The Case for Anti-Hamas Anti-Zionism
How sections of the movement for Palestinian self-determination have become unhinged with blinding rage, and how this hurts our chances of achieving prosperity for all
When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stunned the Democratic establishment by beating an entrenched incumbent in a primary in the spring of 2018, it was seen as potentially heralding a new era of hope for the progressive movement, which was still reeling from the election of Donald Trump a year and half prior. Alongside her, several other left-wing firebrands were elected to Congress that year, forming what is now colloquially referred to as “the Squad.” And with them all the way were the Democratic Socialists of America, a grass-roots organization whose numbers were ballooning into tens of thousands of dues-paying members, making them the de-facto face of socialism in America, and an appealing alternative to the two-party system. At its peak in 2021, when Biden was still new in office, the pandemic had partially abated, and it felt as though there was a real chance for the uprising of the previous summer to achieve some of its goals, the DSA stood as a non-insignificant player in the political arena, a major accomplishment in a country where for many, “socialism” is still a evil buzzword denoting everything that can go wrong in a society. In February 2022, the organization took a hit when it equivocated on Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, revealing that its “big-tent, no party-line” stance (i.e. attempting to be welcoming to every sub-group within the left) had allowed some of its leadership to be infiltrated by distinctly non-democratic socialists. However, it wasn’t until the last year (at the time of writing), with Israel’s war on Gaza and the massive, justified public outcry thereto, that the moral and pragmatic foundations of the DSA cracked in a way that can’t be papered over or brushed aside. On July 10th, 2024, they revoked their long-standing endorsement of AOC, because — and get this — she wasn’t antisemitic enough for them.
Don’t take it from me; here it is in their own words (emphasis mine):
We recognize that AOC has taken many courageous positions on Palestine such as co-sponsoring several House Resolutions (3103, 786, 496), naming Israel’s genocide as well as opposing House Resolution 894. However, members have raised their concerns regarding a number of her votes, including a vote in favor of H.Res.888, conflating opposition to Israel’s “right to exist” with antisemitism. AOC also co-signed a press release on April 20, 2024, that “support[s] strengthening the Iron Dome and other defense systems.”
Finally, AOC recently hosted a public panel with leaders from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, lobbyists for the IHRA definition of antisemitism. On this panel, anti-Zionism and antisemitism were conflated and boycotting Zionist institutions was condemned. This sponsorship is a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide through political and direct action in recent months, and in decades past.
This statement doesn’t tell you what “IHRA” is an acronym for, but I will; it stands for “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,” nor does it provide any details on the definition of antisemitism that they promote, which is formulated as follows:
Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.
These crucial omissions are not the only issue here, though. Twice in just the two paragraphs that I quoted above, the DSA bemoans the perception that others have of them being antisemitic, insisting that these are just conflationary arguments used by the other side in order to delegitimize anti-Zionism. But many Jewish people do feel that it’s antisemitic to oppose Israel’s right to exist, even if they also staunchly oppose the actions of the Israeli government over the past 76 years, because it’s very easy to jump from there to making a bigger argument that the right of return, i.e. the guarantee of being able to live in peace in one’s ancestral homeland, should apply only to Palestinians, and not to Jews (i.e. the opposite of the current arrangement). In addition, while the Israeli government has plenty of ways to bomb people, the Iron Dome is not one of them; it functions in a purely defensive capacity to shoot down Hamas rockets aimed at mostly Jewish civilians, so withholding funding from it just makes it look like you want those civilians to explode. (Of course, the rockets are not being fired at them because they’re Jewish, but because they’re seen as supporting a colonial regime through their presence on the land, so the label “civilian” actually doesn’t apply to them, and the goal is to ultimately make them decide voluntarily to go back to Europe, even though only about half of Israeli Jews have any European heritage, and nobody can seem to answer where the other half should “go back” to.)
Keep in mind, these are some of the same people that have spent years promoting the idea that if a black person/woman/queer person tells you that you’ve said or done something racist/sexist/queerphobic, you don’t get to argue with them or claim that it wasn’t your intention to be bigoted; you have to simply accept their objectively correct perspective and apologize, but now that they’re the ones being told that their actions are re-inflaming the wounds of past trauma for a historically oppressed group, they don’t especially like it. It’s almost as if basing the credibility of someone’s argument on their identity category was an unreliable strategy all along, that left the window for individuals or groups acting in bad faith to weaponize their oppressedness wide open. But of course, Jews aren’t an oppressed group, at least not anymore, from the far left’s point of view, but are in fact almost by default complicit in the oppression of Palestinians (unless they take bold steps to distance themselves from what are, in many cases, the institutions and organizations that represent their closest community), and so any concerns that they might raise about things like antisemitism should be discounted as attempts to derail the conversation to center themselves and hold onto their privileged positions.
