Does Israel Have the Right to Defend Itself?

States do not possess the right of self-defense to uphold illegal occupations.

By Stephen R. Shalom

October 30, 2024

Source: Fpif


k_barghouti - Palestinians throw stones at Israeli soldiers. Flikr.

“Israel has the right to defend itself,” President Joseph Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and countless commentators have declared multiple times over the past year. But does Israel in fact have such a right?

Even if there were an Israeli right to self-defense, such a right would be limited by the standard of proportionality. This is not only the requirement of proportionality for any individual military operation, but of Israel’s response to the October 7 attacks taken as a whole: are the harmful effects of Israel’s military campaign outweighed by the benefits of achieving the claimed legitimate aims of the campaign?

Israel’s response certainly does not meet this standard given that it has subjected the people of Gaza to what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has deemed a “plausible” genocide. Amnesty International called the “intensity and cruelty” of the Israeli government’s bombardment “unparalleled,” with a “pace of death” The New York Times found to have “few precedents in this century.” Oxfam and Human Rights Watch characterized Israel’s military actions as “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks,” and the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry found a “concerted policy” to destroy Gaza’s health-care system.

But does Israel have a right to self-defense at all?
Digging into the Arguments

On one level, of course it does. When confronted by someone about to commit an unjust act, such as killing a civilian, there is a right to self-defense. Consider a Soviet or American soldier in World War II preparing to unjustly slaughter a group of Japanese or German civilians. Even though the victims are citizens of evil regimes engaged in an unjust war, they still are not morally liable to being butchered. Therefore, a Japanese or German soldier, despite participating in an unjust war, would be justified in using force in defense of the endangered civilians.

Accordingly, Israeli security forces were engaged in legitimate self-defense when they acted to defend the innocent victims of October 7. Moreover, Israeli civilians who participated in “individual self-defense or defense of others” on that day did not thereby become lawful military targets. (Otherwise, as the International Committee of the Red Cross noted, “this would have the absurd consequence of legitimizing a previously unlawful attack.”) They too were engaged in legitimate self-defense.

On another level, however, Israel does not have the right of self-defense to an attack against its illegal long-standing occupation. Russian troops in occupied Ukraine cannot claim self-defense when they are attacked by Ukrainian forces. Japanese troops couldn’t claim self-defense when they were attacked by guerrillas in occupied China or the occupied Philippines during World War II. Russia’s and Japan’s occupations were illegal and their armies’ only morally legitimate recourse in the face of resistance was to end those occupations. In the same way, the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is illegal and unjust and Israel cannot claim self-defense when Palestinians struggle by legitimate means to end the occupation. The proper Israeli response to such Palestinian actions is not self-defense but full withdrawal from the occupied territories.

Nor can Israel’s military operations in Gaza be deemed self-defense as a means of freeing hostages and thus ending an unjust abuse of civilians. The overwhelming majority of freed hostages were released in exchanges (105) or unilateral Hamas actions (4), while the number freed by the IDF (8) was almost certainly exceeded by the number inadvertently killed by them and far exceeded by the number of Palestinian civilians killed in the rescue efforts. Family members of the hostages charge that, in rejecting negotiations, “Netanyahu is knowingly, deliberately and protractedly abandoning the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.” A former hostage family spokesperson stated that they had learned that “Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the [Gaza] Strip, but the [Israeli] government rejected the offer.” Israel’s assault on Gaza has not been aimed to secure the release of its hostages but to defend (and expand) its illegal occupation, which it has no right to do.
Illegal Occupation

Since the ICJ only issued its advisory opinion declaring the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories to be illegal in July 2024, one might argue that the occupation wasn’t illegal before that date. But the Court’s reasoning did not draw upon any recently occurring event that had rendered the occupation illegal. Rather it pointed to territorial acquisition and denial of self-determination — longstanding features of Israeli policy:


The Court considers that the violations by Israel of the prohibition of the acquisition of territory by force and of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination have a direct impact on the legality of the continued presence of Israel, as an occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The sustained abuse by Israel of its position as an occupying Power, through annexation and an assertion of permanent control over the Occupied Palestinian Territory and continued frustration of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, violates fundamental principles of international law and renders Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful. (Para 261)

In any event, the illegality of the occupation was identified before this ICJ advisory opinion. In 2017, the Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Michael Lynk submitted a report endorsing the four elements of a test proposed by international law scholars for whether an occupation was legal: (a) The belligerent occupier cannot annex any of the occupied territory; (b) The belligerent occupation must be temporary and cannot be either permanent or indefinite; and the occupant must seek to end the occupation and return the territory to the sovereign as soon as reasonably possible; (c) During the occupation, the belligerent occupier is to act in the best interests of the people under occupation; and (d) The belligerent occupier must administer the occupied territory in good faith, including acting in full compliance with its duties and obligations under international law and as a member of the United Nations. Lynk found that Israel failed all four elements of this test.

And in 2022, the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory found Israel’s occupation to be illegal, focusing “on two indicators that may be used to determine the illegality of the occupation: the permanence of the Israeli occupation, … and actions amounting to annexation, including unilateral actions taken to dispose of parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory as if Israel held sovereignty over it.”

Israel argues that its occupation is legal (or even not an occupation at all) because it acquired the West Bank and Gaza as the result of a defensive war against an attack waged by neighboring Arab states. In fact, however, in 1967 it was Israel that attacked first. Those who excuse Israel’s action as justified preemption point to the Arab armies mobilizing on its borders. But whatever panic there was among the public, those who understood the military situation — policymakers in Tel Aviv and Washington — knew quite well that even if the Arabs had struck first, Israel would have easily prevailed in any war. Egypt’s leader was looking for a way out and had agreed to send his vice-president to Washington for negotiations. Before that could happen, Israel attacked. Menachem Begin, then an Israeli cabinet member, recalled that we “had a choice.” Egyptian Army concentrations did not prove that Nasser was about to attack. “We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Yet, even if it were the case that the 1967 war was wholly defensive on Israel’s part, this could not justify Israel’s continued rule over Palestinians. A people do not lose their right to self-determination because governments that had no legal or moral right to be ruling parts of Palestine (Jordan and Egypt) went to war. Whatever penalties would have been warranted to impose on Amman and Cairo for having started the war, there was no basis for punishing the Palestinian population by forcing them to submit to foreign military occupation.

