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ULTRA-LEFTISM WON’T HELP FREE PALESTINE  
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Eric Blanc
October 7, 2025
Labor Politics
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_ Interview with Bashir Abu-Manneh & Hoda Mitwally on how US
activists can more effectively support Palestinians. Two years after
Oct 7, public outrage against Israel is widespread, yet grassroots
solidarity nowhere near as powerful as it needs to be. _

Pro-Palestinian protestors march in downtown Minneapolis, Oct. 6,
2024., Photo: Nicole Ki | MPR News (Minnesota Public Radio)

 

_While Trump’s ceasefire plan might provide relief from Israel’s
genocidal onslaught, Gaza has been decimated, and the proposed deal
would codify a vastly deteriorated situation for millions of
Palestinians._

_To discuss how American organizers might more effectively fight to
support Palestinians’ rights to freedom and self-determination, I
spoke with Bashir Abu-Manneh, who is writing a book provisionally
entitled _Disposable Palestinians_, and Hoda Mitwally, a member of
New York City Democratic Socialists of America and LSSA/UAW Local 2320
speaking in a personal capacity._

ERIC: I want to focus our conversation on the strategies and tactics
necessary for Americans to effectively support Palestine, but we
should first briefly address the current negotiations. We’ll see
whether Israel again scuttles a deal, but as of this writing, it seems
like we’re closer than before to a negotiated ceasefire agreement.
What’s your impression of Trump’s proposal, reactions to it on the
ground, and what the deal says about the relationship of forces in
Palestine, Israel, and the US?

BASHIR: This is an updated version of Trump’s 2020 Peace to
Prosperity vision — basically a plan to formally ratify the Israeli
occupation and the de facto annexation of swathes of the West Bank,
leaving Palestinians in enclaved bantustans with a series of
humiliating conditionalities to meet before calling the ghettos a
“state,” if ever. Back then, it was seen as a total victory for
Israel’s occupation and biblical messianic worldview, while
providing no rights for the Palestinians.

Given that the architect of the 2020 vision, Jared Kushner, also
drafted the current ceasefire proposal, it’s no surprise the new
ceasefire declaration rehashes the same logic. There’s one proviso:
now the conditions are infinitely worse for Palestinians after October
7. Gaza is flattened and destroyed, and the West Bank is dangerously
edging toward Gazafication.

According to the deal, Gaza will be demilitarized. Hamas will either
leave or surrender, with no guarantee Israel will ever withdraw from
Gaza or stop military operations there. Under the guise of
demilitarization, Israel will continue to target Palestinians when it
deems necessary — just as it targets Lebanon today even after the
ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah, a far more powerful group than
Hamas.

In fact, Hamas is expected to trade the hostages upfront for
Palestinian captives and prisoners and thus forego its only remaining
leverage, making it reliant on external players under the auspices of
the U.S. as the ultimate arbiter of the future of Palestinians in
Gaza.

The fact that Hamas has agreed to this U.S. ceasefire deal with a
‘Yes, but’ and is seeking to amend some clauses — after Israel
tried to assassinate its negotiators just the other day — shows the
extent of Hamas’s political and military degradation. October 7
produced the exact opposite of what Hamas dreamily expected to
achieve: more occupation, not less; the destruction rather than
expansion of the Axis of Resistance; genocide and the total
obliteration of Gaza. The reason Hamas is negotiating is because
it’s severely weakened and trapped.

What Palestinians in Gaza welcome about the deal is easy to
understand: it promises an end to the mass bloodshed, it takes mass
ethnic cleansing off the table for now, and it raises hopes for
reconstruction. No doubt this is better than mass death, endless
forced displacement, and population concentration in tinier slivers of
Gaza. But no one pretends this is a good deal.

ERIC: Right, though I imagine supporters of Hamas would argue that
they partially achieved their goal of isolating Israel at a moment
when it was normalizing itself in the Middle East.

BASHIR: How to safeguard Palestinian humanity and defend Palestinian
rights and presence in Palestine should be central to the principles
and calculations of progressives. That’s the politics Palestinians
deserve.

What is clear is that October 7 gave Israel the pretext for a genocide
that has cost Palestinians at least three percent of the Gaza
population and has obliterated Gaza — no education, electricity,
homes, health, safety, security, or water. Mass trauma is a
pathetically inadequate word for what Palestinians have experienced
since October 7.

Israel is responsible for its barbarism in Gaza and elsewhere, and it
has to be held accountable for its genocide. But I fail to see how all
this human cost can simply be framed as collateral damage for the sake
of achieving Israel’s increased isolation, especially since Israel
has succeeded in decimating Gaza for the foreseeable future,
jeopardizing the lives of multiple generations.

