Defining Democratic Socialists of America

By Paul Le Blanc

Published 8 May, 2026

“Defining Democratic Socialists,” by Paul Le Blanc, first appeared on Against the Current No. 242, May/June 2026. A slightly edited version is now being republished on LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal and Communis with permission from the author and ATC.

A User’s Guide to DSA: 5 Debates That Define the Democratic Socialists
Edited by Stephan Kimmerle, Philip Locker, and Brandon Madsen. 
Seattle, WA: Labor Power Publications, 2025. 459 pages. 
See www.labor-power.org.

A User’s Guide to DSA: 5 Debates That Define the Democratic Socialists serves a dual function. Most obviously, it connects readers with the largest organization on the U.S. Left today — Democratic Socialists of America, whose membership has sky-rocketed from a few thousand mostly aging and inactive old-timers to 100,000 newly-minted socialist adherents. (It has been estimated that only 10% of DSA members are active — which would make the number of DSA activists “only” about 10,000 — significantly larger than any other socialist or communist group in the United States.) These adherents and activists are mostly young. They have been energized not only by the intensifying social, economic, political and environmental crises of the past couple of decades, but also the phenomenal impact of open, self-identified socialists in the electoral arena — from Bernie Sanders to the Congressional left-of-center “squad” headed by the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, and the remarkable 2025 mayoral victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York City.

The other function of this valuable collection is to draw readers into a series of discussions and debates among committed DSA members, through which Marxist theory is being connected to politically serious, outward-reaching activism in the United States. These are not critiques from the sidelines but contending reports and proposed battle-plans from those laboring for a transition to socialism in the near future. The book’s 38 articles represent a broad range of opinion within DSA — mostly from members of the more than thirteen political caucuses currently influencing the organization’s thinking and policies. It should be added that the great majority of DSA members belong to no caucus, and a few authors in this volume (including myself) are non-caucus members.

Building a socialist alternative

Groundwork, a substantial component of DSA’s moderate wing, offers this useful listing of “five key interlocking crises in capitalism” (p. 316):

• First, the existential threat to human civilization posed by the climate crisis.
• Second, the advancing threat posed by the far right to multiracial democracy.
• Third, the continuing threat of US imperialism to world peace and the global South’s laboring classes.
• Fourth, standards of living in the US are in precipitous decline, causing social and economic instability and the possibility of real political realignment.
• Fifth, attacks on women’s bodily autonomy and the rights of gender and sexual minorities have continued to oppress working people in the US and the world at large.

Groundwork member Ashik Siddique is a co-chair of DSA. The other co-chair is Megan Romer, from the far-left Red Star caucus. She stresses the interlocking aspects of the various issues. “We view them from a socialist perspective and see that none of them stand alone,” she notes. “Immigration is not separate from labor justice, which is not separate from environmental justice, which is not separate from housing rights. They are connected because all of them are symptoms of capitalism” (p. 24).

From a different point on the DSA political spectrum, Reform and Revolution caucus member Philip Locker — an editor of this volume — offers a key definition of socialism that emphasizes its grounding in Marxist essentials: “Understanding the centrality of the working class is at the core of the revolutionary socialist tradition. It was on this basis that Marx argued for the revolutionary idea that socialism is the self-emancipation of the working class. This profoundly democratic idea is the beating heart of authentic Marxism” (p. 304). This is “profoundly democratic” because of how Locker understands the U.S. working class:

The working class, the majority of the US population, is compelled to sell its labor for a wage to survive. This includes teachers, nurses, baristas, tech workers, service workers, construction workers, manufacturing workers, public sector workers, workers at non-profits, etc. It includes both low-paid workers and high-paid workers (who are paid well because they have built strong unions or due to their skills being in high demand for a time). The working class includes blue and white collar workers, manual and intellectual labor, highly skilled and less skilled labor.

He adds: “The working class also includes the family and dependents of wage-earners, such as children, retired workers, and stay-at-home parents in working-class families who work to raise the next generation of workers or to care for the elderly.” More than this, Locker notes, “women are part of the paid workforce more than ever,” and “the working class is disproportionately made up of people of color” (p. 303).

Most DSA members agree with these points from the members of Groundwork, Red Star, and Reform and Revolution. But the organization struggles over what to do about it all. “Our Tasks and Perspectives,” a key Groundwork document reproduced in this book, puts the matter starkly:

One may say that the fundamental tool of Marxist analysis is class, and in the final analysis our goal may be a classless society, but if our organizing does not meet people where they are — in their own experience of their oppression, which includes factors beyond class per se — we can hardly hope to unite the class. To put it simply: we cannot win the class struggle without winning all of our other struggles.

While this also seems to be accepted by most, it is a tall order. A User’s Guide to DSA is designed to help advance the process of sorting this out. Most of the contributions are grouped into five defining debates: 1. How to Fight Trump and Defend Working-Class and Oppressed People; 2. Electoral Strategy and the Democratic Party; 3. Labor Organizing and the Role of Socialists in the Workers’ Movement; 4. How to Change the World?; 5. What Is Socialist Internationalism?

Origins and development

In considering the future of DSA, we should recall its past.

“Historically speaking, there are fundamentally two DSAs: pre-Bernie DSA (1982-2014) and post-Bernie DSA (2015-present),” writes Laura Wadlin, a leader of the influential left-wing caucus Bread and Roses in her useful essay “A Political History of DSA, 1982-2025.” She points out that “only a tiny portion of DSA members were organized socialists before the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign revitalized the idea of ‘democratic socialism’ in 2015,” adding that “many active members now only became socialists in the last few years or months” (p. 48).

DSA emerged under the tutelage of Michael Harrington (1928-1989), a popular, sophisticated Marxist with a strongly reformist orientation. Pupil and comrade of ex-Trotskyist Max Shachtman, he followed Shachtman into the social-democratic Socialist Party of America. Next to the aging warhorse Norman Thomas, Harrington became its most prominent figure. He finally split from Shachtman over the U.S. war in Vietnam and U.S. Cold War foreign policy, both of which his mentor supported. Harrington and his co-thinkers soon connected with “new left” socialists of the New American Movement, and DSA was born in 1982.

A small force of pro-labor and liberal-oriented reformists inside the Democratic Party, DSA nourished close ties with international social democracy, represented by Olof Palme of Sweden, Willy Brandt of West Germany, and such Israeli notables as Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin. Harrington believed in a “realignment” strategy which would transform the Democratic Party into a progressive and social-democratic labor party. This aspect of Harringtonite “orthodoxy” is no longer unequivocally embraced even within DSA’s moderate wing.

As young activists began flooding into DSA in 2015, according to some of Harrington’s loyal followers, this orientation was pushed aside by ultra-left and/or Leninist infiltrators (who reject liberal reformism and support Palestinian liberation instead of Zionism). Surviving oldsters adhering to the Harrington orientation have either left DSA (some publicly and angrily, as with Paul Berman and Maurice Isserman) or congregate in a small North Star Caucus which critically supports more centrally engaged DSA moderates.

Perceptions that DSA has suffered infiltration, manipulation, and violation seem inaccurate. Rather, there has been a process of phenomenal (almost overwhelming) growth, with older perspectives being superseded by newer understandings. The ancient mariners among us lived through a similar transformation in the early 1960s, when we and many thousands more radicalizing “New Left” activists flooded into Students for a Democratic Society and turned it into something far more radical (and less clearly-defined) than what our parent group — the moderately social-democratic League for Industrial Democracy — felt was desirable or appropriate.

