April 26, 2021
Last week, a fascist mob swept through occupied Jerusalem to take part in anti-Palestinian pogroms, attacking Palestinians in the streets and in their own homes, all with the backing of the police. This racist violence during the holy month of Ramadan serves as yet another example of what Palestinians and people of good conscience have been saying for far too long: Zionism is Racism and Israel is an Apartheid State.
While such unfettered fascist violence — complete with chants of “Death to Arabs” and “Burn their towns” — should terrify everyone, it must be understood that settler violence towards Palestinians is also a normal, everyday part of the Zionist philosophy and project backed by the state of Israel. Mainstream “liberal” Zionists will attempt to whitewash these pogroms, saying that “this isn’t who we are,” but we know these fascist mobs are the true face of Zionism and the representatives of the Israeli State’s objectives.
Zionism is, after all, a settler-colonialist movement whose principal goal is to establish and maintain a Jewish ethnostate in historic Palestine, which has always required eliminating the indigenous Palestinian people from the land. In much the same way that white supremacist logic is meant to justify and normalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous people and the hyperexploitation of Black and Brown people in America, Jewish supremacy is the justifying logic for Israel’s ongoing disposession and elimination of the Palestinian people and their hyperexploitative system of apartheid. It is not a coincidence, then, that these pogroms are happening as hundreds of Palestinians in East Jerusalem are facing forced imminent evictions by Israeli settlers.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) continue to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people, and we in the BDS & Palestine Working Group call on all US-elected officials, especially DSA-endorsed politicians, to join us in not only denouncing the anti-Palestinian progroms in Jerusalem, but also in supporting Palestinian civil society’s antiracist Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) call to pressure Israel into finally complying with international law.
For decades now, Israel has refused to comply with international law by continuing its illegal settlement building and population transfer into the occupied territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. As long as those in power — in Israel, the US, and elsewhere — refuse to act to stop Israel’s injustices, we can only expect more Palestinian suffering in the years to come, just as the world witnessed this past week and just as Palestinians have been experiencing for a century.
We must hold those in power to account.
To these ends, we also call on all of our comrades in DSA chapters across the nation to redouble their efforts in support of the BDS movement. As socialists, we understand the interconnectedness of all of our struggles under capitalism — that until all of us are free, none of us are free. Last night was a very violent example of why DSA continues to reject racism, colonialism, imperialism, and fascism, and why we must continue in our unequivocal support for and mobilization around the full and total boycott of Israel until it fully complies with international law.
This is how we continue to stand with Palestine, and this is how we fight for the just future we seek.