The Democratic Socialists of America’s initial reaction to Hamas’s murders of more than 1,200 Israelis, the vast majority of them civilians, has brought a torrent of entirely merited criticism down upon the group. Liberals and leftists who have long championed Palestinian statehood and Israel’s total withdrawal from the West Bank, and who now oppose the obliteration of Gaza that Israel is threatening, found DSA’s promotion of what was effectively a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square to be outrageous. They found the initial failure of DSA’s national political committee to condemn Hamas correspondingly repugnant.

That’s also been the reaction of many DSA members, too. A number of them have been debating publicly leaving the organization—largely, older members, many of whom belonged to one of DSA’s two predecessor organizations, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) and the New American Movement (NAM). Some have belonged to one of those groups and then DSA for a full half-century.

I’m one of them.

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