The new reality bustles with complexity, contradiction, and confusion. The DSA website tells us: “DSA makes room for a variety of strategic approaches to fighting capitalism. Whether you're repairing your neighbors' brake lights, organizing a rent strike in your building, or fighting for public control of electric power, one thing is clear: We're stronger together.” The fact is that there is not agreement in DSA on what strategy can make democratic socialism a reality — on which ways can really help us advance toward socialism. A key part of DSA’s very purpose is to help its members figure out what approaches can actually be effective in bringing socialism into being.

Despite not wholly unjustified complaints about the mind-numbing tyranny of Roberts Rules of Order, however, DSA seems to be a fairly democratic organization. The caucuses have not established a dictatorship, nor have they turned DSA into a factional battleground. The organization seems more serious than that — an interactive collection of caucuses, a work-in-progress.

Discussion and debate

This brings us to the discussions and debates reflected in this book, with diverse evaluations of present realities and attempts to map future directions — but also with flashes from past experience and analysis.

There is much common ground within DSA. Most would be inclined to accept Phil Locker’s point that “global capitalism is mired in a deep crisis, marked by a growing chasm of inequality between nations, and between the capitalist oligarchs and everyone else,” and that “capitalism today means never-ending war, millions fleeing poverty, persecution, and catastrophic climate disaster.” There is also widespread consensus around seeing this as fueling in the United States “a deep polarization of society.” As Locker puts it: “On the right, we have seen the dangerous rise of Trump, a reactionary demagogue mobilizing discontent against immigrants, people of color, women, trans people, and other scapegoats. On the left, democratic socialists Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), and now Zohran Mamdani have sparked — and reflected — a resurgence of socialist ideas.” This socialist resurgence was fueled by “the Great Recession fundamentally [which] discredited the dominant ideology of neoliberalism and its worship of the ‘free market’ as the cure to all social problems.” Locker adds: “This impact was all the greater, given that the crash in 2008 was the culmination of a four-decade-long capitalist offensive overseen by the political establishment of both major parties” (p.295).

Despite such widely shared perceptions, there are serious differences in DSA. While Joe Burns complains that “some of the debate within DSA, frankly, is a little confusing, with people talking past each other” (p. 266), there are also real issues involved.

Those putting this book together helpfully provide three glossaries (one on “What’s What in DSA,” one on “Language of the Labor Left,” and one on contending electoral strategies entitled “Clean Break, Dirty Break, Dirty Stay”) plus a descriptive list of DSA caucuses. This is seasoned with the editors’ sophisticated confession that “each definition reflects a political position, and the meanings are contested” (p. 153). As a minority current within the Reform and Revolution caucus, they emphasize the “willingness to allow space for discussion and debate” (p. 22).* “The existence of caucuses in DSA is a good thing and a sign of its democratic vitality,” they insist, “as long as caucuses are mindful to work in a constructive manner to advance our common struggle against capitalism” (p. 14). They provide URLs to the websites of the various caucuses to assist readers in exploring more fully the thinking from the varied political locations within DSA.

Sarah Hurd of Bread and Roses makes a key point applicable both to DSA and to labor organizing as a whole — despite formal votes, “you can’t force anyone to do something they don’t find worth their time” (p. 261). Some are drawn to small-scale projects that “do good” — while many others reach for engagement with larger struggles to advance socialist goals. Among these, many are drawn to electoralism on behalf of progressive or socialist candidates, while others are more inclined to engage in mobilization and organizing in broad social movements around specific issues. These include trade union protections for workers, providing housing or public transit or health care, and opposing the slaughter in Gaza. Still others reach for a combination of these, but with different proportions of time and energy devoted to one or another component.

There are two wings of the organization — tagged left-wing and moderate wing. (Indeed, who in a socialist organization would want to be stuck with a “right-wing” tag?) And there are contending currents within each wing. It’s worth noting that New York City DSA — whose mayoral candidate was denounced by Donald Trump as a fanatical Communist — is a stronghold of DSA moderates, of whom Mamdani is an outstanding representative.

Two caucuses are predominant among the moderates — the Socialist Majority Caucus (“majority” now less appropriate than it once was) and Groundwork —are inclined to work in the Democratic Party, although with somewhat different rationales. Neither is unified around the old “realignment” perspective. There are many comrades in both caucuses who dismiss the possibility of transforming the Democratic Party into a labor party.

Some in the Socialist Majority Caucus (SMC) — such as David Duhalde, whose essay “Stay Dirty” is reprinted in this book — envisions a permanent status of socialists in the Democratic Party as a left-wing faction, helping to pull the party as a whole in a somewhat more progressive direction. Exploring the SMC website, however, one can find others who do nourish hopes for the Democratic Party embracing the cause of social-democratic reform. In contrast, the dominant trend in Groundwork supports a tactical use of the Democratic Party ballot line through which DSA can run and elect candidates, while at the same time building a strong electoral machine. It anticipates a mass socialist party will someday emerge from this, leaving the shambles of the corporate-capitalist Democratic Party in its wake.

Red Star, Marxist Unity Group, Bread and Roses, Reform and Revolution can be found in the left-wing of the organization and have become a majority bloc in recent years. They continue to accept the tactic of electing socialists by making use of the Democratic Party ballot-line, but they are inclined to approach the matter critically. Transparency and accountability are highlighted, due to a strong tendency for “electeds” to compromise with and adapt to the powers-that-be within the Democratic Party establishment. Many comrades are upset by a recurring tendency for “electeds” to set aside DSA positions that seem politically inconvenient. Whether such offenses should result in public criticisms, dis-endorsement, or even expulsion from DSA is a topic of discussion, with divergent positions being expressed.

A widespread sentiment in favor of breaking, sooner or later, from the Democratic Party is complicated by such details as: how much sooner or how much later; how uniform such a break should be; what would be defining signals that the time has come; etc. The left-wing caucuses also tilt toward preferring union struggles and various social movements to electoralism — though many in the DSA left are also keenly aware that DSA has grown largely through the electoral campaigns of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and other openly socialist DSAers seeking Democratic Party nomination.

Another significant fissure has opened up around what is called “campism,” of which Red Star appears to be the foremost proponent. Campism means aligning with, and being more or less uncritical of, all forces who are in the “camp” that opposes U.S. imperialism. Within that “camp” are authoritarian dictatorships — some claiming to be socialist, and others that are conservative and openly anti-socialist, in some cases ultra-religious. Left-wing DSA member Dan La Botz writes: “Socialist internationalism, as conceived by Karl Marx and other nineteenth and early twentieth century Marxists, was the notion that socialists should express their solidarity with the world’s working classes, with the poor, and with the oppressed of all sorts in all countries.” Yet within the presumably “anti-imperialism” camp one can find widespread oppression and exploitation and systematic violations of workers’ rights. La Botz concludes that campism represents “a profound deformation of socialist internationalism” (pp. 347, 349).