If you thought that was all the DSA had in store, though, you’d be wrong; the New York City branch of its youth wing, the YDSA, went even further and condemned AOC outright. In an Instagram post beginning with a graphic of a black figure holding up a banner reading “Whoever is in solidarity with our corpses but not our rockets is a hypocrite and not one of us until victory,” they first lament their own fellow comrades within DSA, whom they claim subscribe to an “erroneous theory of change… which holds that the power to influence politics comes from holding political office alone, and which has consequently viewed support for Palestinian liberation as one that hinders the ability to hold office,” as if anyone is actually saying that we have to choose between having leaders we can rely on in power and doing the work of organizing ourselves. They then claim that “this erroneous theory of change and power is manifested in the conduct of NYC-DSA Socialist in Office (SiO), Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who in her politics and actions has displayed opposition to the mass movement for Palestine (emphasis mine)”. In addition to the objections laid out above by the main national branch, they also cite her for her support of the at-the-time presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, and donating to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which helps keep Republicans out of power in the House of Representatives, given the Democratic Party’s largely unwavering support for Israel. This is despite the fact that AOC’s goal with these actions was not to help bolster Israeli apartheid, but to help ensure that the American people are not subjected to the dystopian nightmare that would be Project 2025, and yes, even though the Palestinian people are living through a dystopian nightmare right now, we would lose any ability to potentially help them under a Trump dictatorship. The NYC-YDSA continued, describing AOC as “crossing the cultural boycott picket line by attending and giving remarks at the Stand Together national convention, which was placed on the boycott list by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel,” referring to the BDS movement’s denunciation of the cross-cultural organization Standing Together, arguing that placing an emphasis on imagining a future of coexistence and shared prosperity, as the Israeli and Palestinian leaders of Standing Together do, is to fail to take the moral high ground by not painting the Israeli side as the shameful oppressors. Circling back to the invocation of the rockets in the banner on the first slide, the NYC-YDSA concludes by accusing AOC of “stating in a March 2024 interview with CNN that she supports the United States and Israel’s efforts to crush Palestinian resistance,” in reference to a single line where she said “We [the U.S.] and the Israeli government have a right to go after Hamas,” even though she actually spent most of that interview condemning what she described as a genocide perpetrated by Israel as an act of collective punishment.
This is where we get to a key point of contention, which is how Hamas ought to be properly viewed. This one’s not super complicated for me: they committed war crimes against civilians, and that’s a verifiable fact, not Israeli propaganda. Whether you use the word “terrorism” to describe that or not is just a semantics debate. If it’s a bad thing when Israel commits war crimes against civilians, then it also has to be bad when Hamas does it, since otherwise, you’re saying it’s okay when currently oppressed people lash out, but that it wasn’t okay when Jewish militias such as the Haganah lashed out in 1947–1949 at a time when they had just lived through the attempted genocide of their people. (Of course, it wasn’t fair that they lashed out against the Palestinians and not against the Germans, but they held the entire non-Jewish world responsible for what had happened to them, just as some hold the entire non-Palestinian world responsible for what’s happening now.) But as mentioned above, not everyone sees everyday Israelis as civilians in the first place, so they then become legitimate targets, whereas Hamas draws from a currently oppressed population, whose actions can then be justified as being part of the “resistance by any means necessary” to achieve liberation. Let’s also not forget that Hamas is, on top of everything else, essentially an Islamofascist organization much more reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan than anything that could seriously be described as left-wing.
Having just said that, I would not ask any Palestinian person to condemn Hamas. After all of the images and stories of indescribable death and destruction in Gaza, there is no way in which wanting revenge is not understandable. But we don’t live in a world where you can always get an eye for an eye, and even if you could, it still wouldn’t be justice, as appealing as it might be to call it that. It’s not surprising to me that activist spaces sometimes end up taking increasingly extreme positions over time, since those who feel the most passionately are naturally going to be the ones motivated to put in the time and energy to make an organization run, but the consequence of that is the Overton window in that space moving so far in one given direction that anyone who hasn’t moved all the way with it (in this case, anyone who doesn’t feel that Hamas has a claim to the moral high ground) ends up cast out as an enemy of the cause. So instead of holding onto their claim to relevance, groups like the DSA burn bridges with their most well-known and effective champions, all the while pretending that the Uncommitted movement that they contributed to, which discouraged voting for Biden in the spring 2024 Democratic primary as a form of protest, was really the decisive factor that pushed him out of the presidential race, and not his disastrous debate performance. They also proposed that the replacement with the best chance of winning in November would be Rashida Tlaib, another Squad member whose last name they didn’t even bother to spell right, whom they then publicly petitioned to challenge Kamala Harris for the nomination.