Moreover, as Michael Bothe has noted, even if Israel’s war in 1967 had been a lawful act of self-defense, “taking advantage of the situation for the purpose of annexation … would go beyond the limits of what is allowed as self-defense[:] namely[,] measures which are militarily necessary and proportionate means of self-protection.”

Israel argues that since it withdrew its forces from Gaza in 2005, the territory is no longer occupied. But both legally and practically, Israel’s withdrawal did not end the occupation. As John Dugard, the U.N.’s then Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, noted in 2006, Gaza remained under Israel’s control, with Israel retaining control of Gaza’s air space, sea space, and (with Egypt) land borders. And Human Rights Watch stated in 2008 that “even though Israel withdrew its permanent military forces and settlers in 2005, it remains an occupying power in Gaza under international law because it continues to exercise effective day-to-day control over key aspects of life in Gaza.” As the Israeli human rights organization Gisha observed, if Israel had truly ended the occupation, then it could not prohibit Gaza from trading by sea or air with other nations, or prevent people from coming in and out, or declare “no go zones” within the territory.

The same conclusion follows from basic principles of morality. Regardless of the legal status of the occupation, it surely cannot be morally acceptable to maintain a people under occupation and deny them self-determination for more than 50 years. Accordingly, on moral grounds there can be no right to self-defense on behalf of maintaining that occupation.
The Invasion of Lebanon

The Biden administration has used the same “Israel has the right to defend itself” language with respect to Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah. Does Israel have such a right in this case?

As in Gaza, Israel’s bombing campaign in Lebanon has placed civilians at grave risk of harm. But it’s not just Israel’s illegitimate war tactics that negate any Israeli right to self-defense here. One of the rules of customary international law is that the exercise of the right of self-defense is subject to the condition of necessity. There is a corresponding moral standard from just war theory of last resort. According to these principles, it cannot be right to go to war when there exists some other, less violent, and less costly (in terms of human lives) means of achieving a just cause.

On October 8, 2023, after Israel launched its assault on Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack the previous day, Hezbollah fired some rockets at military targets in Shebaa Farms, a small piece of land occupied by Israel. Lebanon claims Shebaa Farms; Israel says it is part of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, conquered from Syria in 1967 and annexed by Israel in 1981. Israel’s annexation was declared null and void by a unanimous Security Council resolution and recognized by no country in the world other than Israel, until the Trump administration did so in 2019. Syria claims Shebaa Farms belongs to Lebanon, but neither Syria nor Israel has responded to the UN secretary general’s 2007 proposal for the demarcation of the border.

In any event, Israel retaliated for the Hezbollah attack, and the two sides proceeded to exchange fire across the border, with a majority of the projectiles coming from Israel, and with a large majority of the casualties, both military and civilian, occurring in Lebanon. Tensions increased over the summer, when what was likely an errant Hezbollah rocket killed 12 youngsters in a Druze village in the Golan. Israel assassinated a Hezbollah commander in Beirut (along with several civilians, wounding dozens of others), air strikes and rocket fire ensued, but by the end of August, the border had quieted down. Then in mid-September, Israel unleashed its pager and walkie-talkie attacks (condemned as war crimes by most human rights groups). Israel followed with extensive air bombardment and then a ground invasion into Lebanon. Was this justified self-defense?

Israel could have ended the Hezbollah rocket attacks at any point over the past year had it accepted a ceasefire in Gaza. (During the brief Gaza ceasefire in November 2023, Hezbollah had held its fire.) Of course, no country wants to be pressured to choose a policy by military threat, but morally and legally, the decision as to whether to accept a Gaza ceasefire was not optional for Israel. When one is committing massive human rights violations, it is not discretionary whether to continue doing so. As B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, stated in January, the only way to implement the ICJ order calling on Israel to prevent acts of genocide “is through an immediate ceasefire. It is impossible to protect civilian life as long as the fighting continues.” In May, the ICJ ordered Israel to end its Rafah offensive. Again, for the Israeli government this wasn’t an option.

Israel had another opportunity to bring calm to the border, and perhaps much more, without needing to unleash a new, major war.

A few days after the pager bomb attacks, the United States and France drafted a call for a 21-day pause in fighting to allow for diplomacy aimed at reaching a longer-term truce. Washington informed the UN and Lebanon that Israel agreed. The New York Times reported that “the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, also sent word through an intermediary that his powerful militia supported the call for a cease-fire.” On September 25, the plan was publicly announced, with the backing of Australia, Canada, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Qatar. Peace seemed possible. U.S. officials even expressed hope that the peace might extend to Gaza.

According to The Times report, however:

Two days later, before diplomats could draw up a detailed cease-fire proposal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel declared at the United Nations that Israel must “defeat Hezbollah in Lebanon.” Soon after, huge bombs fell on Beirut’s southern outskirts, killing Mr. Nasrallah and extinguishing any immediate prospect of a cease-fire.… progress toward a cease-fire was further along than previously known, but it was halted abruptly when Israel killed Mr. Nasrallah.

The Times noted that the killing of Nasrallah was “the second time in 10 weeks that Israel had quashed progress toward a cease-fire by striking a militia leader; Israel’s assassination in July of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, led to the hardening of that group against any Gaza cease-fire proposal.”

