This is from the book I’m writing, which will be called “When Tears Can’t Save Them: Why the pro-Palestine movement failed to stop a holocaust, and how it can still win.”
In September of 2026, when the United Kingdom began sanctioning the West Bank’s settlements, the lack of a response from the Trump White House struck many as curious. The Netanyahu government spoke against the UK’s decision, so why would Washington not oppose it? Media speculations leaned towards the idea that Trump and Netanyahu were having behind-the-scenes friction, which was more believable after this development. But the deeper reason had to do with a shift in the U.S. empire’s strategy towards Palestine; one where the goal is now to take credit for whatever negotiations come out of Palestine’s anti-colonial war, while expanding the persecution of those who’ve actually been fighting for Palestinians.
It’s become clear that our ruling class believes “Israel” cannot survive in its present form; which doesn’t mean our rulers aren’t still trying to preserve the Jewish state, but it does show they’ve been forced to concede on critical fronts. If the imperialists get their way, in the long term Palestine’s genocide will come to have the same function as the Nazi German genocide, where we’ve seen the rise of a “Holocaust industry” that profits from an unresolved generational trauma.
We already see a batch of media personalities, like Mehdi Hasan, who’ve been making careers out of speaking about Palestine while assisting the imperial hegemon. And if the UK’s sanctions successfully bring about a two-state solution, as the British government says it’s hoping for, then the imperialists will indeed be able to turn Palestine into another “independent” neo-colonial state. But this is only if the next changes in Palestine happen on the hegemon’s terms, which both the Palestinian resistance and its supporters are not going to let happen.
Both Britain and the U.S. have been accelerating efforts to crush Palestine solidarity organizing, which tells us so much about the motives of these leaders who are now claiming to care about Palestinian lives. In July 2026, the UK arrested 166 people for speaking up against the criminalization of Palestine Action. Then in August, the U.S. Treasury Department placed Masar Badil (the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement) under sanctions. It was this action that caused Masar Badil to observe how Washington is seeking to determine what kinds of anti-colonialism deserve to exist; which fits with the U.S. posture in which the UK’s concession on Palestine is seen as acceptable, but Palestine supporters are increasingly treated as terrorists. Wrote Masar Badil about Washington’s blacklisting of the Movement’s global friends:
Tomorrow, we may succeed in removing one name from a list, but if the mechanism that allows the effects of these decisions to be extended into other countries remains intact, the problem will simply find a new name. The issue is not only who is on the list, but how much power we are prepared to grant to those who make it…In the Palestinian case, there is another contradiction that is difficult to ignore. The United States presents these sanctions in the language of security and counterterrorism, but Washington is not a neutral arbiter on the question of Palestine. It is the principal political, military and diplomatic power supporting the Zionist regime. It provides weapons, military cooperation and political protection while our people continue to confront genocide in Gaza, settler colonialism, displacement, killing and imprisonment throughout Palestine. The contradiction is clear: Those who arm and protect the colonizer also want to reserve for themselves the right to determine which forms of resistance to colonialism are legitimate and which are not.
It is this hypocritical nature of the imperial “human rights” advocates that we must expose as the liberal Zionist faction ramps up its PR tour, and seeks to sanctify the genocide through progressive rhetoric. The UK government represents the imperial faction that will swoop in to rehabilitate Zionism, joining with the European Commission, the “humanitarian” NGOs, and the other promoters of “reconciliation” with the colonizers. The Trump wing has decided to let the liberal Zionists fulfill this mission, because MAGA still depends on support from the ruling class and the ruling class now overall desires such damage control. This doesn’t mean the West Bank sanctions aren’t a victory, but like all victories in this fight, the true credit goes to the actual anti-Zionist forces. It’s the Palestinian freedom fighters and their global allies who got us this far, the imperial “humanitarians” still aren’t even doing the bare minimum; a principled stand against the genocide would mean boycotting all “Israeli” products, but the liberal Zionists are still hoping to strengthen the “good” colonists.
This is a real gain for the Palestinian cause, but we must respond to it by redoubling our struggle against the liberal Zionists, rather than rewarding them. To stop them from setting back the cause, we’ll have to combat the crypto-Zionist agents within pro-Palestine spaces, who’ve been able to seize the spotlight within our discourse as the movement has stagnated.
The difference between these pro-normalization agents, and the authentic enemies of Zionism, is that the covert normalizers preach a politically correct version of “anti-Zionism.” They haven’t let go of their Judeophilic biases, even as Jewish institutions have continued to overwhelmingly assist the holocaust. They want to keep repeating the “both sides” narratives, and the idea that Zionism victimizes Jews too. It’s this framing of the genocide that our government will increasingly propagate, because it’s what can make liberal Zionism appear reconcilable with supporting Palestine.
At the same time that ever-more people get targeted for speaking up on Palestine, our ruling institutions will lift up the “Palestine ally” grifters who condemn the resistance, and who treat Jews as the eternal victims. This is what we’ve seen as George Galloway has gotten de-banked, while Mehdi Hasan hasn’t had anything happen to him. When Hasan Piker condemned the resistance, he was no doubt trying to become one of these personalities who’s allowed to profit from Palestine, and who avoids provoking the empire’s wrath.
The problem the “peace” psyop faces is that the movement’s ranks are increasingly catching on to it. More and more Palestine supporters have been pointing out how harmful and phony the Judeophilic posture is; and thereby, they’ve been breaking from the identity politics worldview that says you can never “speak over” someone from a certain group. The movement is preemptively ejecting the next wave of normalization advocates, and this will let pro-Palestine circles maintain cohesion during our next fights. The question is how effectively we’ll manage to rally the broader working class towards real solidarity actions with Palestine, and overcome the attempts to chill the people into submission.
————————————————————————
If you appreciate my work, I hope you become a one-time or regular donor to my Patreon account. Like most of us, I’m feeling the economic pressures from our era of accelerating inflation, and I need money to keep fighting for a new system that works for all of us. Go to my Patreon here.
To keep this platform effective amid the censorship against dissenting voices, join my Telegram channel.
