Palestine: From shifting the discourse to changing US policy
First published at Convergence.
Eighty percent of Democrats support a permanent ceasefire and somewhere around 63% support conditioning weapons aid to Israel. But the Biden administration is still sending the bombs that Israel uses to kill children.
The Lancet, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals in the world, estimates that the death toll from Israel’s assault on Gaza as of June 2024 would approach 186,000, 7–9% of Gaza’s total population. The equivalent figure for the US would be 27 million people dead.
Though it is a tribute to all who have protested that the Democratic presidential nominee now uses (and may even in a way believe) the phrases “Palestinian dignity” and “Palestinian self-determination,” the Democratic Party leadership still will not allow a Palestinian-American to speak their own truth from the Democratic Convention podium. And the US Department of Justice is bringing terrorism charges against six Hamas leaders while letting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu slide, despite his pending arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges.
Such are the reminders of how far we still need to go to end US complicity with the genocide taking place in Gaza. Every single day it continues is a human catastrophe.
Yet it should bolster rather than diminish our sense of urgency to realize that the movement for a ceasefire and Palestinian rights has accomplished a great deal over the last year. If we can combine that sense of urgency with effective strategy and persistent action, we can make even greater headway in the pivotal weeks and months ahead.
(For weekly updates on what is happening in Gaza, the Middle East, and international and US politics, as well as listings of actions to take, follow Arab Resource and Organizing Center analyst Samer Araabi’s reports on the weekly Palestine Solidarity Announcements program; recordings of all past calls are posted here.)
The pro-Israel narrative has been shattered
The US movement opposing Israel’s war on the people of Gaza marks a turning point. It is a watershed in solidarity with Palestine on what has been a third rail of US politics since World War II. It has made breakthroughs in accurately naming what is taking place in Gaza and in targeting Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid as the root cause of the violence that afflicts all those who live in historic Palestine and constantly threatens war throughout the Middle East.
As early as last December, evidence presented by South Africa to the International Criminal Court convinced the Court that it was “plausible” Israel was violating the Genocide Convention. Since then the scale of carnage has only grown and with each passing day more is revealed about the scale of death and destruction. When someone like former Israeli soldier and Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies Omer Bartov changes his mind and decides that in fact Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (and compares the actions and mentality of the Israel military to that of the German military in World War II) the case is open and shut for anyone not in active denial.
The combination of this carnage (seen in real time across the world’s cellphone screens) and the outpouring of pro-Palestine activism has transformed the country’s conversation about Israel, Palestine, and US policy. The main arguments that defenders of the Israeli ethnostate relied upon pre-2023 (already under strain by the consensus among global human rights groups that Israel is an apartheid state) have collapsed. The claims that Israel is a “light among nations,” “the only democracy in the Middle East,” deploys “the most moral army in the world,” is a peace-loving state in a supposed “bad neighborhood”—all these lie in tatters.
The movement for a ceasefire and an end to US military aid to Israel has captured the moral and intellectual high ground. It has transformed the thinking on Palestine among younger people, within the trade union movement, and within the voting base of the Democratic Party. It has effectively put an end to PEP—Progressive Except Palestine—as a viable stance among partisans of social justice. It has filtered upward to reshape the view of congressional staffers and mid-level administration officials.
A corner has been turned, there is no going back
This tectonic shift in US public opinion will only get broader and deeper as more information emerges about the scale of the Gaza genocide. And dissatisfaction with US backing for Israel will grow as Palestine solidarity efforts increasingly make clear how essential the arms shipments and political/diplomatic cover the US provides Israel are to all the killing.
