only reason our organized pro-Palestine movement is smaller than it could be. Public opinion has turned against Israel in the US, but I don’t think that’s primarily because the movement has been strong. It’s mostly because the horrors of Israel’s genocide are undeniable; it’s been live-streamed to the entire world, and people can no longer ignore it.

Internally, I think we’ve failed to consistently build the biggest and broadest coalition possible, a movement laser-focused on ending US support for Israel’s atrocities. To do that, we would have to more consistently work with people who don’t agree with us on every single thing. It would require a greater number of leftists leaving their comfort zone of being a powerless opposition, protesting on the sidelines, expressing our moral outrage online. It would require joining united-front, inside–outside efforts to win a permanent ceasefire — and, if a deal is soon reached, to enforce this ceasefire against Israel’s belligerence — and to win a full arms embargo. Fortunately, this get-your-hands-dirty strategy is starting to make some real progress.

Bashir: My sense is that external factors are absolutely key. If you take campuses as an example, the repression has been tremendous. People live in fear; there’s retaliation; there’s doxxing; people lose jobs. I wouldn’t underestimate that — it disorganizes people and makes them think twice.

Eric: I agree, but shouldn’t we always expect the ruling class to use repression wherever it can get away with it? And state repression often backfires or fails against mass movements that raise demands that resonate with the broad public and that involve as many people as possible — not just small cores of activists.

I think part of the reason why repression has been so effective on campuses is that, because of an excessive activist focus on “security culture,” there was often a relatively high bar to entry to getting involved, beyond a few mass democratic exceptions like San Francisco State. And the encampments’ rhetoric was often kind of inflammatory (and prone to misinterpretation), which undercut efforts to involve and persuade others to join the fight for a ceasefire and divestment.

That raises a question: what should be the movement’s united-front demands and red lines?

Hoda: In such a pivotal and urgent moment for the people of Palestine, it doesn’t make sense for the US left to draw a minimum program on the basis of ideological stances that don’t resonate with public opinion here. Most Americans are horrified by Israel’s actions, but don’t yet understand Gaza or Palestine primarily through the lens of Zionism.

For the first time in my lifetime, a majority of Americans disapprove of Israel and agree that its actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. They want a ceasefire; they want more humanitarian aid to go in; they want sanctions against Israel. That creates a political opening we’ve never had. We can channel that energy into a broad movement for divestment and a full arms embargo, which will remain essential no matter what the current ceasefire negotiations lead to. The way I see it: if you oppose genocide and want the U.S. government to stop funding Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, you belong in our movement.

Bashir: How can you help people like the Palestinians, who suffer daily, whose lives are totally dominated by Israeli occupation, who live under an apartheid regime? Even Palestinians inside Israel have no real chance of equality under Jewish supremacy. They also live in fear as a result of the genocide and what Israel might do next — inside Israel and in the West Bank.

If you’re organizing in the U.S., the question is: what are you going to do to improve that situation? Too much energy here goes into debating one state or two states or engaging in theoretical fights around Palestinian resistance tactics. And frankly I don’t see that as a useful debate here if your main goal is changing policy on the ground for people who are suffering today. That’s what matters most.

Among Palestinians, there’s legitimate contestation about favored outcomes and what liberation means. For a solidarity movement, I don’t see why it should enter that terrain of debate. Uphold one thing: unconditional support for the Palestinian right of self-determination. That’s the fundamental right Israel has violated. Fighting for that right by cutting off US military aid would be a huge contribution to Palestinian welfare.

There are always going to be ideological discussions on the Left. But if those become disablers that fragment the movement and make you less effective at improving conditions on the ground, then I don’t know what those discussions are for. Advocacy in the real world is about power — how you challenge the workings of power, how you build capacity, how you practice leverage. It’s the difficult work of winning over people to a just cause.

And while students on U.S. campuses can shape the conversation, they don’t have a lot of leverage to change policy. Many young people support Palestine because it’s a moral cause — that’s good. But if you’re going to build a mass movement among the broader working class, you also need to look for ways to help people see how it is in their interest to stop the genocide and stop funding Israel. This may not be as intuitive as in a union organizing campaign fighting for better wages and working conditions, but you can demand that funds going to Israel go to public services in the US. Money for schools and health care in the US and Gaza— not bombs. Make those links — show how American foreign policy serves the elite and the military and doesn’t serve the majority here or abroad. Without that, Palestine remains only a moral cause, and moral-cause organizing is hard to scale up as the links to material interests are hard to see.

Eric: I think that type of “no money for war” framing resonates widely even with some Republican voters — a significant number of people voted for Trump because they thought he’d end the wars.

That said, as an American Jew, I can say from personal experience that debates over Zionism are basically inevitable in our families and our communities. More generally, it seems that groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and other anti-imperialist radicals do have a responsibility to make a case against Zionism, even if at this point it’d be counterproductive to make agreement on this a precondition for joint action or for our electoral endorsements.