Nasrallah certainly had blood on his hands. Hezbollah’s role in Syria during the civil war there was reprehensible. But his killing and the ensuing war can hardly be described as Israel exercising its right to defend itself. Rather than self-defense, these represented steps toward an unnecessary—and hence unjust— war, with all the horrible consequences that entails.

Self-defense is a basic right of individuals and countries. But it is not justified self-defense when it represents the defense of an unjust occupation. And it is not legitimate self-defense when war was neither necessary nor a last resort.


Stephen R. Shalom (born September 8, 1948) is professor emeritus of political science at William Paterson University in NJ. Among other topics, he writes about U.S. foreign policy and political vision. He is on the editorial board of New Politics and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and the Real Utopia network.

Doing Time for Palestine

Corinna Barnard interviews two of the “Merrimack 4,” activists facing jail on Nov. 14 for their direct action on a U.S. subsidiary of Israeli weapons supplier Elbit.

 (First of two parts)

By Corinna Barnard

October 31, 2024

Source: Consortium News


Activists target Elbit Systems office in Merrimack, New Hampshire, on Nov. 20, 2023. (Courtesy Maen Hammad)



Almost a year ago a photograph of two figures standing on a rooftop of a building in Merrimack, New Hampshire, attracted interest in the social-media sphere attentive to the Palestine-Israel conflict.

The people in the photograph were wearing masks and holding greenish smoky flares over their heads.

Beneath them was a sign, “Elbit Systems of America.”

That’s a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary of the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems.

The parent, Haifa-based company is a leading supplier of weaponry — military drones, artillery, munitions and electronic warfare systems — that the Israeli military, for over a year, has needed to destroy the built-and-natural environment of Palestinians while slaughtering them at a historic rate in modern warfare.

In the photo, an American flag drooped on the left side of the Elbit facility, frames the image. The sky had the delicate pastels of a nice November morning.

But who were the people on the Elbit Merrimack roof? And why were they up there?

For much of the past year a variety of people — prosecutors, politicians and reporters — have been providing the answers.

Now Calla Walsh, the one in the blue jacket on the left side of the photo, is responding to email questions from Consortium News. So is Paige Belanger.

Walsh, Belanger and two other young women — Sophie Ross, then 22, and Bridget Shergalis, then 27 — are the Merrimack 4.

On Nov. 20, 2023, they led a direct action against Elbit Merrimack.

Almost a year later, on Nov. 14 they are scheduled to begin a 60-day sentence in Hillsborough County House of Corrections, also known as the Valley Street Jail, in Manchester, New Hampshire, for their role in that action.

“Whatever the conditions are, they will be much better than those faced by Palestinians in Zionist concentration camps,” says Belanger, in an email to ConsortiumNews.

Until now, the Merrimack 4 have refrained from speaking publicly about their experience while their case was being adjudicated.

“It’s only now, after coming to plea agreements and knowing what our sentences will look like, that we feel we are able to begin speaking about our case and reclaiming our voices more generally,” Belanger says.

(Over the past year, I got to know Walsh and Belanger after following their initial political activities in October and November 2023, before the Merrimack action).
Arrested on the Roof

Walsh and two others, on the morning of that photo, had climbed ladders to reach the roof of the Elbit building in Merrimack.

Earlier, while a support team was blocking the driveway to the building, a core group broke windows, sprayed red paint and graffiti on the front of the building and barred a door with a bicycle lock.

Holding the smoke flares on the roof and creating an iconic photo-op was a triumphant gesture.

Shortly after that photograph was taken, local police arrested Walsh, then 19, along with Sophie Ross and Bridget Shergalis — the original “Merrimack 3” — on the roof.

Merrimack police involved the F.B.I. in its investigation of the incident to find any “co-conspirators.”

Two months later, in January, Belanger, then 32, was also arrested, making it the “Merrimack 4.”
Palestine Action

Palestine Action activists blockading Elbit Systems Instro Precision factory in Sandwich, Kent, on Nov. 6, 2023. (Palestine Action)

The Merrimack Elbit action followed the lead of Palestine Action, the U.K. campaign that has defaced and damaged Elbit and other military-linked facilities in that country under the mission statement: “Take Direct Action Against Israel’s Arms Trade in Britain.”

Walsh and Belanger helped form a U.S. branch of Palestine Action after Oct. 7 and the group began an Elbit-targeting spree.

They disturbed an Elbit recruitment event at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston; defaced an Elbit office in Arlington, Virginia, with red-paint graffiti: “War criminals work here.”

Between Oct. 7 and Nov. 20, the Elbit office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was targeted several times, including on Oct. 30, when both Calla Walsh and Sophie Ross got arrested, one year ago today.

Then came Merrimack.
Felonies Dropped

In September, the Merrimack 4 defense team negotiated the 60-day sentence for two misdemeanors in a legal mediation with a judge.

That outcome is a major reduction of initial felony charges that Hillsborough, New Hampshire, county prosecutors brought against them for riot, sabotage, criminal mischief, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. The charges had hung the chilling prospect of decades in jail over the co-defendants.

“The hardest part was all the months of waiting, isolation, and fear of a lifetime in prison, which is over now,” Calla Walsh told Consortium News. “Every day in jail I know I’ll be a day closer to getting back in the streets with the movement.”

Walsh and Sophie Ross have charges pending from their arrests at the Cambridge, Mass., Elbit facility. As a consequence of those arrests, their bail for the Merrimack action the following month was set higher, at $20,000 each, compared with $5,000 for Shergalis.

Walsh and Ross are both still in legal trouble in Massachusetts. But unlike New Hampshire, it is their home state. And Walsh, while now only 20, already has a political chapter behind her in Massachusetts, as a politically precocious teen who helped bring in the youth vote for Democratic U.S. Sen. Ed Markey. That may have earned her some political goodwill.