ERIC: If a ceasefire _is _reached and upheld, I worry that Trump
and establishment Democrats will say that “peace has been reached”
and that we don’t have to worry about Palestinians anymore. And for
Americans who don’t follow politics very closely, it might seem now
that there’s no more need to pressure Israel since “the war is
over.” Hoda, how do you think activists in the US could effectively
keep up pressure in solidarity with Palestine in such a new context?

HODA: That scenario you outline is a real possibility, and there’s
a risk it could weaken our solidarity movement.

I’m not optimistic about the final details of the ceasefire
framework and what it will mean for Palestinian sovereignty. The U.S.
has been a dishonest broker for decades. While Trump may superficially
appear to have pressured Netanyahu more than Biden, there hasn’t
been a real shift in the U.S.’s overall posture toward Israel. And
the agreement likely won’t contain any “sticks” to dissuade
Israel from attacking Gaza in the future, attacking Palestinians in
the West Bank, or attacking any other country in the region.

The onus will be on activists here to explain in the simplest possible
terms that Trump’s ceasefire is not a real, comprehensive peace
agreement. Some Palestine solidarity activists might wince at the word
“peace” due to its disingenuous use in the aftermath of the Oslo
negotiations.
[[link removed]] But
I think the Left here needs to reclaim it to build a broader anti-war
movement and to challenge establishment politicians. Our side
really _does_ want peace — and that can only come about by
honoring the rights of all Palestinians. Israel doesn’t want peace:
its status quo relies on daily violence and injustice against
Palestinians, even if the bombs on Gaza stop for now.

Given the ongoing negotiation talks, there are other key points of
pressure where we can be effective. The reconstruction of Gaza is
going to be a major point of contention, and we should fight to ensure
that Palestinians are provided sufficient resources to rebuild their
lives. Palestinians in Gaza are facing the worst conditions
imaginable: going forward, any US funds ought to be redirected to
making Gaza livable for Palestinians again, not to a genocidal,
apartheid regime that will likely try to further decimate Palestine if
given the opportunity.

ERIC: No matter what happens with this deal, it’s a real problem
that the US anti-war movement is weaker as an organized force than one
might expect given how unpopular
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and its conduct has become. And especially if Gaza is no longer in the
headlines, it will be more important than ever for large numbers of
people to be talking to their neighbors, co-workers, and fellow
students about why the fight is far from over. But we don’t yet have
that type of organized reach.

There are obviously huge external factors explaining the movement’s
relative weakness: repression, entrenched interests, and the
long-standing reluctance of Democratic Party centrists and aligned
groups to ever talk about Palestine. But even if we acknowledge all
those outside dynamics, there’s still a question for our side: Have
tactical or strategic errors prevented us from maximizing bottom-up
pressure to stop the genocide and cut off US funding for Israel?

HODA: You’re right to point out the external factors — they’re
very real. But I don’t think that’s the only reason our organized
pro-Palestine movement is smaller than it could be. Public opinion has
turned against Israel in the US, but I don’t think that’s
primarily because the movement has been strong. It’s mostly because
the horrors of Israel’s genocide are undeniable; it’s been
live-streamed to the entire world, and people can no longer ignore it.

Internally, I think we’ve failed to consistently build the biggest
and broadest coalition possible, a movement laser-focused on ending US
support for Israel’s atrocities. To do that, we would have to more
consistently work with people who don’t agree with us on every
single thing. It would require a greater number of leftists leaving
their comfort zone of being a powerless opposition, protesting on the
sidelines, expressing our moral outrage online. It would require
joining united-front, inside–outside efforts to win a permanent
ceasefire — and, if a deal is soon reached, to _enforce_ this
ceasefire against Israel’s belligerence — and to win a full arms
embargo. Fortunately, this get-your-hands-dirty strategy is starting
to make some real progress
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BASHIR: My sense is that external factors are absolutely key. If you
take campuses as an example, the repression has been tremendous.
People live in fear; there’s retaliation; there’s doxxing; people
lose jobs. I wouldn’t underestimate that — it disorganizes people
and makes them think twice.

ERIC: I agree, but shouldn’t we always expect the ruling class to
use repression wherever it can get away with it? And state repression
often backfires
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mass movements that raise demands that resonate with the broad public
and that involve as many people as possible — not just small cores
of activists.

I think part of the reason why repression has been so effective on
campuses is that, because of an excessive activist focus on
“security culture,” there was often a relatively high bar to entry
to getting involved, beyond a few mass democratic exceptions
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San Francisco State. And the encampments’ rhetoric was often kind of
inflammatory (and prone to misinterpretation), which undercut efforts
to involve and persuade others to join the fight for a ceasefire and
divestment.