The 1960s are instructive: so many young people got involved fighting the Vietnam War and then, through the radicalizing experience of that mass movement, they started asking wider questions about imperialism and the capitalist system. Similarly, if we build a united widescale fightback against arms to Israel (and push to include these demands and speakers in anti-Trump actions like No Kings rallies), that’s actually the best path towards helping large numbers of people start questioning deeper issues like Zionism, American imperialism, and capitalism.

Bashir: For me, the fundamental point is that fighting the occupation and fighting the genocide is fighting Zionism where it matters. You’re not saying, “We’ll put anti-Zionism on hold and come back to it later.” Look at Israel: most members of Knesset are against a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. If you fight to end the occupation in those territories, you are fighting Zionism. This is the frontline of Zionism and where it’s most vulnerable and exposed.

So it’s a matter of strategic focus, not fragmenting the movement over doctrine and hypothetical questions. If people are working against the occupation and for Palestinian self-determination, they are on the front line of the fight with Zionism. It is not the only thing progressives can do against Israel’s larger apartheid regime, but it’s a main site of confrontation, which is also prioritized by Palestinians inside Israel.

Eric: Hoda, both you and I were delegates to the DSA convention in Chicago this summer. My impression was that the underlying differences there centered on whether we should be orienting primarily to left activists or to people to our right. One of DSA’s leading left caucuses, for example, argued on the eve of the convention that DSA had chosen to “appease the most reactionary sections of the working class” at the “cost of alienating the advanced sections of the working class, who now mobilize to the left of DSA readily and in huge numbers in the ongoing Palestine movement.” What’s your take?

Hoda: I’m not sure what specific phenomenon they’re referring to. As far as I know, the only major industrial action in the U.S. related to stopping the genocide was ILWU Local 10 blocking weapons shipments to Israel at the Port of Oakland. Those actions are inspiring, and DSA members were part of them. But if we’re going to stop Israeli apartheid, we have to think bigger than one shipyard on the West Coast, where the union and the workers already agree with us.

Eric: I think what they’re referencing is more that some Palestine activist groups here, which have led some of the bigger protests, have insisted that DSA hasn’t been sufficiently anti-Zionist or sufficiently critical of our endorsed elected officials.

Bashir: The idea that a socialist movement should take strategic cues from middle-class activists — that’s the problem. Why should that layer set the line for a class movement?

There will always be segments of ethnic minorities who disagree with how you frame an issue. So what? We’re socialists. Our aim is to organize the working class in all its complexity and ethnic makeup. That doesn’t mean one constituency gets political primacy — to censor and shape what you say, how you articulate your struggle for working class power. And since every ethnic or national group is heterogeneous, and criss-crossed by competing class interests, there are always going to be real political differences within that group. If socialists end up being silenced by sectional interests as articulated by middle-class activists, we’re done.

Eric: To be honest, I get the impulse towards ultra-leftism. I have a toddler, and every day for the past two years I’ve woken up, read the news about more kids slaughtered in Gaza, and just felt absolutely devastated. And in those moments, I felt like expressing my outrage as loudly and as intransigently as possible.

But I think there’s also another source of this ultra-left impulse: some currents of leftists and Palestine activists have a pre-existing ideological orientation towards trying to break the Left from the Democrats immediately or in the very near future. And I think that’s part of the reason why there’s been so much focus from those milieus in, for example, attacking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Hoda: We need to think broadly and generously about what it means to have federal electeds standing up for Palestine and Palestinians. Until very recently, that simply wasn’t a feature of American politics. We also need to understand the different roles of organizers and electeds. For AOC, part of her unique power is that she has a congressional vote and can pressure other congresspeople to support bills like Block the Bombs.

It’s irresponsible when people on the Left spread misinformation about AOC’s record. She has never voted for military aid to Israel, she has never voted affirmatively for Iron Dome. She has consistently voted against Israel and the military-industrial complex.

Yes, she has made some clumsy rhetorical moves many of us may disagree with on Iron Dome and at the 2024 DNC. But I would argue rhetoric is not the same as a bad vote. It makes no sense to focus so much criticism on one of the few people in Congress who has generally been on the right side of this fight from day one. We want to create an incentive structure for politicians to start voting against funding. If we focus our fire on the electeds closest to us more than on those who are still vehemently backing Israel, it will be very hard for us to ever force a majority of American politicians to cut off the funds.

And while I think AOC is wrong on the offensive/defensive arms distinction, too much of the US activist left has incorrectly made Iron Dome into a make-or-break symbol, when in reality it’s a tiny part of American funding for Israel. Even before it was established in 2011, American military support already gave Israel a huge military edge against all its neighbors — this goes all the way back to the Lyndon Johnson administration.

Eric: Beyond AOC, how do you look at the relationship between Palestine solidarity and leftist electoral campaigns within the Democratic Party?