Israel’s hardline defenders—the AIPAC-anchored Zionist establishment, the Christian Zionist movement, the military-industrial and police-prison complexes, and the white Christian nationalist anti-Semites who now dominate the Republican Party—will double down on denial. But already they have all but abandoned engaging in debate about Israel’s actions. AIPAC spent close to $100 million targeting pro-Palestine candidates this year but never even mentioned Israel in their attack ads, a clear sign that they know their position is a losing one. Instead, the hard Zionist and MAGA factions in the pro-Israel camp push for repressive legislation and crackdowns on protests, while deploying charges of anti-Semitism against Palestine solidarity activism (and also as a cudgel against higher education and other institutions that they regard as threats to white Christian hegemony). The pro-Israel forces that function in the Democratic Party, while collaborating to a degree with Republican-led repression, now claim to be “working night and day” for a ceasefire even as they approve sending bombs to Israel.
Both the repression and the posturing are infuriating. But both indicate how much pro-Palestine sentiment has gained in the battle for public opinion. And though there are certain to be ups and downs on that battlefront in the months and years ahead, a corner has been turned. For the new generation especially, there is no going back.
Getting from here to policy change
The challenge now is to turn the sea change in public opinion into a corresponding change in US policy. This is no easy task in a country where all kinds of structural barriers exist to block majority rule, and where foreign policy is especially shielded from popular input, held tightly by a groupthink-practicing cohort (“ the blob”) that functions inside the executive branch.
Yet there are vulnerabilities that a movement determined to change US foreign policy can and must exploit. A key indication of what Israel’s defenders are most worried about is their constant stress on the importance of keeping support for Israel a “bipartisan” project. It’s right there on the AIPAC website landing page: “We are more than 4 million pro-Israel Americans from every congressional district who are working to strengthen bipartisan support for the US-Israel relationship.” And it’s evident in the millions of dollars AIPAC has thrown into Democratic primaries to prevent critics of Israel from being nominated and elected. AIPAC’s fear is that if the Democratic Party shifts away from its longstanding support for Israel, changes in US policy will be the inevitable result.
On that they are right. And their fears are well-grounded: thanks to pro-Palestine activism going back long before October 2023 and exploding in scale and intensity since, a shift in the Democratic Party’s stance on Israel-Palestine is already well underway.
Change in the Democratic Party is well underway
In 2021 for the first time more Democratic voters expressed sympathy for Palestine than for Israel in the Israel-Palestine conflict. In spring 2023, the initial narrow tilt had widened: 49% expressed more sympathy with the Palestinians compared to 38% for Israelis. As of May 2024, 56% of Democrats believed Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.
Crucially, these sentiments have been finding political expression. A cohort of pro-Palestine congresspeople – the Squad along with several other progressives – began to congeal after the 2018 election. Growth of sympathy for Palestinians at the congressional level was slow but steady, and by May 2024, 94 members of Congress (all Democrats) had come out publicly for a ceasefire. And soon after that, ideas about putting conditions on or ending US military aid to Israel begin to be seriously considered by numerous Democratic members of Congress.
There were wins and losses in the Democratic primaries. An avalanche of AIPAC money defeated Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, but Summer Lee and Omar Ilhan beat back AIPAC-funded challengers and AIPAC gave up altogether on challenging Rashida Tlaib. The spotlight all these races put on AIPAC’s practice of using money from MAGA donors to intervene in Democratic Party races further galvanized the grassroots “Reject AIPAC” movement and has made resistance to AIPAC common throughout the progressive movement.
Opposition to Israel’s actions, almost unheard of in the labor movement only a few years ago, has swept through major unions. By Summer 2024 the AFL-CIO and unions representing a majority of US union members had called for a ceasefire. And in late July seven unions representing six million workers published an open letter to President Biden demanding that he cut off military aid to Israel until it ends its brutal assault on Gaza.
In June the NAACP called for ending arms sales to Israel to force a ceasefire, adding the voice of this often conservative-on-foreign-policy organization to the many calls for the US to put pressure on Israel for a ceasefire coming from Black faith leaders.
And through it all, the growing weight and leadership of the Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities made itself felt, from street protests to meetings (both held and boycotted) with administration policymakers to debates about the Gaza genocide’s impact on the 2024 presidential election. (James Zogby’s weekly Washington Watch columns are a good place to track much of this; see this column in particular for his reflections on “the long journey to Arab American empowerment.”)