Now that Harris is the nominee, and has inspired a level of hope and mobilization not seen since Obama’s 2008 campaign, have any of these people reconsidered their position? Not quite. During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Russian asset Jill Stein and “#TruthJusticeLove” proponent Cornel West, both of whom are running separate third-party bids for president, held an “Abandon Harris” press conference with the purported goal of opening voters’ eyes to possibilities beyond the two-party system, but with the knowledge that neither of these campaigns will pull more than 1% of the vote if current polling is accurate, this effort serves only as a spoiler for Trump, risking a repeat of 2016, where Hillary Clinton would have won if she had received Stein’s votes. But for some on the far left, it’s really not about winning in the long term, or even in the short term; it’s about being able to say to yourself that you never had to make a compromise or settle for anything less than perfect, because doing so would have made you just another traitor to the cause. It really seems to me that these people would genuinely rather lose if it means they get the opportunity to go down in a blaze of glory than win as a result of gradual, sustained, mundane effort. They would rather go up against a militarized fascist Goliath in the form of a Republican White House, because it would mean that what they see as America’s true face would finally be revealed, without the hypocritical façade that they see Democratic liberalism as, and maybe more importantly, because it could be the spark that ignites the long-awaited Revolution that’s less likely to happen when people are mostly or even partly having their needs met by Kamala Harris. They haven’t learned a thing from the Communist Party of Germany, which helped the Nazis take power in 1932 for the exact same reason, and yet they have the audacity to claim over and over that liberals are the ones who side with fascists when push comes to shove in order to block leftists from rising to power. And they see perpetual rage as a virtue to be proud of, rather than what it is, which is profoundly detrimental to one’s ability to not only build coalitions, but also to maintain one’s own well-being and ability to function and think clearly, all of which are necessary to be an effective changemaker. And yes, these things may also be markers of privilege, but if someone is literally using their privilege to help others and fight for progress, I don’t see how they have any need to be ashamed of that.
So I think I’ll skip out on being part of a group that openly announces that it will kick out any member that they deem to be opposed to the Palestinian liberation movement, not that they would want someone like me anyway after publishing an article like this. Even Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization that I respected despite its perception by many as a fringe group, I recently learned had its North Carolina branch put out a statement in 2021 essentially calling on members to avoid praying in Hebrew, since it would potentially be triggering for a Palestinian to hear it, saying that “it is not our place to redeem our tradition on the backs of Palestinians. Enough has been taken.” Given the central status of Hebrew as the original vernacular and liturgical language of the Jewish people, and saying that the Jewish tradition is in need of “[external] redemption,” this legitimately seems to me to cross the boundary into antisemitism, just as it would have been absurd to ask Muslims to stop praying in Arabic after 9/11 or 10/7 out of respect for the perceived victims of their tradition. Could Judaism be reimagined without Zionism as we know it? Of course; in fact, I called for that in one of my other articles. But it’s worth noting that whereas pro-Palestinian activists and leftists today are as sure as they are that the sky is blue that Zionism in any form is an inherently right-wing ideology, Stalin himself actually believed that the newly formed state of Israel could develop along socialist lines, given the prominence of the kibbutz movement alongside a major political party that advocated for a shared Jewish-Arab society, and so the Soviet Union was the first country to officially recognize its independence. It was only once the reality of apartheid became apparent and Israel’s alignment with the West became solidified that the international left, including the Soviets, adopted their current anti-Zionist position.
The truth is, Hamas and Netanyahu need each other for their own survival. They talk a big game about wanting the other side gone, but if it ever actually happened, they’d be left without their political raison d’être. Neither of them really believe that what’s happened to their side was wrong on principle, they just think it happened to the wrong people, so they both have to go, which is why the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for both of them, to the dismay of both sides. Just as it is the responsibility of Zionists to imagine a Palestinian society that doesn’t hate Israelis, it is our responsibility as anti-Zionists to imagine an Israeli society that doesn’t hate Palestinians. And if you can’t imagine that just yet, I might be skeptical of your claims to be fighting for “a better world for everyone,” even if I know your heart is in the right place, and I wouldn’t be the only one, especially if you happen to be acting exactly how your opponents might if they infiltrated your organization in order to discredit your cause (like say, vandalizing an Anne Frank memorial, blowing up a synagogue, or calling for the total eradication of Western civilization). But if you can imagine what I’ve described, then congratulations, and speak up. Stand with civilians against collective punishment, no matter who’s doing the punishing.
And of course, free Palestine.
