LeftOfTheDial

FYI I am not a DSA member. I have no special investment in or connection to the organization. It’s just important to see the broader implications of the attacks on DSA. The establishment is trying to use Israel/Palestine to discredit the left as a whole.

DSA is the largest, most prominent and most electorally effective socialist/leftist organization in the U.S. That’s why the establishment is going after it and not other orgs. They can and will come after your lefty org next.

Leftists who critique or condemn DSA for reasons unrelated to Israel/Palestine should realize that the establishment is not attacking one org; they’re attacking ALL leftists who criticize Israel/show solidarity with Palestinians.

DSA’s messaging on Israel-Hamas is not beyond reproach, but let’s be real: there is no way for a socialist org to show solidarity with Palestinians without a backlash. Many attacks on DSA are opportunistic and have nothing to do with Israel. [Thread]

Imagine if terrorists applied the reasoning Kathy Hochul and many others apply to Palestinian civilians/Hamas to U.S. civilians for the foreign policy of our government. We don’t want to go down that road.

For all those who say “Israel isn’t out for revenge; they need to target Hamas as a matter of self-defense,” listen to the language of Israeli officials and their U.S. enablers. This isn’t just a military operation against Hamas; it IS about revenge.

If someone murders your family/children, you are not justified in taking revenge on them by murdering their family/children. That is the logic of a sociopath. Horrific violence against innocents does not justify horrific violence against other innocents.

Using the evil of Hamas to absolve Israel of responsibility for CHOOSING to besiege, bomb and impose collective punishment on the Palestinian civilians of Gaza is all too common and it’s BS. That’s not how morality works. [Thread]

[We need] an international left rooted in values that side with the child over the gun every single time, no matter whose gun & whose child. A left that is morally consistent & does not mistake consistency with moral equivalency between occupier & occupied.

“So how do we confront this violent ideology? What could lessen its power, drain it of some of that fuel? True solidarity. Humanism that unites people across ethnic and religious lines. Opposition to all forms of identity-based hatred, including antisemitism.”

Naomi Klein: “The responsibility for these crimes of collective punishment rests solely with their perpetrators and their financial and military backers abroad. But we all have to figure out how to make it stop.”

“For Zionists, Jew-hatred is the central rationale for why Israel must exist as a nuclear-armed fortress… Force alone is the only conceivable response to threats. Israel’s murderous leveling of Gaza is the latest, horrific manifestation of this ideology.”

Naomi Klein: “Supposed comrades on the left continue to minimize massacres of Israeli civilians, and some even seem to celebrate them, as if doing so proves their bad-ass anti-Zionism… these callous displays are a GIFT to militant Zionism.” [Thread]

We all have inherent dignity. Media narratives that play on internal biases to elevate some and dehumanize others are dangerous. Given the threat of antisemitism, my fellow Jews should know this better than anyone.

Propaganda only goes so far. According to polls, not just leftists but DEMOCRATS are now more sympathetic to Palestinians than Israelis. The narratives that justify apartheid and collective punishment are eroding…

A common response to advocating for Palestinian rights and contextualizing (NOT justifying) Hamas’s horrific attacks on Israeli civilians: “now is not the time.” But Palestinian civilians in Gaza are dying NOW. If not now, when? Never?

U.S. media usually ignores conditions in the West Bank and Gaza. If Palestinian suffering is acknowledged, it’s presented as normal or unavoidable. But Israeli suffering is described in minute, heartbreaking detail.

Effective propaganda in an open society doesn’t lie. It selectively presents and shades the truth. It includes/emphasizes facts that feed into existing preconceptions and omits facts that contradict a preferred narrative.

Part of manufacturing consent is manipulating empathy to fit a preferred narrative. People learn about wars from biased sources that display atrocities/suffering of one side and not the other. Public opinion forms accordingly. [Thread]

How can anyone claim RFK Jr. is “anti-establishment” or an acceptable candidate for any progressive to support? His comments on Israel/Palestine in the wake of attacks might as well have been dictated by AIPAC.

It’s wild how a few attendees at a DSA rally make gross, widely-condemned pro-Hamas statements, and the narrative becomes “all democratic socialists/leftists love Hamas and cheer dead civilians.” Pathetic smears.

Whenever Rashida Tlaib trends, I check for something spicy 🤞 only to find that she’s being attacked for the crime of existing as a badass Palestinian American socialist in Congress. Oh no, a Palestinian flag! 😱

If, like me, you are horrified by Hamas’ attack on civilians, you should be at least as disturbed by Israeli’s decades long military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

Thousands of innocent Palestinians die every year at the hands Israeli violence. Millions are denied basic rights.

It is not enough to abandon Zionism. Secular Jews must offer rich Jewish cultural and communal experiences to fill the void left by nationalism. The alternative is assimilation. @JewishCurrents, @jdforward and @tabletmag have explored this.

It is on younger generations of Jews: orgs like @IfNotNowOrg, @JFREJNYC, @jvplive, @btselem to move beyond the limits of Zionism and do everything we can to oppose Israeli collective punishment of Palestinians and push for a just peace.

As the Hamas attacks have made clear, the status quo is not tenable. Israelis cannot have a state and ruthlessly deny Palestinians self-determination. Bare minimum, liberal Zionists must give up the fantasy of a 2-state solution and face reality.

Most likely, Israelis and Palestinians will have to co-exist in Israel/Palestine. History cannot simply be undone and both peoples have set down deep roots. I don’t know the solution, but a binational state with equal rights for all is a nice dream.

It’s important to emphasize that moving on from Zionism need not entail abandoning the historic, religious and cultural connection between Jews and Israel. We can have a meaningful relationship with a holy place without embracing ethnonationalism.

Today’s liberal Zionists could be tomorrow’s advocates for Palestinian rights and self-determination (just look at @PeterBeinart) if we can appeal to the best of Judaism and Jewish values, which IMO are antithetical to ethnonationalism and apartheid.

I am not a Zionist. I don’t define my Jewish identity in relation to any form of ethnonationalism. I believe Jewish values compel us to fight for the human rights/self-determination of Palestinians, who live under siege in Gaza & apartheid in the West Bank.