Neighboring New Hampshire is different.

Walsh knew that she and the others on the roof might get arrested, as they had been in Cambridge. But she didn’t expect the state to come down so hard.

“I was brought out into the courtroom in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, and when I saw my mother and familiar faces of comrades in the court stands, I knew I was in way deeper trouble than I realized,” says Walsh.

Based on her experience, she has advice for people considering a similar form of protest: “Always avoid arrest and maximize material impact and propaganda effect.”

In January, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella took over the case from the prosecutors with the Hillsborough County Attorney’s Office who brought the original charges.

“Originally we were all charged under New Hampshire’s sabotage statute (649:2), for hindering the U.S. or its allies’ defense capacity, a Class-A felony that carried a minimum one year in prison,” says Walsh. “No one had ever been charged with this statute before, but the state had to drop the charge because they realized it could only be used during a declared state of emergency.”

In January, Formella announced that a grand jury indicted three of them — Walsh, Ross and Shergalis — for four Class-B felonies: riot; conspiracy to commit criminal mischief; burglary; and conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence for climbing onto the company’s roof. Each charge carried a sentence of between three-and-a-half and seven years in prison.

A matching indictment came against Belanger in May.

It was “somewhat shocking,” says Belanger, “to experience such draconian charges for an action so morally righteous.”

By July, however, it began to look like their case might not go to trial.

In September, the state dropped all the felony charges.
Fergie Chambers

Cox Enterprises headquarters in Atlanta. (Taylor2646, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

James Cox Chambers Jr, aka Fergie Chambers, has been funding the Merrimack 4 legal defense.

Chambers is an estranged member of the Cox family, which owns the privately held, Atlanta-based global conglomerate Cox Enterprises. Forbes ranks it as the 10th richest family in the U.S.

In addition to paying their legal bills, including bail, Chambers was also a “comrade”: He helped Belanger and Walsh found Palestine Action US and participated in some of their actions.

But since the Merrimack action he’s been out of the country, in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.

A Rolling Stone profile of Chambers in March delves into his lifestyle: sex, drugs, spiritual quests, tormented family relations and his disastrous bankrolling of communal-living experiments.

But it also discusses his interest in overthrowing the U.S. for the good of the world. The problem with all that, Chambers has concluded, is the unwelcome attention it attracts from U.S. law enforcement.

Two months after that Rolling Stone profile, in May, the NH Record reported that Chambers is under an active F.B.I. investigation.

“Fergie left the country a few days after the Merrimack action, after seeing the kinds of charges being leveraged against the three girls arrested on the roof,” says Belanger.

A lot about the U.S. cultural scene generated by the Washington-backed Israeli war on Gaza recalls the period of political and social upheaval in the early 1970s, during the Vietnam War. That includes Chambers. He seems like an emanation from the ranks of the “radical chic” as the writer Tom Wolfe coined it. In today’s slang, post Occupy Wall Street, he’s a 1-percenter with revolutionary politics.

Chambers has generated a media whirlpool around himself. In addition to Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and The New York Post have run their own profiles of him.

Belanger says his notoriety didn’t help the Merrimack 4.

While Chambers’ legal support has been critical, his connection to the case otherwise


“created an opening for us to be easily dismissed or maligned. We faced rumors of being groomed and indoctrinated into a sex cult, comparisons to the Symbionese Liberation Army and Patti Hearst story, and assertions that we had otherwise been led astray by an unbalanced power dynamic with an ultra-wealthy man who encouraged and enabled us to put our bodies on the line for his own platforming and political reputation.”

Both Belanger and Walsh deny all of that.

Belanger says she came across Chambers in 2020, when he was running his latest communal experiment on acreage in Alford, Massachusetts, a village about 20 miles south of her home town in Pittsfield. Since his move to Tunisia, Chambers has been selling that property off.

“He asked me to come live on the land and work towards creating a revolutionary project,” Belanger writes.


“There were not really clear parameters of what that project might entail, just that we would be aligned on a political line and seek to become a presence in the Berkshires with some political aim. There were a lot of iterations of that project in the years I lived there. My role throughout was mostly political education. I immersed myself fully into learning and teaching Communist theory and trying to figure out ways to most meaningfully put it into practice within the specific conditions of the Berkshires.”

(One local person familiar with the set-up in Alford, who did not wish to be identified, noted that Chambers’ provision of living quarters is a huge factor for young people struggling to find affordable housing in an area where rents have gotten out of the reach of many.)
Prosecutors’ Pressure Play

Meanwhile, Belanger considers the initial charges a pressure play by the state to crack the co-defendants. But it didn’t work, she says. The state “failed to intimidate someone into collaborating with them.”

Mark Moody, a New York City litigator, says that harsh prosecutorial overreach is a common tactic designed to coerce guilty pleas from those confronted by the criminal justice system.

But he sees “political flavor” in New Hampshire Attorney General Formella’s statement, quoted in his office’s announcement of the indictment, regarding the “important civil rights and public protection interests involved.”

“It looks like an attempt to criminalize conscientious opposition to the manufacture of weapons on American soil that will be used by foreign governments to indiscriminately slaughter human beings on foreign soil,” Moody said in an email.

By Nov. 20, 2023, the date of the Merrimack action, Israeli war crimes in Gaza were mounting.

On Oct. 13, 2023, Israeli historian and genocide scholar Raz Segal was already calling Israel’s assault on Gaza a “textbook case of genocide” in an article in Jewish Currents.

“Gaza death toll tops 10,000; UN calls it a children’s graveyard,” read a Reuters headline on Nov. 10.

Ghassan Abu Sittah, a physician who had worked at two hospitals that had been struck by Israeli forces, was depicting the attack on the health sector as “part of a military strategy that aims to wipe out Palestinians.”