Uncommitted at the DNC
The work of the Uncommitted National Movement at the DNC pushed all this further and gave it focus. Though the movement did not win its main demand for a commitment to an arms embargo on Israel, or even its call for a Palestinian-American speaker, it had a significant presence that led to expanded support among delegates and considerable media attention. Uncommitted was represented by 30 delegates to the Convention based on the 700,000-plus votes it received, but by the end of the Convention it had convinced 300 Harris delegates to join them in signing a pledge as “ceasefire delegates.”
Both strategist Waleed Shahid and journalist Lisa Featherstone, writing in Jacobin, compared Uncomitted’s presence to that of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic Convention. The MFDP did not win its demands at that time but laid the groundwork for future civil rights victories. Shahid concludes that Uncommitted’s work “signals the building of a coalition that transcends individual battles to redefine the party’s stance on Palestinian human rights,” and adds:
“This coalition — uniting progressives, racial-justice advocates, labor unions, elected officials, Palestinian and Arab organizers, and Jewish organizations — is the blueprint for a new Democratic majority. One that says no more bombs, no more weapons for Israel’s military aggression against Gaza, and no more complicity in the occupation of Palestine. The next few weeks, months, and years, hopefully under a Harris administration, will be about solidifying and expanding this coalition.“
(On what was and was not won at the DNC, see also “ Palestinians Will Speak Whether Democrats Want Them to or Not” by Y.L. Al-Sheikh in The Nation and “ Palestine Won at the Democratic Convention” by James Zogby in his column for the Arab American Institute.)
The “inside” component of a peace and Palestine solidarity effort cannot succeed without constant pressure from “outside” in the form of protests, agitation, civil disobedience, and creative mass actions. The energy galvanized and the message sent by such protests over the last 10 months have been essential to keep a spotlight on the carnage in Gaza and US complicity with it, move public opinion, and force every elected official and public figure to take a stand.
But the demands raised in streets, encampments, and vigils must take root in and grow “inside” the Democratic Party and the halls of Congress if they are to be won. There will inevitably be tensions between those focused on building “outside” protest and those taking on the messy slog “inside.” The more communication and coordination is forged between inside and outside (and some groups are involved in both components) the more effective the overall work can be. The Not Another Bomb campaign launched by the Uncommitted Movement, which can and should gain traction throughout the electoral season and if necessary beyond, is one where inside and outside synergy has great potential.
At the cutting edge of internationalism
Right now, the Palestine Solidarity movement is at the cutting edge of the fight for peace, respect for international law, and a shift away from global domination and militarism as the anchors of US foreign policy. The Gaza genocide is seen throughout the world as an egregious example of the global dehumanization of peoples in the global South. It is the most blatant example of US double standards in posing as the great defender of a ‘rule-based international order”; in practice the US has one standard for its enemies or non-aligned countries and a totally different one for its allies and puppets.
In this context, the fight for Palestinian rights is simultaneously a fight for peace, for human rights for all, for respect for international law, and for ending the obscenity of so-called “defense” contractors making billions from human suffering. Making gains on any one of these fronts is bound up with making gains on the others. As the first sustained movement at scale with internationalism at its center in more than a decade, Palestine solidarity has already re-energized activists focused on these closely related battlefronts. And the impact it has already had on labor and every other sector of the progressive ecosystem shows its potential to make internationalism central once again to the entire movement’s thinking and practical work.
Translating that potential into a thick alignment of institutions, organizations and campaigns that can synergize “inside” and “outside” peace and solidarity work will not be easy. But it is a moment of wide popular awareness of the deep connection between struggles in this country and around the world against racist dehumanization, militarism, and dispossession. So even as we intensify our campaigns for # NotAnotherBomb and a permanent ceasefire, the time for a conversation about building for the long term is now.
Max Elbaum is a member of the Convergence Magazine editorial board and the author of Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (Verso Books, Third Edition, 2018), a history of the 1970s-‘80s ‘New Communist Movement’ in which he was an active participant. He is also a co-editor, with Linda Burnham and María Poblet, of Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections (OR Books, 2022).