Since Palestinians have no democratic means to fight for their freedom and against Israeli domination, the primary task of the American left is to use our democratic leverage to weaken Israel’s genocidal military capacity. Between 2019 and 2023, the United States supplied Israel with at least 68% of its weapons. Israel relies on the United States for its air advantage, with a growing fleet of F-15s and F-35s that are manufactured and repaired in the United States. Additionally, from October 2023 to July 2024, the United States has sent Israel nearly $6.5 billion in bombs and other munitions, according to a senior Biden administration official. If our government ended military aid to Israel, this would significantly weaken Israel’s ability to engage in its genocidal war against Palestinians and the armed resistance. We should focus our strategy directly and firmly on fighting U.S. military aid to Israel.
Right now, our movement has been unable to meaningfully affect the flow of weapons to Israel, despite the fact that 66% of voters support a ceasefire and 56% of Democrats believe that Israel is carrying out a genocide. In a recent poll, 62% of respondents who voted for Biden in 2020 believe that the United States should condition military aid to Israel on Israel stopping the war in Gaza. This hostility towards Israel in the United States is significantly higher than it was during the 2018 Great March of Return in Gaza or the 2021 Sheikh Jarrah protests in the West Bank. In addition, the largest mobilizations this country has ever seen for Palestine in the streets have been accompanied by the largest student protests since the Vietnam War.
This increased support has not translated into increased political pressure to end military aid to Israel. Any mitigation of support from the Biden administration is often superficial: the brief pause that the administration placed on transfers of 2000 lb bombs to Israel was quickly reversed with a plan to send 500 lb bombs to Israel instead. Congress has also taken steps to quell support for Palestine and protests against military aid to Israel through legislation such as the No Tax Dollars for Encampments Act, which would cut federal funding for schools that do not immediately remove encampments.
Supporting Palestine from within the United States did not begin and will not end with the Uncommitted movement’s attempt to influence the Democratic presidential nomination. This impressive campaign mobilized over 700,000 people across the country to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary, to protest Biden’s intransigence towards the demand of a ceasefire and arms embargo. This enabled a handful of uncommitted delegates at the DNC to organize delegates around the demand for an arms embargo and permanent ceasefire. Although this campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, it demonstrated that the genocide is a critical issue for voters across the country.
Our primary tasks now should be to take advantage of the groundswell of support for Palestine to 1) organize grassroots campaigns and apply pressure, including through our unions, to end weapons transfers to Israel and 2) to elect more members of Congress that will always vote against military aid to Israel.
On the first task, pressure campaigns such as Mask Off Maersk, spearheaded by the Palestinian Youth Movement, could be highly effective at increasing barriers to weapons transfer. Maersk is the primary weapons logistics firm managing weapons transfers to Israel from the United States through its membership in the Maritime Security Program (MSP), which enlists commercial ships to transport weapons for the military. By highlighting the complicity of weapons logistics companies in the genocide, environmental destruction, and dangerous working conditions for civilian mariners, this campaign seeks to build a public pressure campaign to get Maersk to unenroll from the MSP program. As the largest single firm in the MSP, this would make the transport of weapons to Israel significantly harder for the United States.
Similarly, seven large labor unions – including the UAW and the NEA, the largest union in America – have recently supported the demand for an arms embargo, and this presents an excellent opportunity to build the political movement for an arms embargo beyond this election cycle. Our task should be to engage these labor unions in organizing for candidates who support an arms embargo in as many congressional districts as is possible. These unions will also play a key role in uplifting pressure campaigns like Mask Off Maersk, by upholding boycotts and educating their membership on the necessity of labor unions engaging in international solidarity.
Then, the second task would complement these grassroots efforts with an electoral program whose messaging and analysis is similarly focused on disrupting military aid. If the American left’s strategy was dependent in the short term on the cultural rejection of Israel as a concept, it would be crucial to define a red line for endorsements, supporting only Congressional representatives that rejected a two-state solution. If we believe, however, that ending military aid is the most significant political intervention that socialists in the United States can make, our strategy is far less dependent on the rhetoric of the politicians we elect, and instead should be based on how they will vote on military aid to Israel.
Currently, there are only a handful of members of “the Squad” in Congress that consistently vote against military aid to Israel. Of these, Jamaal Bowman (#8 in the rankings of the most pro-Palestine representatives) was recently defeated in a primary election after AIPAC spent over $14 million to unseat him, the most ever spent in a Congressional primary. Cori Bush (#2 in the same ranking) faced a similar uphill battle as AIPAC-affiliated groups spent over $8 million on a primary challenger to unseat her. In this election cycle, the Palestine solidarity movement has lost two votes against military aid to Israel. The ability of AIPAC to unseat candidates will also send a chilling message across the country to other representatives: their seats could come under attack if they dare to oppose weapons transfers.
Many socialists have criticized members of the Squad for their rhetorical positions on a two-state vs a one-state solution or for their characterizations of the October 7th attacks. Of course, our movement would be much stronger if our congressional representatives took stronger positions in support of Palestine, but in the absence of representatives that are willing to do that and given the severity of the circumstances, we have an obligation to support anyone who will vote against military aid to Israel right now.
Based on the strategy laid out above, our support for Congressional representatives should not be based on their shared commitment to a specific vision or solution to the occupation. It should be based on an instrumental understanding of the necessity of using political action to end military aid to Israel in order to facilitate Palestinian liberation. Rather than evaluating our strategy based on how closely we are adhering to a broad set of ideological principles, we should evaluate all aspects of our strategy based on how likely they are to impact military aid to Israel to strengthen the position of the Palestinian resistance.
For example, an $18 billion sale of F-15 aircrafts to Israel was paused after surprising holdouts from members of the House and Senate Foreign Affairs Committees. Rep. Gregory Meeks and Sen. Benjamin Cardin, neither of whom are progressives, were responsible for this six month hold. Meeks received over over $300k from the pro-Israel lobby in 2024. These holdouts were the closest the Biden administration has come to an arms embargo, with almost zero relationship to the broader pro-Palestine movement. If we were to pack Congress with staunchly pro-arms embargo representatives, this temporary pause could be transformed into a longer or even permanent arms embargo.
Our objective in the imperial core is crucial – just as the Carnation Revolution was integral to ending Portuguese imperialism abroad, we must build political power to end military aid to Israel. A prominent leader in the Lebanese resistance said of the Uncommitted campaign: “If the pressure and opposition continues in the United States, this will open a door of hope. Of course, there are other countries that have [denounced] Israel, like Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, and Cuba, and we salute them for the pressure they are placing on Israel. But at the end of the day, the American position is the decisive one.”
It is our task to push beyond the Uncommitted campaign to build long-lasting political power that will facilitate an end to this genocidal war, the siege of Gaza, the unjust imprisonment of Palestinians, and the occupation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.