Palestine Solidarity is Trapped! OUT OF THE MOVEMENT, TO THE MASSES!

By Caleb T. Maupin

Palestine Solidarity Protests in the United States represent the global majority opinion and a rising layer of the U.S. public. However, the protests are dominated by two leftist trends, both of which are keeping the movement isolated from the bulk of the U.S. public and its rising opposition to funding Israel.

It’s been a few years since October 7th. The White House has changed hands, and the public is sick of the bloodbath and starvation. Yet, bombs keep dropping round the clock, Gaza is starving and dying, and U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill for what humanity will undoubtedly remember as one of history’s ugliest genocidal crimes.

The U.S. government is paying for Israel’s crimes, but the U.S. public doesn’t stand behind them in doing so. Polls show Americans want less involvement in foreign conflicts, and the bulk of the population in both Red States and Blue States is increasingly opposed to U.S. support for Israel.

But the Palestine movement is in a complete rut of isolation. The slogans haven’t changed. The protest signs look exactly the same. Why is it that the protest movement demanding “No More Money for Israel’s Crimes” is unable to capture the rising layer of the population that agrees with them?

‘State Department Socialists’ Stage Managing Protest

The answer is that the Palestine movement is the private property of two distinct political currents which are permanently and willfully isolated from the U.S. public. Who runs the Palestine movement?

The primary entity that stages pro-Palestine rallies—widely heralded by the Associated Press and mainstream media before they even take place, and that finds itself grabbing headlines on CNN and other outlets—is Jewish Voice for Peace. This organization is dominated by members of the Democratic Socialists of America. It is pacifist in its approach and carries out bold acts of civil disobedience that get huge amounts of publicity.

However, Jewish Voice for Peace is part of the U.S. political establishment. DSA was started by the “State Department Socialists” of the 1960s—Michael Harrington, Irving Howe, and Gloria Steinem—along with a slew of followers of Max Shachtman. These entities often bragged about their collaboration with the CIA and steered the U.S. labor movement to support the Pentagon’s foreign policy.

Today, the DSA–Jewish Voice for Peace milieu is a collection of regime-change activists and State Department spooks. The older generation of Jewish “socialists” who turned against the Soviet Union is now replaced by a layer of non-white regime-change activists farmed from Ivy League schools and the Rhodes Scholar program. Mahmoud Khalil, who became a favored cause after Trump targeted him for deportation, has been an intelligence operative for years, working to bring down the government of Syria in coordination with the Muslim Brotherhood. Zohran Mamdani’s wife was also heavily involved in rallying the Muslim community to support Obama’s crusade to topple an independent government and give Israel airspace it could use when bombing Iran. Linda Sarsour is also notorious for her efforts to rally Muslims to support cruise missile attacks and even accommodate Israel. An article in Haaretz celebrates how she made sure that the “Women’s March” against Trump in 2017 didn’t contain a single anti-Israel sign.

While DSA originated among labor Zionists, Trotskyites and social democrats, today its primary activity is courting the Muslim vote for the Democratic Party and helping the image of the United States around the world. Sure, AOC voted for the Iron Dome, but her office is happy to shake hands in a photo op with some Imam, and she will happily listen to some “concerned” pacifist grandmothers. Sure, the U.S. is funding Israel, but anti-Israel Jews are protesting inside the U.S. Capitol building, showing that America has room for different views.

The U.S. maintains relations with many oil-rich Arab states, and the Muslim Brotherhood has been an important asset of U.S. intelligence since the 1950s. The U.S. bankrolling Israel’s crimes—something every Muslim will oppose—presents a problem for these relationships. Jewish Voice for Peace and DSA’s well-funded and highly publicized Palestine protests amount to nothing more than optics stunts: controlled opposition to help the U.S. and its Democratic Party save face as the genocide continues. This is the role this current has always played, since the days of peace parades sponsored by Riverside Church against the Vietnam War, when Cold War strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski chaired an organization called “Negotiate Now!” staffed by these same political forces. 