Hoda: Alongside a revitalized labor movement, electoral politics is one of the most effective ways to build the Left and to fight against the apartheid regime. I understand people’s frustrations with the Democrats, obviously — Biden chose to sacrifice his legacy on the altar of genocide, wiping out all the decent steps forward he took domestically. And so many of us were heartbroken by Bernie’s loss. But winning the presidency was a longshot in 2020 — and one of the main reasons we again have a real Left in the US after decades in the wilderness is because of Bernie’s insurgent primaries inside the Democratic Party.

Similarly, the Uncommitted movement may not have been powerful enough to force the DNC to meet its demands, but it succeeded in mobilizing over 700,000 people, and it paved the way for some of our recent successes. It’s a big deal that the Congressional Progressive Caucus — which represents roughly half of House Democrats — recently endorsed Block the Bombs and that twenty-four Senators voted to support Bernie’s bill to stop sending bombs and munitions to Israel.

I don’t see why we’d abandon this strategy when it’s bearing fruit. One of the biggest developments of the past year is how the Democratic base has lost faith in the party establishment and has turned leftwards. We see that in Bernie and AOC’s big rallies and in Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, which brilliantly centered working-class affordability demands alongside a commitment to justice for Palestinians.

Zohran won his primary almost a year to the day after Jamaal Bowman lost. Bowman’s loss scared so many politicians into thinking they couldn’t challenge Israel, but Zohran’s win has done the exact opposite: it’s emboldening candidates everywhere to finally take a stand. In the span of a year, we’ve caused a massive crisis for AIPAC. They can’t cakewalk into election wins anymore, because real constituencies of people will vote them out.

Bashir: The longer-term perspective remains to build a massive progressive movement around the American working class. That’s the best chance to change American foreign policy so you stop genocides and wars in the Middle East. It’s a hard, long road. You’re building, in a sense, from scratch.

So win over people who voted for Trump or Harris by explaining that billionaire-bought establishment politicians will never satisfy their material needs, and that they’re better off with a socialist alternative. It’s tough, but without focusing on that broader working-class agenda and without focusing on winning over people who don’t already agree with you, I have a hard time imagining how you’ll build enough power to seriously change US policy towards Israel and the Middle East. And you really do need a huge amount of power, because US ruling class support for Israel is not really about Israel or Palestine per se — it’s because the American elite needs to dominate in the Middle East to control oil, sell arms, and syphon off petrodollars.

Eric: One thing I’d add is that we need to intervene in the 2028 primary. One reason Uncommitted arose is that there wasn’t any pro-Palestine primary challenger — there wasn’t any challenger. We can’t make that mistake again. Whoever ends up being our candidate in 2028 may not necessarily share our full position on Israel — Bernie certainly never has — but I do think they need to at least be calling for an end to the genocide and for cutting off military funding.

Bashir: True, but no matter who ends up winning the Democratic nomination in 2028, you have to assess your voting tactics in relation to an assessment of the parties’ social base. Because the Democratic base is so much more pro-Palestine than the Republican base, it makes it more likely for you to succeed in pushing a Democratic president to cut off funding.

Eric: My last question has to do with labor organizing. Workplace disruption is one of our main sources of leverage, as we saw in the recent general strikes by Italian workers in solidarity for Gaza. What do you think it would take to move in that direction in the US?

Hoda: DSA’s campaign Labor for an Arms Embargo is doing exciting and unifying work that is pointing the way forward on how we can get the labor movement to use its power for Palestine. But we don’t often talk about what “get active in your union” actually means. It means building trust and relationships and doing the slow, tedious work with your co-workers so you can move people to action.

On the Left, we sometimes carry a romantic idea that the masses are ready to be activated at a moment’s notice for our goals, as if they’re disciplined soldiers in a reserve unit, and the only thing stopping them from taking action are union bureaucrats or Democratic misleaders. But that’s just not the reality on the ground in the US.

Many workers are horrified by the genocide but don’t yet see the relationship between what happens at work and the politics carried out in their name as Americans. In that context, don’t make your first appearance at a union meeting be a demand for a pro-Palestine resolution — people will be wary. Be as invested in building your union as you are in using it for broader social justice aims. Earn your co-workers’ trust. Show you care about your union; know its governance; understand the contract.

This practical piece is too often missing and this gap produces conflict, especially between veteran union members who have experienced decades of decline and newer, more zealous union members who sometimes carry a student-movement style into long-standing workplaces. Learn to be approachable and dependable unionists so that eventually your unions can act with teeth on Palestine.

Bashir: You’re asking unions to take a foreign-policy position. But it’s not intuitive why they should. So you have to be patient and do the political legwork to build trust and to show step by step how American foreign policy in the Middle East degrades rights and conditions here.

Don’t just dump righteous moralism on workers who are trying to feed their families while working two or three jobs. Many workers don’t see the link; it has to be built. It takes time, but you need to focus on persuading working people if you’re going to build a movement powerful enough to transform the United States and its foreign policy.