Responding to such perspectives, Red Star militant Sam Heft-Luthy argues for an “informed and vigorous solidarity with socialist and anti-imperialist movements” and a willingness to learn from “modern socialist societies.” Only such “an open and positive spirit of international solidarity” can provide “a positive program for anti-imperialism” to guide DSA’s efforts (pp. 362-3, 366). The debate sharpened around the evaluation of Hamas in the Palestinian struggle — particularly after the Hamas-led massacre of civilians of October 7, 2023, consequently used as a pretext by the Israeli government for a two year-long genocidal assault on Gaza’s Palestinian population. A polemic within DSA by Red Star members, entitled “We Do Not Condemn Hamas, and Neither Should You” was followed by one from Reform and Revolution members, “We Do Not Tail Behind Hamas, and Neither Should You.” Both polemics can be found in A User’s Guide to DSA (pp. 380-7, 385-405).

Another point of difference involves how to characterize Trumpism. Some matter-of-factly refer to it as fascism — for example, Jesse Hagopian’s comment on the dissonance in the United States of “the ‘world’s greatest democracy’ [now being] under the rule of a fascist” (p. 103) — while others agree with Stephan Kimmerle:

Unlike classical fascism, Trump’s presidency has not eradicated all forms of democracy or working-class self-organization. Although he has steered towards a more authoritarian system, his methods rely on the capitalist state (ICE etc.), rather than the direct force of fascist paramilitary gangs on the streets, to implement policies like arresting immigrants and assaults on the left. The system still retains checks and balances and a separation of powers, despite an increasing and threatening concentration of power in the executive (p. 138).

Yet this almost seems a terminological quibble. Most DSAers favor making use of still-existing democratic opportunities to agitate, organize and massively mobilize against the anti-democratic, repressive, oppressive activities of the Trump regime.

Contradictions in the struggle for socialism

Anti-racism and class struggle have been central to discussions in DSA, as has been the tension between political principles and political relevance.

“As despicable as Trump’s relentless attacks on Black people and immigrants have been, they are not merely the product of personal bigotry,” notes Jesse Hagopian. “The fact is, the capitalist system has long relied on racism as a central mechanism for maintaining the power of capital over labor” (p. 95). Drawing on insights of C.L.R. James, he emphasizes the centrality of the anti-racist struggle in U.S. history: “The Black freedom struggle has never only benefited Black people. Black revolt has consistently been the backbeat that moves others to get up off of that thing and struggle for something better — from the abolitionist movement fueling women’s suffrage, to Reconstruction’s public schools and multiracial Union Leagues” (p. 97), down to more recent times, as “the foundational groove of Black struggle set in motion the antiwar, student, feminist, Indigenous, LGBTQIA+, working-class movements and strike waves which riffed on that rhythm — each one improvising its own verse while staying in the shared key of liberation” (p. 98). Stressing what some analysts call “intersectionality,” he argues that “struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, and xenophobia are not distractions from the class struggle — they are the terrain upon which a truly unified, fighting working class must be built” (p. 103).

Rashad X of the Marxist United Group focuses on achieving black liberation through creating “three main things: democratic conditions, safety from racial terror, and economic equality. All this ties to self-determination.” He elaborates: “You can’t have self-determination without an equal say in democratic governance, both within a nation and on a global scale. You can’t have Black liberation if Black people are at risk of facing racial terror, whether from the state, vigilantes, or otherwise. And you can’t have Black liberation without a level of economic equality when it comes to development” (p. 89). He blends two approaches that are sometimes counterposed: African American self-determination and revolutionary integration; he rejects racial separation of revolutionary parties and socialist republics. Questions can be raised about whether these two approaches can be harmoniously blended, and how easily the racial fragmentation of the working class can be overcome with racism so deep-rooted in our history.

Further tensions inherent in the dynamics of the class struggle are pinpointed by other contributions.

Joe Burns — left-wing labor activist who authored Class Struggle Unionism — points out that unions, almost by definition, are an integral part of the capitalist economy: “Even if we have the most militant unions, you’re still negotiating the terms of your exploitation.” Of course, this is the case with unions that are overtly corrupt, also with those led by pro-capitalist and class-collaborationist bureaucracies (“business unions”), but Burns explains that “militant unionism in and of itself cannot resolve the contradiction, because the billionaires are going to keep getting billions.” Such accumulating profits (or accumulating capital) adds up to considerable economic power. “Over time, you give someone more and more power. Guess what? Eventually, they’re gonna use it to crush you.” He concludes: “Employers very much view us as in a fight to the death. They want to exterminate unionism.” Many in the labor movement, even the labor-left, “crave stability and stable labor relations. But that is fiction” (p. 268).

Burns is also critical of the influential left-wing orientation promoted by the late Jane McAlevey. “To me,” he argues, “Jane McAlevey’s approach is very much based on this idea that the working class needs these outside organizers to come in and get them to fight. And so, then it becomes a question of organizing skills and techniques.” But it is a false assumption “that struggle comes from outside the workplace and is imported in there.” Rather, “struggle comes because of the conditions of capitalism, and in particular the conditions and contradictions in that workplace” (p. 265).

Yet another experienced labor activist, Stephan Kimmerle, reflects: “There is a lot of strength in many tactics promoted by Jane McAlevey. However, they need to be combined with the fundamental wisdom of the Rank-and-File Strategy [promoted by revolutionary socialist labor analyst Kim Moody] — the need to organize for a class-struggle approach and a vibrant democracy within the labor movement, against the resistance of the bureaucracy” (p. 283).

An interesting twist comes from Bread and Roses member Jane Slaughter. She appreciates the enthusiasm for successful rank-and-file unionizing actions in the Starbucks chain but raises a significant challenge. She quotes one Starbucks worker: “Oh my gosh, it was a beautiful feeling to know that we did it. We showed up for each other and we didn’t allow these corporations to continuously abuse us. It felt like victory, but also just sweet liberation.” She comments: “It’s an important union struggle; it’s also a coffee shop.” Her point is that “union strategists [must] decide where they need to grow their union in order to achieve power against their corporate counterparts” (pp. 270-271). Yet such strategists are generally connected with the union staffs (or “bureaucracies”) that Burns and Kimmerle warn against. Such matters are wrestled with in contributions throughout this volume.

A “purist” bent prevalent in DSA (as in much of today’s left-wing and progressive movement) crops up in various ways. Many members are not inclined to work with non-socialists who put forward positions that are deemed inadequate. Some shun even non-DSA socialists in different organizations. A “Build DSA” sentiment often cuts across activist engagement with broader coalitions and consequent abstention from real struggles. Such self-isolation is critically targeted by more than one author in this collection. “We can’t retreat within ourselves,” insists David Vibert, a Bread and Roses activist in the Zohran Mamdani campaign. “We need to maintain and build on the coalition that Zohran assembled not to just help him pass reforms from on high down to us, but because a militant coalition of the working class is the true hope for achieving socialism in the United States” (p.234). Also relating to the Mamdani are comments of Reform and Revolution minority-ite Philip Locker, speaking to a common criticism on the Left that Mamdani’s campaign program contained merely reforms: “Working people will need to fight for each of these reforms as fiercely as the billionaire class will fight against them” (p. 296).