“What has been different in this war than all the other wars I have been at – not just in Gaza, but all around the region, in Yemen, Iraq and Syria – is that the destruction of the healthcare system has been the main thrust of the [Israeli] military strategy,” Abu Sittah was quoted by Al Jazeera.

The existence of an expanding genocide in Gaza drew little recognition from the Granite State’s attorney general, local politicians or press in their various responses to the Merrimack 4’s action.
Chorus of Condemnation

New Hampshire’s Republican U.S. senator, Chris Sununu, smited the incident as anti-Semitic. He urged prosecutors to charge ahead, in a comment quoted by the NH Journal:


“The antisemitism, hate, and significant damage brought to Elbit America’s campus yesterday has no place in NH and will not be tolerated. I am confident law enforcement will work to bring those responsible for this vile act of hate to swift justice.”

A bipartisan chorus of condemnations from local politicians followed Sununu’s opening salvo.

The NH Journal enthusiastically adopted Sununu’s “anti-Semitic” term. This is their lead on a Nov. 21 article:


“If the antisemitic activists of Palestine Action US were hoping to rally support in the Granite State with their attack on an Israeli-based defense contractor in Merrimack, it appears they miscalculated.”

The smoke flares the demonstrators were holding on the roof in that photo are theatrical pyrotechnics commonly used in pro-Palestine demonstrations. Unlike “incendiary devices,” they are not weapons designed to start fires.

But for authorities steeped in post-9/11 anti-terrorism furor, masked people on a roof with smoking objects were not to be taken lightly.

After Merrimack Police Chief Brian Levesque initially described the flares as “incendiary devices,” the term stuck in the press, along with references to “smoke bombs” and “billowing smoke” from the flares.

With that kind of hyperbole, it was quite reasonable for members of the local community to assume that the young women on the top of the local Elbit building were making more than a political gesture. Did they perhaps want to blow up the building? The whole town?

By both restricting the evidence of Israel’s genocidal violence from the story and deploying inflammatory terminology, the press conjured the Merrimack 4 into young women who went around “commiting siege and riot” for no apparent reason.

They just liked smashing glass and splattering red paint. They seemed possessed. New Hampshire, after all, is in New England, home of the colonial-era witch trials.
Canary Mission

All in all, the legal, political and media response to the case might as well have been orchestrated by Canary Mission, the heavily-funded Israel-run website that tracks and smears advocates of Palestine in the U.S. through a network of anonymous informants.

James Bamford, an American journalist who specializes in U.S. intelligence agencies, describes the doxxing site as a key asset for the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, a “ highly secretive intelligence organization that is largely focused on the United States, and the Shin Bet security service.”

In The Nation last December, Bamford recommended a federal investigation of Canary Mission’s funders for assisting agents of a foreign government.

Canary Mission had already blacklisted Calla Walsh before the Merrimack action for her open support of the armed Palestinian resistance and her BDS — boycott, divest and sanction — work against Israeli companies.

The site said she worked on The Mapping Project, which identifies “local institutional support for the colonization of Palestine” in Boston and its surrounding areas. Walsh says that’s untrue; all she ever did was tweet support for it.

“That’s what I was doxxed for. I would never want to take credit for those anonymous people’s work, but Zionist think tanks claimed I was an Iranian agent masterminding the entire project,” she said.

Walsh believes her Canary Mission profile affected the tenor of their prosecution.

“At my arraignment, using information that appeared to be taken from my Canary Mission page, the prosecutor portrayed me as a vicious anti-Semitic communist hooligan who was running around the country committing crimes and calling cops ‘pigs,’ ” she told CN.

All of the Merrimack 4 now have Canary Mission profiles.

Errors & Victories

Protesters outside an Elbit Systems of America facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, Nov. 20, 2023. (Courtesy Maen Hammad)

Looking back on the Merrimack action, Belanger acknowledges that it may have been precipitous.

“Operating with an extreme sense of urgency,” says Belanger, “I think we bypassed a lot of grassroots development and community-building requisite for creating a powerful movement that could withstand state repression.”

The prosecution’s felony charges, meanwhile, may have worked to halt the outbreak of attacks on Elbit.

“Our initial charges for the Merrimack action were five felonies that could amount to 37 years in prison,” says Belanger.


“Especially from the vantage of hindsight, with our sentence totalling 60 days and pleading only to misdemeanors, we can see how trumped-up these charges were. The state wanted to quell these types of actions, and certainly used us as an example against engaging in militant action at a pivotal point in the escalation of the genocide.”

At the same time, both Belanger and Walsh are heartened by some of the results of the direct-action approach they adopted.

Anti-Elbit actions slowed down after the Merrimack felony charges in November 2023, but they did not stop.

In March, other demonstrators resumed actions outside Merrimack Elbit.

“Some of the protesters chained themselves to tires filled with cement and other materials to block the driveway in and out of the property of the Israel-based international defense electronics company,” ABC affiliate WMUR-TV reported.

As of early October, eight of them were found guilty of criminal trespass and awaiting sentencing.

And last August, the Elbit Cambridge office where some of them had demonstrated in October 2023 decided to move to a “more suitable location.” That decision followed a year-long campaign of demonstrations outside the building that began in August of 2023.

Walsh ranks the closure of Elbit’s Cambridge office as one of the few material wins for the BDS movement in the U.S. in recent years.

“Ultimately the resolution of our case, defeating felonies and prison time, is a win against counterinsurgency,” she says.


“I hope it makes people more willing to take militant anti-imperialist action, and to do it more effectively. Part of the goal of any action is to make possible the next, greater level of action. We did not take ‘shut it down’ to be a metaphor, and permanently closing the Elbit in Cambridge is one of the few material wins we’ve had in the U.S. in recent years.”
Responding to Genocide

“What did you do during the genocide?”