Whether its SANE/Freeze, United for Peace and Justice, Peace Action, War Resistors League or another name, these forces have always played the same role. The slew of organizations and coalitions staffed by Democratic Socialists of America, Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, “Liberation Road” and the Communist Party USA all function in the same way. They are a public relations division of the US State Department intended to soften America’s image as militaristic power to the world, and a way for the Democratic Party to court the peace vote at home, while carefully controlling the message.

PSL – Anti-Populism, a Woke Counter-Gang

The second current of pro-Palestine protesters seems more radical on its surface. Instead of being bankrolled by the CIA and the U.S. political establishment, it’s funded by pro-China billionaire Roy Singham. It gets less “face time” on MSNBC. Defense of Iran and the Houthis is occasionally heard from its bullhorns—between transgender and BLM virtue-signaling.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), the biggest remnant of Sam Marcy’s Workers World Party, runs the ANSWER Coalition, the People's Forum, and a whole cluster of voices speaking up against U.S. support for Israel. Their consistent anti-imperialist stances around the world set them apart from the DSA current. PSL sets up a stage and reserves permits for whatever the latest trendy liberal cause is, hoping to recruit yet another layer of 20-year-olds into its woke activist club that masquerades as a Leninist vanguard party. Most quit in a year or two, realizing the whole thing is just a protest hustle—a revolving-door fundraising operation, not a plan for moving the U.S. toward socialism.

From the 1980s to today, every U.S. war has been met with a two-pronged anti-war movement. The Gulf War was protested by two coalitions in Washington D.C.: one led by DSA and Communist Party USA members who assured a pacifist tone and arranged for members of Congress to speak; the other led by Marcyites who waved Palestine flags and chanted “1, 2, 3, 4—we don’t want your racist war!” This rivalry continued during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) functioning as the “big tent,” and Brian Becker’s ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) as the peaceful, legal, but multi-issue alternative.

During these years, Rabbi Michael Lerner and Leslie Cagan took all kinds of sectarian shots at Brian Becker and Sara Flounders, as the two factions battled for permits and donors. The DSA crowd wanted a pacifist tone and a single-issue message. The ANSWER Coalition wanted a leftist potpourri of issues (Mumia Abu-Jamal, U.S. troops out of the Philippines, “sex worker liberation”) included—along with muting any denunciations of anti-imperialist states.

What Do They Agree On?

While DSA and PSL may hate each other—with the boomer bosses of both camps having rivalries that go back before most of the Zoomer protesters were even born—the two currents agree on a fundamental assumption: the American people are the enemy.

The message is screamed shrilly into bullhorns at PSL rallies and more subtly stated at DSA–Jewish Voice for Peace events, but it’s there. The view is that America is an evil, racist settler country. The Red State Americans who are losing their jobs and homes and becoming more and more anti-war—even as they serve in the military out of economic desperation—are just “losing their privilege” and deserve to be poorer. To be a Trump supporter, a libertarian, an evangelical Christian, or to believe in “right-wing conspiracy theories” is an irredeemable, unforgivable crime.

Whether DSA or PSL is running the protest cage, you can be sure that no Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, or Alex Jones fans are welcome. This growing layer of anti-Israel Americans are a “basket of deplorables” as far as these organizers are concerned. Protesting Israel is to be reserved only for the wokest of the woke.

Even though Trump ran on a platform of ending wars, and even though there’s a clear break among his supporters over his betrayal of this promise—with Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene denouncing his moves, and Elon Musk talking of forming a new party—as far as the protest bureaucracy of aging leftists is concerned, being a Democrat is 1,000 times better than being a Republican. The anti-war movement must keep itself positioned right where it was in 1968—as the leftist flank of the Democrats.