That raises a question: what should be the movement’s united-front
demands and red lines?

HODA: In such a pivotal and urgent moment for the people of
Palestine, it doesn’t make sense for the US left to draw a minimum
program on the basis of ideological stances that don’t resonate
with public opinion
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Most Americans are horrified by Israel’s actions, but don’t yet
understand Gaza or Palestine primarily through the lens of Zionism.

For the first time in my lifetime, a majority of Americans disapprove
of Israel and agree that its actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.
They want a ceasefire; they want more humanitarian aid to go in;
they want
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against Israel. That creates a political opening we’ve never had. We
can channel that energy into a broad movement for divestment and a
full arms embargo, which will remain essential no matter what the
current ceasefire negotiations lead to. The way I see it: if you
oppose genocide and want the U.S. government to stop funding
Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, you belong in our movement.

BASHIR: How can you help people like the Palestinians, who suffer
daily, whose lives are totally dominated by Israeli occupation, who
live under an apartheid regime? Even Palestinians inside Israel have
no real chance of equality under Jewish supremacy. They also live in
fear as a result of the genocide and what Israel might do next —
inside Israel and in the West Bank.

If you’re organizing in the U.S., the question is: what are you
going to do to improve that situation? Too much energy here goes into
debating one state or two states or engaging in theoretical fights
around Palestinian resistance tactics. And frankly I don’t see that
as a useful debate here if your main goal is changing policy on the
ground for people who are suffering today. That’s what matters most.

Among Palestinians, there’s legitimate contestation about favored
outcomes and what liberation means. For a solidarity movement, I
don’t see why it should enter that terrain of debate. Uphold one
thing: unconditional support for the Palestinian right of
self-determination. That’s the fundamental right Israel has
violated. Fighting for that right by cutting off US military aid would
be a huge contribution to Palestinian welfare.

There are always going to be ideological discussions on the Left. But
if those become disablers that fragment the movement and make you less
effective at improving conditions on the ground, then I don’t know
what those discussions are for. Advocacy in the real world is about
power — how you challenge the workings of power, how you build
capacity, how you practice leverage. It’s the difficult work of
winning over people to a just cause.

And while students on U.S. campuses can shape the conversation, they
don’t have a lot of leverage to change policy. Many young people
support Palestine because it’s a moral cause — that’s good. But
if you’re going to build a mass movement among the broader working
class, you also need to look for ways to help people see how it is
in _their _interest to stop the genocide and stop funding Israel.
This may not be as intuitive as in a union organizing campaign
fighting for better wages and working conditions, but you can demand
that funds going to Israel go to public services in the US. Money for
schools and health care in the US and Gaza— not bombs. Make those
links — show how American foreign policy serves the elite and the
military and doesn’t serve the majority here or abroad. Without
that, Palestine remains only a moral cause, and moral-cause organizing
is hard to scale up as the links to material interests are hard to
see.

ERIC: I think that type of “no money for war” framing resonates
widely even with some Republican voters — a significant number of
people voted for Trump because they thought he’d end the wars.

That said, as an American Jew, I can say from personal experience that
debates over Zionism are basically inevitable in our families and our
communities. More generally, it seems that groups like the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA) and other anti-imperialist radicals do
have a responsibility to make a case against Zionism, even if at this
point it’d be counterproductive to make agreement on this a
precondition for joint action or for our electoral endorsements.

The 1960s are instructive
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so many young people got involved fighting the Vietnam War and then,
through the radicalizing experience of that mass movement, they
started asking wider questions about imperialism and the capitalist
system. Similarly, if we build a united widescale fightback against
arms to Israel (and push to include these demands and speakers in
anti-Trump actions like No Kings rallies), that’s actually the best
path towards helping large numbers of people start questioning deeper
issues like Zionism, American imperialism, and capitalism.

BASHIR: For me, the fundamental point is that fighting the occupation
and fighting the genocide is fighting Zionism where it matters.
You’re not saying, “We’ll put anti-Zionism on hold and come back
to it later.” Look at Israel: most members of Knesset are against a
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. If you fight to end the
occupation in those territories, you are fighting Zionism. This is the
frontline of Zionism and where it’s most vulnerable and exposed.

So it’s a matter of strategic focus, not fragmenting the movement
over doctrine and hypothetical questions. If people are working
against the occupation and for Palestinian self-determination, they
are on the front line of the fight with Zionism. It is not the only
thing progressives can do against Israel’s larger apartheid regime,
but it’s a main site of confrontation, which is also prioritized by
Palestinians inside Israel.