It’s a question that people of conscience have been having to ask themselves since Oct. 7, 2023,

Matt Nelson answered it with his life on Sept. 11 by setting himself on fire near the Israeli Consulate in Boston. He did not kill himself immediately. It took four days.

“Free Palestine,” Nelson said at the end of a statement he posted to social media beforehand.

Nelson joined two others in acts of extreme self-destruction.

U.S. active-duty Airman Aaron Bushnell killed himself on Feb. 25 outside the Israeli embassy in Washington to avoid complicity in the genocide.

Before then, on Dec. 1, 2023, a person not identified self-immolated outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta.

Nelson expressed a world view that seems compatible with that of Belanger and Walsh.

“We are slaves to capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care. The protest I’m about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians,” he said in his statement on social media.

And then he set himself on fire.

Four young women in New England took a different approach. Instead of turning their anguish inward, the Merrimack 4 took action.

“I didn’t want to serve time in jail,” Belanger says, “but I have no regrets about being incarcerated for materially disrupting the flow of weapons to Palestine, and I will forever be proud that I took a stand against genocide, especially because it meant putting my own freedom on the line. Standing by and doing nothing simply wasn’t an option.”

This is the first of a story in two parts.

Corinna Barnard is the deputy editor of Consortium News. She formerly worked in editing capacities for Women’s eNews, The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires. At the start of her career she was managing editor for the magazine Nuclear Times, which covered the 1980s anti-nuclear war movement.

Sanders: “I disagree with Kamala’s Position On the War in Gaza. How Can I Vote For Her?”

By Bernie Sanders

October 29, 2024

Source: Bernie Sanders

I understand that there are millions of Americans who disagree with President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the terrible war in Gaza. I am one of them. While Israel had a right to defend itself against the horrific Hamas terrorist attack of October 7th which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages, it did not have the right to wage an all-out war against the entire Palestinian people. It did not have the right to kill 42,000 Palestinians, a third of whom were children, women, and the elderly, or injure over a 100,000 people in Gaza. It did not have the right to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure, housing, and Health Care System. It did not have the right to bomb every one of Gaza’s 12 universities. It did not have the right to block humanitarian aid causing massive malnutrition in children and, in fact, starvation. And that is why I am doing everything I can to block US military aid and offensive weapon sales to the right-wing extremist Netanyahu government in Israel.

And I know that many of you share those feelings and some of you are saying how can I vote for Kamala Harris if she is supporting this terrible war? That is a very fair question. And let me give you my best answer.

And that is, that even on this issue, Donald Trump and his right-wing friends are worse. In the Senate, in Congress, the Republicans have worked overtime to block humanitarian aid to the starving children in Gaza. The President and Vice President both support getting as much humanitarian aid into Gaza as soon as possible. Trump has said Netanyahu is “doing a good job” and has said “Biden is holding him back”. He has too suggested that the Gaza Strip would make excellent beachfront property for development. And it is no wonder Netanyahu prefers to have Donald Trump in office but even more importantly, and this I promise you, after Kamala wins, we will together do everything that we can to change US policy toward Netanyahu. An immediate ceasefire; the return of all hostages; a surge of massive humanitarian aid; the stopping of settler attacks on the West Bank; and the rebuilding of Gaza for the Palestinian people. And let me be clear, we will have in my view a much better chance of changing US policy with Kamala than with Trump, who is extremely close to Netanyahu and sees him as a like-minded right-wing extremist ally.

But let me also say this, and I deal with this every single day as a US senator. As important as Gaza is and as strongly as many of us feel about this issue, it is not the only issue at stake in this election. If Trump wins, women in this country will suffer an enormous setback and lose the ability to control their own bodies. That is not acceptable. If Trump wins, to be honest with you, the struggle against climate change is over. While virtually every scientist who has studied the issue understands that climate change is real and an existential threat to our country and the world, Trump believes it is a hoax. And if the United States, the largest economy in the world, stops transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel, every other country, China, Europe, all over the world, they will do exactly the same thing. And God only knows the kind of planet we will leave to our kids and future generations. If Trump wins at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, he will demand even more tax breaks for the very richest people in our country while cutting back on programs that working families desperately need. The rich will only get richer while the minimum wage will remain at $7.25 an hour and millions of our fellow workers will continue to earn starvation wages.

Did you all see the recent Trump rally at Madison Square Garden? Well, I did and what I can tell you is that as a nation, as all of you know, we have struggled for years against impossible odds to try to overcome all forms of bigotry, whether it is racism, whether it’s sexism, whether it’s homophobia, whether it’s xenophobia, you name it. We have tried to fight against bigotry. But that is exactly what we saw on display at that unbelievable Trump rally. It was not a question of speakers getting up there, disagreeing with Kamala Harris on the issues. That wasn’t the issue at all. They were attacking her simply because she was a woman and a woman of color. Extreme, vulgar sexism and racism. Is that really the kind of America that we can allow?

So, let me conclude by saying this: this is the most consequential election in our lifetimes. Many of you have differences of opinion with Kamala Harris on Gaza. So do I. But we cannot sit this election out. Trump has got to be defeated. Let’s do everything we can in the next week to make sure that Kamala Harris is our next president. Thank you very much.

Bernie Sanders (born September 8, 1941) is an American politician, presidential candidate, and activist who has served as a United States senator for Vermont since 2007, and as the state’s congressman from 1991 to 2007. Before his election to Congress, he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. He has a close relationship with the Democratic Party, having caucused with House and Senate Democrats for most of his congressional career. Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist and has been credited with influencing a leftward shift in the Democratic Party after his 2016 presidential campaign. An advocate of social democratic and progressive policies, he is known for his opposition to economic inequality and neoliberalism.