A few contributors argue for the relevance of the united front orientation advanced in the Communist International of the early 1920s by Lenin, Trotsky, and others. Todd Chretien usefully devotes a whole page to “ABCs of a United Front” (p. 123). Discussing the massive “No Kings” protests against Trump’s policies, Stephan Kimmerle quotes Irish comrade Cian Prendville of the substantial group People Before Profit, who asserts that “we cannot afford to simply stand aside in ‘splendid isolation,’ and criticize from the sidelines,” but adds that a genuine united front cannot be seen as simply a joint campaign in which coalition partners “simply brush differences with partners under the rug.” Rather, “we should fight for united fronts to be arenas of debate and discussion as well” (p. 148). Kimmerle sums up (p. 150): “A United Front approach … entails both: unity in action, even with liberal forces, against Trump, but with full independence, to promote clear socialist and working-class politics against liberalism and Democratic [Party] politics currently leading the movement.”

Learning is crucial in all such discussions, debates, and activist experience. In “Better Fewer, But Better,” Lenin argued against comrades being know-it-alls. Instead, “we must at all costs set out, first, to learn, secondly, to learn, and thirdly, to learn, and then see to it that … learning shall really become part of our very being.” Learning not just from books and study groups, but especially from activist efforts, as we prepare for transformative struggles of the near future. A User’s Guide to DSA advances that process.

Paul Le Blanc, active in the socialist movement for more than five decades, serves on the editorial board of the Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg (Verso), and is author of such books as Lenin: Responding to Catastrophe, Forging Revolution (Pluto 2023) and A Short History of the U.S. Working Class (Haymarket 2016).

• *

  In the view of the editors of the book, R&R has shifted away from its original positions in the direction of the dominant politics on the far left of DSA. Examples include a less critical assessment of the reformist character of DSA, a changed approach to the 2024 presidential election compared to the position R&R had in 2020, and a new position on how to win Palestinian liberation.

Banks that crashed the economy in 2008 are quietly back to their old tricks

Sarah K. Burris

April 17, 2026

ALTERNET


The Financial Times reported Friday morning that the big banks that Wall Street is betting on are failing in private credit markets. It's something that New Republic writer Logan McMillen is sounding the alarm about because it is the same thing that happened in the 2007 and 2008 global economic collapse.

This week, the Federal Reserve likely freaked out economic experts when it demanded the largest banks "detail their exposure to the opaque, multitrillion-dollar private credit market," said McMillen. "Then, almost simultaneously, word broke that some of those same banks are imminently launching a credit default swap index with S&P Global, targeting that same market."

McMillen cautioned that the U.S.'s macroeconomic program is quickly falling apart under the stress of President Donald Trump's war against Iran, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the rise in inflation.


It comes as the "U.S. Treasury is now desperately trying to finance a $1.9 trillion deficit without a large pool of captive foreign buyers. Trump "failed to prepare" for the crisis. A former Trump strategist told CNN last month that the president thought Iran would be just as easy as Venezuela was.

Nate Swanson, a former Trump staffer and current senior fellow and director of the Iran Strategy Project at The Atlantic Council, assumes that Trump thought the whole operation would be easy and he'd be successful


Trump was coming off a "win" from his June strikes and from capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. In the past, Trump was able to kill Iranian military officer Qasem Soleimani "with virtually no repercussions," said Swanson.

Trump has done nothing to prepare for the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and worse, he's done nothing to protect the U.S. economy from the ensuing disaster after the bombing began.

"China is dumping U.S. Treasuries at a rate not seen since the Global Financial Crisis, while stalwart buyers like Japan are seeing their bond yield rates creep up to their highest levels in 27 years," said McMillen, explaining it isn't healthy for the macroeconomy.


What happens this weekend might mark a shift that will be felt for at least a year or more "in the form of a liquidity crisis."

"The Fed’s request that major banks detail their exposure to the private credit market should terrify risk assessors. When macroeconomists picked through the rubble of 2008, many landed on the conclusion that there had been a catastrophic mispricing of risk," McMillen said.

Credit rating agencies continued to claim that toxic subprime mortgages were somehow AAA-rated. Regulators in 2008 at the very least knew where the underlying assests were, McMillen explained. That isn't happening with the $2 trillion private credit market. It's a black box hidden in "regulatory shadows to facilitate high-risk corporate loans that traditional banks were forced to abandon after the passage of Dodd-Frank."


A major indicator of danger comes from a March Politico report revealing that investors are pulling their money after a "string of blow-ups." At the same time, the world of artificial intelligence has posed a risk to some software companies. So, investors are growing so worried that they're pulling their money out to such an extreme that they hit withdrawal limits.

Those limits on withdrawals "from many of these private funds tell us there’s a bank run taking place behind the velvet ropes, in the VIP section," cautioned McMillen.

So, Wall Street is offering a product for another possible crash. In 2008, "credit default swaps" played a significant role in the collapse of the housing market. Now they're being introduced into the $2 trillion market at a time when there is a "liquidity crisis." It's also happening as the Federal Reserve admits it doesn't understand what's going on and has asked banks to detail their exposure to the private credit market. McMillen described it as a kind of "mirror maze of transactions for regulators to navigate."

For about 12 to 18 months in 2007, a small handful of mortgage defaults proved capable of triggering a cascade of multibillion-dollar payouts across the globe." These were after the ABX index (Asset-Backed Securities Index) was created. It was a kind of "synthetic collateralized debt obligation market" that ultimately reached $5 trillion in value. It was just one kind of "credit-default swaps.) Investors were then able to make bets on those investments"without ever owning the underlying asset."


It ultimately led to "a small handful of mortgage defaults ... triggering a cascade of multibillion-dollar payouts across the globe," said McMillen.

Now, the same thing might happen again, only with the private credit market that handles $2 trillion in corporate debt.

"Wall Street is once again seeding flammable barrels of fictitious capital in the financial sector, virtually guaranteeing that if the underlying loans bomb, the blast radius will be much larger than the asset class itself," wrote McMillen.

In 2008, "there was still an 'adult' in the room," he explained. Now, the U.S. is a mess fiscally, and when it comes to foreign relationships, the president isn't winning a lot of friends. Back then, McMillen said that the U.S. had a "clean-enough balance sheet" to navigate the losses and keep things moving.


"Today, U.S. government debt is equal to 122 percent–124 percent of annual gross domestic product," he cautioned. "In the past, this was manageable because the petrodollar paradigm forced the rest of the world to buy U.S. Treasuries. But with the Carter Doctrine scuppered, the Strait of Hormuz closed, and the State Department weaponizing the SWIFT system through sanctions, those once-captive buyers are finally beginning to abandon the U.S. dollar."

It means the U.S. "will be backed into a corner with only a few viable exits." It means the banks would have to be bailed out for the second time in 20 years to prevent a global collapse. The American dollar and credit outlook would be the casualty while everyday people are forced into an "austerity crisis."

"When the domestic economy faced the last crisis of this magnitude, in the late 1970s, Fed Chairman Paul Volcker hiked interest rates, intentionally triggering a recession that broke the back of organized labor. The “Volcker shock” served as the founding act of the bipartisan neoliberal consensus, establishing a macroeconomic and foreign policy paradigm where the U.S. offshored its industrial base and policed maritime shipping lanes in exchange for cheap imports," explained McMillen.

In March, AlterNet wrote about one of Trump's big plans: opening these risky investment markets to anyone who wants to participate using their retirement funds. Now there is a fear that doing so could push markets teetering on the brink over the cliff.


"The Labor Department is planning to roll out a long-awaited proposal that would offer workers invested in retirement products like 401(k)s access to the so-called private markets — a class of highly coveted but risky investments that have historically been walled off from the masses," Politico explained last month.