ERIC: Hoda, both you and I were delegates to the DSA convention
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Chicago this summer. My impression was that the underlying differences
there centered on whether we should be orienting primarily to left
activists or to people to our right. One of DSA’s leading left
caucuses, for example, argued
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the convention that DSA had chosen to “appease the most reactionary
sections of the working class” at the “cost of alienating the
advanced sections of the working class, who now mobilize to the left
of DSA readily and in huge numbers in the ongoing Palestine
movement.” What’s your take?

HODA: I’m not sure what specific phenomenon they’re referring to.
As far as I know, the only major industrial action in the U.S. related
to stopping the genocide was ILWU Local 10 blocking weapons shipments
to Israel at the Port of Oakland. Those actions are inspiring, and DSA
members were part of them. But if we’re going to stop Israeli
apartheid, we have to think bigger than one shipyard on the West
Coast, where the union and the workers already agree with us.

ERIC: I think what they’re referencing is more that some Palestine
activist groups here, which have led some of the bigger protests, have
insisted that DSA hasn’t been sufficiently anti-Zionist or
sufficiently critical of our endorsed elected officials.

BASHIR: The idea that a socialist movement should take strategic cues
from middle-class activists — that’s the problem. Why should that
layer set the line for a class movement?

There will always be segments of ethnic minorities who disagree with
how you frame an issue. So what? We’re socialists. Our aim is to
organize the working class in all its complexity and ethnic makeup.
That doesn’t mean one constituency gets political primacy — to
censor and shape what you say, how you articulate your struggle for
working class power. And since every ethnic or national group is
heterogeneous, and criss-crossed by competing class interests, there
are always going to be real political differences _within_ that
group. If socialists end up being silenced by sectional interests as
articulated by middle-class activists, we’re done.

ERIC: To be honest, I get the impulse towards ultra-leftism. I have a
toddler, and every day for the past two years I’ve woken up, read
the news about more kids slaughtered in Gaza, and just felt absolutely
devastated. And in those moments, I felt like expressing my outrage as
loudly and as intransigently as possible.

But I think there’s also another source of this ultra-left impulse:
some currents of leftists and Palestine activists have
a _pre-existing_ ideological orientation towards trying to break the
Left from the Democrats immediately or in the very near future. And I
think that’s part of the reason why there’s been so much focus
from those milieus in, for example, attacking Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez.

HODA: We need to think broadly and generously about what it means to
have federal electeds standing up for Palestine and Palestinians.
Until very recently, that simply wasn’t a feature of American
politics. We also need to understand the different roles of organizers
and electeds. For AOC, part of her unique power is that she has a
congressional vote and can pressure other congresspeople to support
bills like Block the Bombs.

It’s irresponsible when people on the Left spread misinformation
about AOC’s record. She has never voted for military aid to Israel,
she has never voted affirmatively for Iron Dome. She has consistently
voted against Israel and the military-industrial complex.

Yes, she has made some clumsy rhetorical moves many of us may disagree
with on Iron Dome and at the 2024 DNC. But I would argue rhetoric is
not the same as a bad vote. It makes no sense to focus so much
criticism on one of the few people in Congress who has generally been
on the right side of this fight from day one. We want to create an
incentive structure for politicians to start voting against funding.
If we focus our fire on the electeds closest to us more than on those
who are still vehemently backing Israel, it will be very hard for us
to ever force a majority of American politicians to cut off the funds.

And while I think AOC is wrong on the offensive/defensive arms
distinction, too much of the US activist left has incorrectly made
Iron Dome into a make-or-break symbol, when in reality it’s a tiny
part of American funding for Israel. Even before it was established in
2011, American military support already gave Israel a huge military
edge against all its neighbors — this goes all the way back to the
Lyndon Johnson administration.

ERIC: Beyond AOC, how do you look at the relationship between
Palestine solidarity and leftist electoral campaigns within the
Democratic Party?

HODA: Alongside a revitalized labor movement, electoral politics is
one of the most effective ways to build the Left and to fight against
the apartheid regime. I understand people’s frustrations with the
Democrats, obviously — Biden chose to sacrifice his legacy on the
altar of genocide, wiping out all the decent steps forward he took
domestically. And so many of us were heartbroken by Bernie’s loss.
But winning the presidency was a longshot in 2020 — and one of the
main reasons we again have a real Left in the US after decades in the
wilderness is because of Bernie’s insurgent primaries inside the
Democratic Party.