Arizonan Palestinians On Voting For Kamala And The Election Aftermath

By Michael Albert, Maher Arekat , Mohamed El-Sharkawy , Stephen Mufarreh , Fadi Zenayed 

October 30, 2024

Source: Originally published by Z. Feel free to share widely.





Original Statement available here

Three days ago I received a copy of an article titled “Arizona Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Progressive Democrats and Community Leaders Statement on Presidential Election.” The document had a hundred co-signers/co-authors. I found it warranted, worthy, and compelling—an exemplary collective statement and all the more so with a hundred public signers. I was able to get in touch with one who I happened to know, and so emerged what follows. I hope that if you haven’t already, you will click the above title and read the collective document before continuing with this article, because the intent in this “interview” is to get behind the article, not reiterate it.

My experience in recent weeks has been that a good many people feel intense emotional, moral, and pragmatic qualms about voting for Harris in swing states in order to stop Trump even while they already agree with most or even all of the sentiments and intentions in the collective document. So with little time before the election, and with no opportunity for follow up, I emailed five questions hoping for some responses that might help others in the week ahead. With less than a day to reply, four Palestinian signers sent back answers.

Maher Arekat Answers:Please introduce yourself a bit to readers and to me for that matter, and then if you would your reasons for signing on to the document, basically your hopes for what it might accomplish.

My name is Maher Arekat. I’m a Palestinian American refugee. My family left in 1967 during the second Nakba. I reside in Phoenix, Arizona. I’ve been in this lovely country for 53 years. I’m a peace activist. I work for human rights in Palestine. I’m the founder of the Palestine Community Center of Arizona. I help a lot of charities. I try to do the best I can for the US and also for the Palestinian people.

One of the main reasons I helped do this statement obviously is we don’t want that fascist in office. The best outcome of this election would be Harris, because I see hope in the Democratic Party even though the majority of elected officials like in Congress are not on board with fighting for Palestinian human rights. Many are. More and more. Basically none of the Republicans are. The best outcome would be Harris for President. We can’t have Trump for many, many reasons — obviously the top reason is what’s going on in Palestine and Gaza and how he would make it even worse. And also as an American for many other reasons with a lot different causes and what this country is going through.

The statement is creating a lot of controversy and we’re getting a lot of pushback. But it’s also showing a lot of people that we need to be on the right side of this for the right reasons. It’s a wake up call for our community, our families, our people whether they are Palestinians, Muslims, or Arabs — to be a matter of fact and to show leadership that we need to do this. We cannot afford to be on the sidelines. America is a two party system. Democrat or Republican. We can either have the crazy fascist Mr. Trump or it’s gonna be Kamala. And I have a good feeling that Kamala will be the first Madame President and be better for us. She’s part of the administration, but it wasn’t her call. It was Mr. Biden’s call to be complicit in this genocide.Can you indicate if you felt a kind of resistance or obstacle in yourself to signing a document that was in the end urging votes in swing states for Harris, even while acknowledging and hating her complicity in genocide. And, if you did, how did you overcame it and so decide to attach your name? On the other hand, if you yourself didn’t feel such hesitancy, perhaps you have encountered it in others. If so, perhaps you could indicate why you feel warranted in asking others to overcome it?

It’s been a tough call. It’s been a tough decision. Until about 2 or 3 weeks ago I wasn’t. I’ve been thinking long and hard and actually losing sleep over it. But I’m looking long term and long term is the right judgment that I have to make for myself and our people back home. Hopefully this decision will be the best for us and in our country. We cannot afford to have another four years of Trump destroying this country and attacking our movement. That’s why I came through. I’m hoping we can rally the troops here in Arizona and do the right thing. Obviously we are in a battleground state and we cannot vote Jill Stein or not vote. That’s why I decided to back Harris for President.Even in the few days since the document appeared, or perhaps earlier in discussing it with others, have you encountered from family, friends, workmates, or fellow organizers criticism or even anger over your choice to sign, and, if you have, how do you feel about that and respond to it?

Not so much anger, but I have to do a lot of explaining. When I do explain it makes sense to the family, friends, and community members. They can relate to what the statement is saying. The statement makes the argument clearly and it shows the variety of different people who take this position. It has persuaded a lot of them to come to my camp and back Harris and Democrats. A lot of them were going to vote for Democrats down ballot but not for President, but now they’re coming on board to vote for a Democrat for President. Yes, it’s been tough but I’m a reasonable man. I have a lot of people with open minds. They were pushing back but I had a lot of one on one phone calls. I’m an old timer. I do a lot of phone calls instead of texting or emailing or whatever. I’ve had to do a lot of explaining on the phone in the last few days since the statement came out. Whether Harris or Trump wins, how do you see your own broad post-election personal priorities? Will the fact of your voting for Harris in Arizona have any impact at all on what you do post election?

Of course it will encourage us and give us more hope to push her and the Democrats to come out and do the right thing and start with a peace process to give our people back home, the Palestinian people, hope. A lot of people back home feel our hope can only come through the USA and who leads this country. It’s going to be a lot of work for us afterwards to keep pushing and to have this administration to do the right thing and solve this problem once and for all and have peace. Because neither the Palestinians or Israelis are going anywhere. America has to be an honest broker through Kamala and help us find a solution. America has to do the right thing and start the peace process immediately. It should be a top priority. A stable Middle East is gonna come through solving this problem and the Palestinian people gaining freedom.

Mohamed El-Sharkawy Answers:

Note: Mohamed lost 50 family members in one strike early in the war in Gaza last year. He can’t reach some family members currently.Please introduce yourself a bit to readers and to me for that matter, and then if you would your reasons for signing on to the document, basically your hopes for what it might accomplish.

A- Mohamed El-Sharkawy, Palestinian American, born and raised in Gaza City, went to Aviation school in Cairo, Egypt, Came to the USA after college and work and now works for one of the major airlines.