Israel Moves Toward Executing Palestinian Children

Ramzy Baroud

 April 9, 2026

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Image by Mohammed Ibrahim.

According to Israel’s new death penalty law, Palestinian children, like adults, could, in practice, find themselves facing the gallows. This might take some by surprise, or even be dismissed as an exaggeration. Sadly, it is neither.

The death penalty law, passed by Israel’s Knesset on March 30, mandates capital punishment for Palestinians convicted of carrying out deadly attacks. The legislation, often referred to as the ‘Death Penalty for Terrorists’ law, requires that executions be carried out swiftly, within 90 days, while sharply limiting avenues for appeal or commutation, according to human rights organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

It resolves a long-standing political demand by Israel’s far-right leadership to formalize execution as a tool of control over Palestinians. As extremist Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has repeatedly argued, those accused of such acts “deserve death,” framing the law not as an exception, but as a necessary policy.

Though the law itself does not explicitly mention children, it does not exclude them either. Knowing Israel’s treatment and legal classification of Palestinian children, this distinction is not minor—it is decisive.

Under Israel’s military court system, Palestinian children as young as 12 are prosecuted. In practice, they are often treated as adults within a system that offers few safeguards and operates with an extremely high conviction rate.

Defense for Children International–Palestine reported in its 2023 briefing Arbitrary by Default that the Israeli military detention system subjects Palestinian minors to “systematic”, institutionalized and “widespread ill-treatment.”

Reports by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other rights organizations describe consistent patterns of abuse, including night arrests, physical violence, threats, and psychological pressure.

Many children, these groups note, are interrogated without adequate legal safeguards, in conditions that facilitate coercion and the extraction of confessions.

Under international law, children are protected persons, entitled to special safeguards under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child—both of which prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Not in Israel, however—a state that has consistently treated international law not as binding, but as an obstacle to its political and military objectives.

For Israel, Palestinian children are often framed not as civilians, but as potential threats. This framing represents a profound assault on basic humanity and fundamental rights—one that goes even further than the cynical language of ‘collateral damage’, by preemptively stripping children of their civilian status.

Israeli officials have made such views unmistakably clear.

In 2015, former Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked shared and endorsed a text declaring that “the entire Palestinian people is the enemy,” including its children, and that Palestinian mothers should not give birth to “little snakes.” Her statement was not an aberration, but a reflection of a political discourse in which dehumanization is normalized.

This, too, has often been dismissed as routine racism in Israeli politics. It is not.

Since October 7, 2023, Gaza’s children have been killed in staggering numbers: at least 21,289 children among more than 71,800 Palestinians killed, and over 44,500 wounded, according to UNICEF’s February 2026 update.

In the occupied West Bank, the pattern persists, with Palestinian children increasingly killed during Israeli military raids and settler violence.

All of this in mind, it should not be surprising that the death penalty law does not exempt children from the horrific fate it envisions for Palestinians who resist Israeli occupation.

To be clear, the death penalty law is neither about punishment nor deterrence. Israel does not require a law to kill Palestinians—whether those engaged in armed resistance, or, as has often been the case, civilians with no involvement in hostilities.

For decades, Israel has carried out assassinations, extrajudicial killings, and large-scale military operations that have resulted in thousands of Palestinian deaths.

The killing of Palestinians in Israeli prisons is no longer incidental, but documented. Since October 2023, at least 98 detainees have died in custody—many under conditions linked to torture, abuse, and medical neglect, according to Physicians for Human Rights–Israel.

The law, therefore, is about something else: the projection of power.

It is not fundamentally different from the performative brutality associated with figures like Ben-Gvir, whose rhetoric and conduct toward Palestinian prisoners have emphasized domination, humiliation, and control.

But within this projection of power lies a deadly consequence: Many people stand to be killed—including children.

Though some voices in the international community have spoken out against the law, these reactions have been limited and short-lived, quickly overshadowed by other developments.

Without sustained pressure, Israel has no reason to refrain from carrying out executions—decisions that will be made by military courts that lack even the most basic standards of fairness or adherence to international law.

Once this, too, is normalized, the threshold will shift again. And children will inevitably be drawn into it.

Israel has already normalized practices once deemed unthinkable. If it now normalizes the execution of children, it will cross a threshold even many colonial regimes did not openly breach.

There must be a limit—because its continuation will not only devastate Palestinians, but reverberate far beyond, eroding the most basic protections of human life itself.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author, and the editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His new book, Before the Flood: A Gaza Family Memoir Across Three Generations of Colonial Invasion, Occupation and War in Palestine was published by Seven Stories Press. His other books include “Our Vision for Liberation,” “My Father was a Freedom Fighter,” and “The Last Earth.”  Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net   

If Kushner Was Smart, He’d Invest in Rope: Israel’s Lynching Law for Palestinians 

Stanley L. Cohen

 April 10, 2026

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Israel’s Death Penalty Law for Palestinians by Seth Tobocman.

In 1947, while describing the crimes of the judicial system of Nazi Germany, Telford Taylor, lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal, opined, “[t]he dagger of the assassin was concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.”

With these words, Taylor laid bare the historical context of where and how a state executed, not on the basis of equal application of law for the most serious of crimes, but adopted an institutional cover for mass slaughter of a concocted enemy, all dressed up in a courtroom pretext.

Long before the Nazi party filled its chambers of death with the ashes of many millions of those of different faith, politics, ethnicity and identity, in 1919, Hitler wrote, “the ultimate goal must definitely be the removal of the Jews altogether.”

To accomplish this end, on August 20, 1942, Hitler appointed Otto Thierack, a fervent Nazi, as Reich Minister of Justice. With this appointment, Hitler ensured the death of any independent fact and law-based judiciary in Germany. Substituting in its stead one that fled from an objective rules-based order to become a rubber stamp, finding verdicts of guilt and imposing sentences according to Nazi principles and ideology.  In defining the rule of law and the role of jurists within it, Thierack announced an aim not all that different from the very one which echoes throughout the halls of the Israeli Knesset today:

Those in the administration of justice must recognize that it is their job to destroy traitors and saboteurs on the home front… The home front is responsible for maintaining peace, quiet, and order as support for the war front. This heavy responsibility falls especially to German judges. Every punishment is fundamentally more important in war than in peace.

In his treatise The War Path: Hitler’s Germany 1933-1939 David Irving describes with chilling contemporary familiarity, the construct of the Nazi justice system, one in which findings of guilt and imposition of sentence were determined beforehand not by established evidence or controlling law, but based upon what were considered to be “serious political offenses” seen as an affront to fundamental Nazi faith.  Known as the “People’s Courts,” “its judges were more likely to hand down death penalties to members of the most organised opposition groups, those involved in violent resistance against the state and defendants with characteristics repellent to core Nazi beliefs.”

Finding Oswald Rothaug, a Nazi jurist, guilty of crimes against humanity among his many international law violations, the Tribunal cited a case where he imposed the death penalty on a member of a “deviant race” who was accused of “racial defilement”.  In another similar case of persecution, Rothaug sentenced a slave laborer to death because “the inferiority of the defendant is clear as he is a part of Polish sub-humanity.”

