The fall of Ben Shapiro marks the Zionist right’s cultural defeat, yet it also marks the moment when the “progressive” Zionists are about to swoop in. Now that the Netanyahu wing of Zionist settler-colonialism has lost out within America’s popular consciousness, it’s Zionism’s liberal faction that’s becoming the main anti-Palestine propaganda tool.
This is what anti-Zionists must understand about the enemy that we are facing: just because the most openly ethnic supremacist Zionists have isolated themselves, doesn’t mean Zionism itself has been defeated. Our ruling class is going to pivot to a different means for selling occupation, settlement, and extermination; one where supposed friends of Palestine promise that they’re going to reform the Zionist entity into being a humane state, while the Zionists simply carry on with their crimes.
To identify the deceptive tactics that the “progressive” Zionists are using, we must look at the class forces that support the project at “reforming” the Zionist project. These forces consist of an alliance between the more cosmopolitan colonizers who share an “enlightenment” colonial mindset, in which the settlements are viewed unfavorably but Jewish supremacy is seen as basically good; and the Palestinian bourgeoisie within the occupied territories, who as a rule collaborate with Israel in attacking Palestine’s working masses.
This is the partnership that was warned about in Strategy for the Liberation of Palestine, the 1969 work by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The PFLP pointed out how unless we account for the class interests of the actors within this conflict, we’ll be fooled by those who seek to disguise colonialism as something progressive: “The revolution is science and scientific thought looks for tangible facts. We will not be misled by deceptive mottoes and slogans which are at variance with the facts and which are launched by certain class forces in defense of their interests. The Palestinian bourgeoisie that now lives in Palestine under Zionist occupation is not among the forces of the revolution although it has not manifestly associated itself with Israel and will in reality remain the class force through which the enemies will always try to defeat the revolution and stop it in the middle of the road.”
Right now, the liberal Zionist PAC J Street is using Palestine’s capitalist class as just such a tool for gatekeeping the pro-Palestine struggle. J Street is advancing a program where the Palestinian Authority, the collaborationist force run by Palestine’s comprador bourgeoisie, partners with the Arab states to form a demilitarized Palestinian state. Which is to say a “Palestinian state” that’s not a real state for the Palestinians at all, because it wouldn’t have any means to protect itself against the colonial forces. Within the liberal Zionist narrative, after these reforms are enacted Israel will surely stop all kinds of aggressive actions, and will surely end its internal apartheid policies. Which is pure and absurd fantasy, but it’s the fantasy that groups like J Street need to sell to fulfill their role in the colonial project.
J Street says that in order to disarm the Palestinian resistance, and thereby make way for such a “Palestinian state,”
the US should maintain pressure on Qatar, Turkey, and Egypt to convince Hamas to hand over its heavy weapons and to transfer responsibility for internal security in Gaza to an alternative force. The timing and mechanics for implementing such an arrangement are subject to further negotiations, as is a potential program through which Hamas and other militants would hand over their small arms and be reintegrated as civilians into Gazan society. Parallel to disarmament, the role of maintaining internal security within Gaza – previously carried out by Hamas-aligned police forces – must be transferred to an alternative force. The early deployment of the International Stabilization Force is essential to bolster the ceasefire and to support the training of an alternative Palestinian police force, which would operate in coordination with the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG).
It’s J Street’s promotion of the NCAG that gives away the true intentions of the “progressive” Democrats towards Palestine. The NCAG is a tool for managing the Gaza genocide, created by the Trump White House as part of its colonial governance project the “Board of Peace.” Writes Yara Hawari from Al-Shabaka about how the NCAG is being used in practice:
The NCAG was established under the oversight of US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) as part of the second phase of the ceasefire deal, which the Israeli regime has repeatedly violated. The BoP’s composition and mandate remain unclear, despite its endorsement by UN Security Council Resolution 2803 as the primary body overseeing reconstruction and interim administration in Gaza. Yet, according to its draft charter circulated to prospective member states, Trump, as BoP chairman, is granted sweeping authority to shape membership, control subsidiary bodies, and exercise decisive influence over strategic policy and implementation…Gaza is in urgent need of immediate relief, recovery, and reconstruction, some of which the NCAG might facilitate. Yet it is also in need of a political solution that ends the genocide, siege, and occupation. Without a political solution, the NCAG will serve as a mechanism of genocide management and a political instrument that entrenches the very conditions that made it possible.
The liberal Zionists do not offer a solution that would change the character of these instruments for colonial violence. The genocidal nature of the NCAG and the BoP would not go away under a “progressive” U.S. president. We know this because J Street—whose program absolutely represents how a “democratic socialist” administration would realistically act—outright states that it wants the U.S. to facilitate the disarming of Palestine’s resistance. To render the Palestinians without any way of defending themselves against the occupier, which we’re supposed to believe will suddenly give up its genocidal goals if a “progressive” colonial leader replaces Netanyahu.
Moreover, the “Hamas needs to disarm” position is in itself pro-genocide; it props up the core narrative justifying the genocide, which says that Israel has to be supported in defending against “terrorism.” The “progressives” have used this idea to rationalize various degrees of support for aid to the Zionist entity, like with AOC’s statement that Washington must fund the Iron Dome as a moral imperative. This is how the “progressives” corral their followers into being anti-resistance, and supporting the Zionist entity’s normalization.
The experiences of Palestine’s liberation struggle show us how to resist these manipulations. When we study the literature of those who’ve been resisting Palestine’s destruction, we gain the skills to stop our own popular movements from being corrupted by this “friendly” colonial agenda.
“Progressive” Zionism is going to be what the empire presents as a substitute for the Trump-Netanyahu breed of anti-Palestinian racism. As time goes on, we’ll witness developments that are made to seem like decisive victories for Palestine, like the decline of AIPAC; while also seeing a rise in prominence for forces like J Street. We must separate the liberal Zionists from international solidarity organizing, not letting them gain legitimacy as “allies” of the Palestinian cause.
These actors are entrenched within the unions due to the Democratic Party’s defining role in organized labor, but we can go into organized labor without enabling liberal Zionism. The key is to build institutions for struggle that are independent from the Democratic political machine, letting us operate upon a foundation of principled anti-imperialism. The Palestinian resistance doesn’t act as if the Palestinian Authority is the only viable avenue for gaining power, and tail after it out of “pragmatism.” This is what the occupiers and the collaborators want the resistance to do, but the struggle’s participants won’t capitulate. If we refuse to give up our independence, like Palestine’s revolutionaries have, then the imperial co-optation forces won’t be able to touch us.
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