Similarly, the Uncommitted movement may not have been powerful enough
to force the DNC to meet its demands, but it succeeded in mobilizing
over 700,000 people, and it paved the way for some of our recent
successes. It’s a big deal that the Congressional Progressive Caucus
— which represents roughly half of House Democrats —
recently endorsed
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Bombs and that twenty-four Senators voted to support Bernie’s bill
to stop sending bombs and munitions to Israel.

I don’t see why we’d abandon this strategy when it’s bearing
fruit. One of the biggest developments of the past year is how the
Democratic base has lost faith in the party establishment and has
turned leftwards. We see that in Bernie and AOC’s big rallies and in
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, which brilliantly centered working-class
affordability demands alongside a commitment to justice for
Palestinians.

Zohran won his primary almost a year to the day after Jamaal Bowman
lost. Bowman’s loss scared so many politicians into thinking they
couldn’t challenge Israel, but Zohran’s win has done the exact
opposite: it’s emboldening candidates everywhere to finally take a
stand. In the span of a year, we’ve caused a massive crisis for
AIPAC. They can’t cakewalk into election wins anymore, because real
constituencies of people will vote them out.

BASHIR: The longer-term perspective remains to build a massive
progressive movement around the American working class. That’s the
best chance to change American foreign policy so you stop genocides
and wars in the Middle East. It’s a hard, long road. You’re
building, in a sense, from scratch.

So win over people who voted for Trump or Harris by explaining that
billionaire-bought establishment politicians will never satisfy their
material needs, and that they’re better off with a socialist
alternative. It’s tough, but without focusing on that broader
working-class agenda and without focusing on winning over people who
don’t already agree with you, I have a hard time imagining how
you’ll build enough power to seriously change US policy towards
Israel and the Middle East. And you really do need a huge amount of
power, because US ruling class support for Israel is not really about
Israel or Palestine per se — it’s because the American elite needs
to dominate in the Middle East to control oil, sell arms, and syphon
off petrodollars.

ERIC: One thing I’d add is that we need to intervene in the 2028
primary. One reason Uncommitted arose is that there wasn’t any
pro-Palestine primary challenger — there
wasn’t _any_ challenger. We can’t make that mistake again.
Whoever ends up being our candidate in 2028 may not necessarily share
our full position on Israel — Bernie certainly never has — but I
do think they need to at least be calling for an end to the genocide
and for cutting off military funding.

BASHIR: True, but no matter who ends up winning the Democratic
nomination in 2028, you have to assess your voting tactics in relation
to an assessment of the parties’ social base. Because the Democratic
base is so much more
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than the Republican base, it makes it more likely for you to succeed
in pushing a Democratic president to cut off funding.

ERIC: My last question has to do with labor organizing. Workplace
disruption is one of our main sources of leverage
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as we saw in the recent general
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Italian workers in solidarity for Gaza. What do you think it would
take to move in that direction in the US?

HODA: DSA’s campaign Labor for an Arms Embargo
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doing exciting and unifying work that is pointing the way forward on
how we can get the labor movement to use its power for Palestine. But
we don’t often talk about what “get active in your union”
actually means. It means building trust and relationships and doing
the slow, tedious work with your co-workers so you can move people to
action.

On the Left, we sometimes carry a romantic idea that the masses are
ready to be activated at a moment’s notice for our goals, as if
they’re disciplined soldiers in a reserve unit, and the only thing
stopping them from taking action are union bureaucrats or Democratic
misleaders. But that’s just not the reality on the ground in the US.

Many workers are horrified by the genocide but don’t yet see the
relationship between what happens at work and the politics carried out
in their name as Americans. In that context, don’t make your first
appearance at a union meeting be a demand for a pro-Palestine
resolution — people will be wary. Be as invested in building your
union as you are in using it for broader social justice aims. Earn
your co-workers’ trust. Show you care about your union; know its
governance; understand the contract.

This practical piece is too often missing and this gap produces
conflict, especially between veteran union members who have
experienced decades of decline and newer, more zealous union members
who sometimes carry a student-movement style into long-standing
workplaces. Learn to be approachable and dependable unionists so that
eventually your unions can act with teeth on Palestine.

BASHIR: You’re asking unions to take a foreign-policy position. But
it’s not intuitive why they should. So you have to be patient and do
the political legwork to build trust and to show step by step how
American foreign policy in the Middle East degrades rights and
conditions here.

Don’t just dump righteous moralism on workers who are trying to feed
their families while working two or three jobs. Many workers don’t
see the link; it has to be built. It takes time, but you need to focus
on persuading working people if you’re going to build a movement
powerful enough to transform the United States and its foreign policy.

_SUBSCRIBE TO LABOR POLITICS [[link removed]]
By Eric Blanc · Launched 4 years ago
Analyses of union organizing and working-class politics_
 

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* Palestinians
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