Writing on the “Jewish Question” long before he became grand executioner of many tens of millions of “deviant” races, Hitler preached:

For us, this is not a problem you can turn a blind eye to–one to be solved by small concessions.  For us, it is a problem of whether our nation can ever recover its health, whether the Jewish spirit can ever really be eradicated.  Don’t be misled into thinking you can fight a disease without killing the carrier, without destroying the bacillus.  Don’t think you can fight racial tuberculosis without taking care to rid the nation of the carrier of that racial tuberculosis.  This Jewish contamination will not subside, this poisoning of the nation will not end, until the carrier himself, the Jew, has been banished from our midst.

Tragically, reality dictates a finding that when it comes to attacks on civilians of a different race, religion, culture or identity, Hitler’s deadly vitriol was by no means sui generis. Not even a century later when debating the “Palestinian question,” the words and goals of most Israeli lawmakers are very much a mirror image of those of their counterparts back in the day when they said heil Hitler to the grandparents of the very people who sit in the Knesset today or who carry out their hateful message while attired in black robes or military dress.  Against the desperate crafted shout of antisemite, evidence shows that more than a decade ago, Israeli leaders … both political and religious … provided contemporary meaning to Mein Kampf’s deadly vision and voice. As noted by the Institute for Middle East Understanding, Israeli politicians and rabbis alike have spilt venomous verse thought by many, but spoken by few in public:

+ “[A] Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he’s gay.”[1]

+ “Gentile sperm leads to barbaric offspring.”[2]

+ “[Most of the] Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”[3]

+ “Goyim [non- Jews] were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel… Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… With gentiles, it will be like any person: They need to die, but God will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money. This is his servant. That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”[4]

+ “You can’t teach a monkey to speak and you can’t teach an Arab to be democratic. You’re dealing with a culture of thieves and robbers. Muhammad, their prophet, was a robber and a killer and a liar. The Arab destroys everything he touches.”[5]

+ “[Non-Jews are] murderers, thieves and senseless… Today they say there are eight billion people in the world. And what are they all? Murderers, thieves and senseless. Did God create the world for these murderers? The world was created for the righteous people who study Torah. That is the purpose of creation … The nations of the world have no redeeming qualities.”[6]

+ “Arab culture is very cruel… Arabs use different codes and violent norms that amount to an ideology.”[7]

+ “Racism originated in the Torah… The land of Israel is designated for the people of Israel.”[8]

+ “Hurting small [non-Jewish] children makes sense if it’s clear that they’ll grow up to harm us, and in such a situation – the injury will be directed at them of all people.”[9]

+ “If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there. I don’t think that it is appropriate for [Jews and Arabs] to live together.”[10]

The echo of national socialism surely smiles with perverse pride in seeing what it has passed on to the children and grandchildren of its own victims.  Today, an honest look at the “nation state” of Israel, with its poisonous preaching and incessant deadly deeds, proves the venom of Hitler has so seeped its way into the very fabric of Israeli society, as to defy any hint of collective decency or the reality of justice. Given the voice of its leadership and the damning shared silence of its masses, Israel will only grow more toxic in the years ahead, absent a structural crash and a complete rewrite of its existence:

+ “[B]eat them up not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until its unbearable.”[11]

+ “[W]e must defend ourselves against the wild beasts”[12]

+ “Palestinians are beasts they are not human.”[13]

+ “Those who are against us, there’s nothing to be done- we need to pick up an axe and cut off his head.”[14]

+ “I am happy to be a fascist”[15]

+ “They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise more little snakes will be raised there.”[16]

+ “[T]he Palestinian like threat harbors cancer like attributes that have to be severed. There are all kinds of solutions to cancer. Some say it is necessary to amputate organs but at the moments I am applying chemotherapy.”[17]

+ “[S]end Gaza back to the Middle Ages”[18]

+ “We have crushed them. There are tens of thousands of dead … ‘The dogs and the cats ate them because no one collected them.”[19]

Like its convicted ancestor of the Third Reich, the Israeli justice system of today is by intent and process designed to protect, indeed further, the supremacy of the Jewish state and its Jewish citizenry. That Israel exalts a debauched home-grown screed of Judaism to the exclusion of all other faiths is no myth. To be sure, the messianic cloth of Israeli Judaism provides an additional demonic cover to the usual meaning of theocracy.

That there exist dozens of laws designed to protect and to benefit Israeli Jews to the exclusion of all other non-Jewish citizens is beyond debate; indeed it’s very much settled by the literal verse of its numerous supremacist statutes and regulations. To find tens of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners disappeared through a military “justice” system that detains them indefinitely … with children, the elderly and those in between sitting uncharged, unprosecuted, unconvicted, unsentenced, and battered and bruised, has long been the norm blinked by the Israeli civil society and its courts. Yet, with the Knesset’s most recent execution order, it cannot be denied that Israeli justice, when viewed against that of the Nazis, is not just a difference without distinction, but dispositive evidence that in Israel, once again, the dagger of the assassin is concealed beneath the robe of the jurist.

As almost another national holiday in the making, on the day the Israeli murder bill became law, many members showed up to vote wearing gold nooses to the Knesset session.  Following its passage, as he popped open a bottle of champagne, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir summed up the sentiment of the state’s fascistic political and religious leadership … “[s]oon we will count them one by one … from today, every terrorist will know, and the whole world will know, that whoever takes a life, the state of Israel will take their life.” That is, of course, unless they are Israeli Jews. On its face the plain wording of the statute and its intended reach necessarily excludes all Israeli Jews from the exposure to its penalty.

In the relevant part, the purpose of the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, 5786–2026, “is to establish a death sentence for terrorists who have carried out murderous terrorist attacks, for the sake of the struggle against terrorism — inter alia, for the protection of the State of Israel, its citizens, and its residents.” Applicable almost exclusively to the Occupied West Bank (referred to in the law as “Judea and Samaria”) and its Palestinian population, the Act continues the double standard that sends Palestinians charged or even suspected of violation of Israeli laws in the West Bank to military tribunals while Israeli Jews accused of the identical conduct in the same venue find their way to civilian courts, with civilian judges and civilian justice.

By its requisite intent clause, Law 5786–2026 is limited to those who kill with the specific aim of negating the existence of the state of Israel. Thus, those Israeli settlers guilty of the recent murder of 19-year-old Palestinian American Nasrallah Abu Siyam in the occupied West Bank, if ever charged, are beyond the reach of the law. The same amnesty applies to the armed Jewish settlers who, earlier this year, murdered several other Palestinians during a raid on their village of Abu Falah in the occupied territory.  Core to their ethnic cleansing agenda, settler murders of Palestinians in their local West Bank communities date back many decades.

For example, more than 40 years ago, a mob of settlers murdered an 11-year-old Palestinian girl from Nablus. As justification, the chief rabbi of the Sephardic community at the time apparently cited a Talmudic text justifying the murder of a child who “will grow up to become your enemy.” Under 5786–2026, those rampaging assassins could not be held accountable.

The same immunity from the reach of the law would have applied to the massacre carried out by Israeli-American physician Baruch Goldstein in 1994. Attired in an Israeli military uniform, Goldstein murdered 29 Palestinians during the Jewish festival of Purim in the Cave of the Patriarchs in occupied Hebron. Anything but a challenge to the existence of Israel, before his rampage, Goldstein, quoting from Ecclesiastes, reportedly said “There is a time to kill and a time to heal”. Following the massacre, his supporters described Goldstein as a “saint” and his blood bath as an act of “martyrdom” or a “sanctification of God’s name.”