The fruits of this “movement”—leftism as a college phase—can be seen all around us. “Communism” and “the movement” are now places for the Democrats and labor unions to try out different activist voices and utilize a “rent-a-mob” available on speed-dial to shout down their opponents. The hope is that some of the more skilled among them will “grow up” and become the next AOC after being properly groomed and vetted. Van Jones started out as a Maoist in Los Angeles. Now he’s a pro-Israel Democrat on CNN. Congressman Keith Ellison once worked with Freedom Road Socialist Organization in Minneapolis. This charade is a dead end for anti-imperialist politics, but it’s the bread and butter of those who have been running the game for decades.

The leftist charade does not match politics in 2025. The bulk of the American working class is pissed at the low-wage police state and opposes the moves toward World War III. They are also increasingly aware of the ruthless grip the Israel lobby has over the American establishment—and they oppose it. The rising awareness of Middle America accompanies a lot of confusion and backwardness, no doubt, but it’s where the energy is.

The future of America will not be determined by leftist activists, trendy hashtags, or virtue signals about some “marginalized group,” but by the overwhelming bulk of the population. The American people in their millions—Black, white, Arab, Latino, Christian, Muslim, secular, Red State, and Blue State—will make the future of this country. A movement aimed at them and channeling their energy and demand for a better future must be created—urgently.

Crypto-Zionism Controls Palestine Protests

As the bulk of working-class Americans awaken and become more and more anti-war, anti-establishment, and anti-Israel, PSL and DSA have nothing to offer them but their middle finger. Why? Because the ugly reality is that both political currents are led by crypto-Zionists.

This makes no sense on the surface. How can people who protest Israel non-stop be “crypto-Zionists?” Because Zionism is more than a political position. It is a mindset. Karl Marx condemned it in his writings as a young man. Lenin called it “the spirit of the Ghetto.” Zionism is anti-populism. It is the ideology of Jewish supremacism.

Zionism is the belief that Jews are so special, so superior, and chosen by God, and thus will always be persecuted by the inferior gentile masses. It was this mindset that led some Marxists in Russia to form the Jewish Bund, insisting they could never merge into a wider revolutionary working-class movement. It is this mindset that lurks behind the work of New Leftists like Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag, as well as neocons like Leo Strauss. It is anti-populism. The people are the enemy.

This is what the DSA current believes. DSA is the Democratic Party’s “socialists,” amid their woke, identity-politics obsession that sees “Rust Belt populism” as nothing more than white supremacy—despite its many non-white adherents. This is what PSL believes, and it was this mindset that drove Ukrainian-born lawyer Sam “Marcy” Ballan to build his collection of misfit teenagers to break windows in the 1960s in solidarity with Vietnam and the Black Panthers, and eventually mentor Brian Becker into being the anti-war straw boss he is today.

The idea is that the masses of people in America are irredeemable racists, especially if they are not “woke.” The idea is that any mass movement representing the rising anger of increasingly impoverished working people—their anger at the loss of civil liberties, dropping living standards, and endless wars—could only be “Nazi” because of its tone. This is a form of Zionism that opposes Israel simply because they see Israel as similar to the bulk of humanity—whom they hate. Zionism is anti-working class and anti-populism. 

The Palestine movement will remain trapped and isolated if it doesn’t break with leftism. The Rage Against the War Machine protests of February 19, 2023, and the calls for a new American party to give voice to the anti-war side of MAGA, are where the energy needs to be. Marching in a circle with a collection of angry teenagers raging against their parents and traditional gender roles is a dead end. Most Muslim Americans know this, but they see the desperate conditions in Gaza and know something must be done. They will hold their nose and support anybody who will do something to raise Palestine.

The Center for Political Innovation is here to say we offer a serious way forward. We are building a real, populist anti-war movement that says: money for jobs and schools in America, not weapons for Israel. We are saying “America First” does not mean “Israel First.” We are saying the power of the international bankers and big monopolies must be broken by a government of action that fights for working families. We are saying we must defend our constitution and freedoms from those who would overturn them in their drive for World War Three and a low wage police state.

If we are going to stop U.S. support for Israel, the only way to do this is: Out of the movement, to the masses! Break with the crypto-Zionist leftist protest cage, and build a movement to fight for American working families against globalism/imperialism.