So, too, the new death penalty could not have been applied to those settlers who burned to death a toddler in his family home in the Nablus village of Duma in 2015. Nor would it today have application to Israeli medic Elor Azaria, who, some six years ago, executed twenty-one-year-old Abdul Fatah al-Sharif while he lay injured and motionless on the ground after stabbing, but not seriously injuring, an Israeli soldier in occupied Hebron. Approaching his semi-conscious victim, Azaria cocked his rifle and executed him with a single shot to his head. For his murder, Azaria served some nine months in prison.

These are but a few of the endless examples of Palestinians executed by settlers/soldiers in the occupied West Bank over the last 15 years alone for little more than their mere presence, or words.  Numbering more than 1000 killed in the last several years alone, under the legislative intent of the law, NONE of these assassins (if ever charged) could face execution for their butchery.

Although lacking a dispositive definition under international law, there is a legal consensus that terrorism is criminal violence intended to intimidate a population (or a government) with the specific intention to advance a political, religious, or ideological cause. Although tailor-made to describe generations of West Bank settler terrorists, their statutory exemption from Israel’s latest assault on equal accountability is as palpable as are the massive number of Israeli Jews who find sheer pleasure in the execution of Palestinians in furtherance of their own political, religious, or ideological invective.

In the relevant part, Israel’s definition under its original Counterterrorism Law of 2016 defines a terrorist act as an act that constitutes an offense, or a threat to carry out such an act, which meets the following standards:

It was carried out with a political, religious, nationalistic or ideological motive… It was carried out with the intention of provoking fear or panic among the public or with the intention of compelling a government or other governmental authority, including a government or other governmental authority of a foreign country, or a public international organization, to do or to abstain from doing any act … and the act carried out or threatened to be carried out, involved one of the following, or posed an actual risk of … Serious harm to a person’s body or freedom; Serious harm to public health or safety; [or] Serious harm to property, when in the circumstances in which it was caused, there was an actual possibility that it would cause the serious harm … and that was carried out with the intention of causing such harm.

Tailor-made for charging the Israeli state as a whole with acts of terrorism in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, a plain read of this decade-old law with no statutory limit, shows that while thousands of Jewish settlers have been a veritable primer on terrorism, it’s been applied almost exclusively against Palestinians. Against this de facto selective distortion, stands the de jure reality that the Death Penalty for Terrorists Law, 5786–2026 is, on its face, stripped of all pretense. By design, it is intended to find application solely against Palestinians.

That there is a double standard in the application of Israeli law is neither new nor isolated to so-called acts of terrorism. At its core, there is a deliberate double standard of justice, in all things at all times, with Israelis obtaining privileged status in civilian courts decorated with black robes and a gavel and Palestinians guilty, or liable as charged, in all things at all times, in military courts decorated with nothing but battle dress and guns.

As B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, recently wrote of the military court system:

Israeli military courts have been trying Palestinians in the Territories since the occupation began. While the courts offer an illusion of proper judicial conduct, they mask one of the most injurious apparatuses of the occupation. In these courts, the judges and prosecutors are always Israeli soldiers in uniform. The Palestinians are always either suspects or defendants, and are almost always convicted for violating orders issued by the occupation regime. As such, these courts simply cannot be an impartial, neutral arbitrator. They are firmly entrenched on the Israeli side of the power imbalance, and serve as one of the central systems maintaining its control over the Palestinian people.

Several years earlier, the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights Office indicted the West Bank military justice system noting that “[s]ince the beginning of the occupation, the Israeli military has either taken part in or failed to protect Palestinians from violent settler attacks in the occupied West Bank, including, extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, property damage, destruction and unlawful appropriation, discrimination, harassment, and threats.” Continuing on, it stated “[i]n the occupied West Bank, the functions of police, investigator, prosecutor, and judge are vested in the same hierarchical institution – the Israeli military” that ultimately sits as judge and jury over Palestinians suspects. This translates into a situation where military judges in military courts consistently provide legal and judicial cover for acts of torture, cruel and degrading treatment against Palestinian detainees carried out by their colleagues in the armed forces and intelligence agencies. It also makes legal defence impossible.”

Putting aside the uniform, bias and cover, from a practical standpoint, the military court system that has controlled “justice” in the occupied territories since 1967 and which will be tasked with likely all death penalty prosecutions, presents a procedural gamut far less protective of the rights of the accused than in civil courts… those set aside solely for cases involving Israeli citizens. Thus, because in civil courts there are higher due process standards arising from “basic laws” and criminal procedures, an accused is provided a stronger guarantee of rights compared to the rules handed down, at times, on a case-by-case basis by military orders. In civil court proceedings, those accused of crimes must be quickly charged and have largely unimpeded access to lawyers and family members. In contrast, those Palestinians swept up by the Military process can be held without charge for longer periods (up to 90 days) and typically face long periods of restricted access to legal counsel.

Civil proceedings are held in Hebrew and, at times Arabic, but, in any event, have available translation protocols. Military court proceedings are held entirely in Hebrew, often without translation support, with prosecutions driven by coerced confessions lacking legal counsel, with signed documents written exclusively in Hebrew, which most defendants do not understand.  Under Israeli civil law, the age of majority is 18, while in the military system, 16-year-old Palestinians are treated as adults. In addition, civil law requires specially trained police for juvenile interrogations; no such requirement exists in military prosecutions.

Perhaps most telling of all is that, unlike the civil court system, almost all Palestinians accused of even the most minor breach of law, although “presumed innocent,” are routinely remanded by military judges to custody until the proceedings are concluded. These individuals are not serving a prison sentence, have not even been sentenced, and should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Yet, other than in cases involving traffic violations, this practice is the rule rather than the exception in the military court system. By its very nature, this coercive linchpin of the military court system induces guilty pleas from even the innocent for no reason other than to gain their freedom.

Summing up the worth and rights of Palestinian children, Defense of Children International Palestine notes: “Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world that automatically and systematically prosecutes children in military courts that lack fundamental fair trial rights and protections. Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year.”

In what is very much the mirror image of The Terrorism Act (No. 83 of 1967), a South African statute that allowed for indefinite, no-trial detention based on a very broad definition of terrorism, it is estimated that as many of 800,000 Palestinians have been detained under military orders, including some 13,000 children, without formal charges or trial. Under Israeli “security” provisions, a person, including a child, can be held without formal accusation on the grounds that they plan to break the law in the future. Like the apartheid system of South Africa, because this shackle is crafted as preventive, it has no time limits.

Do not misconstrue any preference for the due process “protections” of the Israeli civil court system over the physical and emotional torture process of the state’s military courts. After all, history is littered with the institutional failures of Israeli civil courts. These courts serve not by virtue of any constitutional edict or independence, for in Israel, there is no such document. Rather, they sit and perform by the whims of the Knesset, which can and does, with regularity, pass laws that convert these jurists into mere messengers of political winds.

Thus, the “necessity defense,” more aptly known as the “ticking time bomb exception,” announced in the case of Abu Ghosh v. Attorney-General, speaks volumes about the blind eye of the Israeli judiciary. In Abu Ghosh, the Israeli High Court approved the use of “exceptional interrogation methods” by state security upon suspicious Palestinians, which not only imposed a high evidentiary burden on those who sought judicial relief for torture, but required a light burden of proof on the state when claiming necessity. As defined by international law, this judicial test violated its prohibition against torture. So, too, once again in violation of settled international law, the Israeli civil courts have endorsed the use of collective punishment … long defined as a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. In case after case, the High Court has upheld or walked away from matters where the military seeks vengeance from families uninvolved in the acts of the few. As noted by the United Nations Special Rapporteur:

Since 1967, Israel has destroyed more than 2,000 Palestinian homes, designed to punish Palestinian families for acts some of their members may have committed, but they themselves did not,” he said. “This practice is in clear violation of Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The list is endless. Whether it’s forcing Palestinians to pay the cost of the destruction of their own homes and businesses; ignoring the 2004 ICJ finding that the walls/barriers in the Occupied Palestinian Territory violate international law; laughing at Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which prohibits occupying powers from transferring its population into occupied territory; and a clear finding that the most recent onslaught in Gaza constitutes genocide, Israel and its civilian court system have been wittingly complicit in a steady stream of violations of international law not seen since the days of the Third Reich.  And now, with another deadly sweeping mock at international law, Israel says we will execute Palestinians and Palestinians alone.

On its face, with appalling pride, the Knesset has now set the stage for the execution by noose of thousands of Palestinians who have never had a day in court, let alone one overseen by independent jurists who ruled not by a military faith and race-based presumption of guilt, but by due process. Like its predecessor, the ticking time bomb exemption, the murder Palestinian law provides absolute discretion to soldiers dressed up with a gavel not only to say guilty as charged, but to impose a sentence of death to be carried out within 90 days of conviction.  This military procedure is akin to the administrative process employed by the Nazis in their People’s Court, which typically had jurisdiction over political offenses, including black marketeering, work slowdowns and “defeatism.” On one such occasion Judge Roland Freisler, who had sentenced more than 5000 people to death, went so far as to send the family of Joseph Muller, a Catholic priest, a bill for his execution by guillotine.

The recently enacted murder of Palestinians is illegal under international law.  To be sure that this law oozes with targeted execution of Palestinians, cannot be debated. With its specific intent, it applies solely to those who cause the death of another “with the aim of negating the existence of the State of Israel.” As noted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights,

The selective application of capital punishment on ethnic or national grounds, or because of one’s political views, constitutes a particularly stark form of discriminatory harm … Any system that permits differential treatment in their justice system or by the imposition of the death penalty undermines the most basic guarantees of equality before the law.

In other respects, the legislation offends settled international law through its palpable attack on essential procedural and substantive safeguards such as notice and specificity as to key elements of an offense, or what can constitute witting complicity in it. Thus, while the law places within its deadly reach co-conspirators who “assist” in lethal attacks, it fails to define with requisite specificity just what to assist means. Is mere proscribed speech, or writing in support of resistance in general a sufficient overt act under the law? Does providing a car, or a weapon or loaning some money to one involved in a lethal act constitute a sufficient overt act in furtherance of the crime to expose a donor to the stretch of the hangman’s noose?  Not at all an abstract debate, Israel is, after all, a land where collective punishment of those uninvolved in a crime is very much the norm and not the exception.

Going further, upon conviction, a resident of the West Bank “who is not an Israeli citizen or Israeli resident … his [default] sentence shall be death, and this penalty only.” By design, the law not only removes any and all settler assassins from its substantive reach, but illegally strips the presiding military panel of sentencing discretion other than in undefined “exceptional circumstances” and where limits are placed on evidence of mitigation to meet that vague burden.

And what of the military court itself? Where unanimity of finding was once required of three jurist panels often passing verdict and sentence in far less serious cases involving but a “nominal” penalty, here, where the noose is the mandated punishment, a mere majority consensus of the judges is required. Continuing on, even in the absence of a request from prosecutors (themselves dressed in military uniform), historically, this is a court system with a conviction rate of almost 100%, built largely of coerced admissions/confessions that were presented for signature to long-detained Palestinians entirely in Hebrew. Isolated, intimidated, sleepless, hungry and subjected to physical and mental abuse with regularity, these often child prisoners are told to sign here, and do so without the presence and advice of counsel.

In what is very much a race to the finality of the hangman’s noose, 5786–2026 impermissibly limits rights of appeal, denies the possibility of pardon and no matter how uncertain the evidence, or arbitrary the penalty, sets an execution mandate of no more than 90 days in violation of the 6-month requirement of Article 75 of the Fourth Geneva Convention with its intent to ensure a reasonable opportunity to pursue appeals.

Most alarming, while it appears, albeit in ambiguous wording, that the law prohibits a revisit to cases of those already convicted and sentenced for a lethal offense, given the supremacist drive of the Knesset, and the obedient silence of the Israeli High Court, the prospect for an amendment permitting post hoc execution looms large.  Moreover, in the absence of any controlling wording to the contrary, there stands the real possibility of a retroactive application of the law to thousands of detained Palestinian prisoners, including hundreds of children awaiting prosecution for allegations that occurred well before its passage. Known as a nunc pro tunc application of a new rule or law, and rejected by legal systems across the globe, historically, Israel has exhibited no hesitancy whatsoever in ignoring settled international norms or law. A more glaring example of a real-world, real-time, real-application by the Knesset of the talisman of blood libel would be hard to find.

Make no mistake about it. The Death Penalty for Terrorists Law is but another accelerated step in the Israeli drive to ethnically cleanse all of Palestine, through any available means.  Unwilling to settle for its most recent criminal mass slaughter in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians were murdered in plain view in Gaza and the West Bank, it now seeks to recast its Reich-like assassin’s face through the pretext of a legislatively-approved military lynching.

In reality, an honest look says all that’s missing from Israeli law 5786–2026 are the prefatory words of an Alabama newspaper editor who, in harkening back to the days of the Ku Klux Klan, when referring to his goal of cleaning out Washington D.C. wrote… “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them”.

Notes

[1] Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, Deputy Minister for Religious Affairs in the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, member of the Jewish Home party (December 2013).

[2] Rabbi Dov Lior, Chief rabbi of settlements in Hebron and Kiryat Arba, head of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank], and leading figure in the religious Zionist movement (January 2011).

[3] Eli Yishai, Then-Minister of the Interior in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (June 2012).

[4] Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the late influential spiritual leader of the Shas party, which was a part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government from 2009-2012 (September 2010).

[5] Moshe Feiglin, former Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party (2004).

[6] Rabbi Aharon Yehuda Leib Shteinman, Spiritual leader of the United Torah Judaism party, which was then part of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (May 2012).

[7] Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, Chief rabbi of the city of Safed (2011).

[8] Rabbi Yosef Scheinen, Head of the Ashdod Yeshiva (religious school) (2010).

[9] The King’s Torah, written by Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, from the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the settlement of Yitzhar (2010).

[10] Ariel Atlas, Then- Minister of Housing in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s coalition government (July 2009).

[11] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

[12] Id.

[13] Rabbi Eli Ben Dahan, Israeli Deputy Defense Minister.

[14] Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

[15] Miri Regev, Israeli Minister of Culture.

[16] Ayelet Shaked, Israeli Minister of Justice.

[17] Moshe Yaalon, Former Israeli defense Minister.

[18] Eli Yishai, Former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister.

[19] Avraham Zarbiv, Rabbinical Judge who served as a bulldozer driver in Gaza.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.