I signed on the document in the hope that the new president would stop the genocide in Gaza.Can you indicate if you felt a kind of resistance or obstacle in yourself to signing a document that was in the end urging votes in swing states for Harris, even while acknowledging and hating her complicity in genocide? And, if you did, how did you overcome it and so decide to attach your name? On the other hand, if you didn’t feel such hesitancy, perhaps you have encountered it in others. If so, perhaps you could indicate why you feel warranted in asking others to overcome it.

Yes, absolutely, until 2 weeks ago, I was one of the advocates for “Abandoning Harris”, but the more I listen to Trump speaking in his rallies, I realized that we can have a fascist, selfish, unhinged, and corrupt person to be a president of USA.Even in the few days since the document appeared, or perhaps earlier in discussing it with others, have you encountered from family, friends, workmates, or fellow organizers criticism or even anger over your choice to sign, and, if you have, how do you feel about that and respond to it?

Yes, I had backlash from family members and friends because the genocide and the holocaust are still going on in Gaza and the current administration is aiding in that. But I say, anyone but Trump.Whether Harris or Trump wins, how do you see your own broad post-election personal priorities? Will the fact of your voting for Harris in Arizona have any impact at all on what you do post-election?

I hope Kamala Harris would do what she said she would do, end the wars immediately, work on peaceful solutions to the conflict, and bring justice and peace to the region. Otherwise, I think it will be the time to start thinking about and encourage the Third Party.Finally, were there any other lessons you took from being part of the collective document process that you would like to share?

No more wars, No more bloodshed.

Stephen Mufarreh responses:Please introduce yourself a bit to readers and to me for that matter, and then if you would you reasons for signing on to the document, basically your hopes for what it might accomplish.

I am a first generation American. My father was born and raised in Ramallah in the West Bank, Palestine. He was forced to immigrate to the United States due to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

My hope is that the letter sends a clear signal to the Democratic Party that they need to do better than just being the “lesser evil” choice. I would like to see the Democratic Party break free from the shackles of the Israeli Lobby by upholding human rights and International law consistently.Can you indicate if you felt a kind of resistance or obstacle in yourself to signing a document that was in the end urging votes in swing states for Harris, even while acknowledging and hating her complicity in genocide. And, if you did, how did you overcame it and so decide to attach your name? On the other hand, if you yourself didn’t feel such hesitancy, perhaps you have encountered it in others. If so, perhaps you could indicate why you feel warranted in asking others to overcome it?

I was 100% set on voting for Jill Stein so I was very resistant to signing the letter. I felt I would be betraying my community by publicly endorsing Kamala Harris. But more importantly, Kamala Harris has done nothing to earn the Arab or Muslim vote. However, I have spent the last several weeks in deep conversations with a diverse coalition of human rights activists. I was presented with an alternative perspective, one that was not grounded in my desire to rightfully punish the Biden/Harris administration, but one that accepts the terrible reality of a second Trump presidency. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that I would vote for Harris while she was part of the genocide administration, but we fair a sliver of hope pressuring Harris. We stand zero chance with Trump.Even in the few days since the document appeared, or perhaps earlier in discussing it with others, have you encountered from family, friends, workmates, or fellow organizers criticism or even anger over your choice to sign, and, if you have, how do you feel about that and respond to it?

People have rightfully criticized me for voting for Harris and I do not blame them. It hurts to hear people cut us down and question our motives when we care so deeply about our Palestinian brothers and sisters. However, my feelings are irrelevant to the loss experienced by those living the horrors on the ground in Palestine. Hopefully with time, our community will come to see that we based our decision to vote for Harris after carefully evaluating this decision from all angles, just as I know they did with their decision to vote for Dr. Jill Stein.Whether Harris or Trump wins, how do you see your own broad post-election personal priorities? Will the fact of your voting for Harris in Arizona have any impact at all on what you do post election?

The short answer is NO. We already know that neither the Democrats nor the Republican have ever been fair and neutral regarding Palestine. We have been told by many insiders that AIPAC has too much control in Washington. Therefore, our fight for human rights is a long one. Irrespective of who we vote for, everyone in our community has a few bruises from this journey and we are all a bit wiser. You will see a multi-pronged approach with even more community building and activism after this election.Finally, were there any other lessons you took from being part of the collective document process that you would like to share?

Intentionally left blank.

Fadi Zenayed Answers:

Fadi resume: Former President of the Youth Federation of Ramallah, Palestine (AFRP) (1980); former board member of AFRB (various years); former President of the Chicago Club of Ramallah, Palestine (1984) current Vice-President of the Phoenix Club of Ramallah Palestine; Chicago Regional Director of the Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) 1984-1985); former President of ADC-Chicago (1988-1990 and 2009);author of Observations of Israel’s Apartheid System (2024); former Secretary Palestinian American Congress (1995)Please introduce yourself a bit to readers and to me for that matter, and then if you would you reasons for signing on to the document, basically your hopes for what it might accomplish.

My name is Fadi Zanayed. I have been involved within Arab-American politics for 45 years. I signed the document because I believe strengthening the Progressive Party within the Democratic Party is our best hope for establishing peace in the Middle East. Leading the community to this direction is in the best interests of the Progressive and Arab communities.Can you indicate if you felt a kind of resistance or obstacle in yourself to signing a document that was in the end urging votes in swing states for Harris, even while acknowledging and hating her complicity in genocide. And, if you did, how did you overcame it and so decide to attach your name? On the other hand, if you yourself didn’t feel such hesitancy, perhaps you have encountered it in others. If so, perhaps you could indicate why you feel warranted in asking others to overcome it?

I came out in favor of Harris 10 days before this statement came out. I wanted to lead on this issue because I believe that this is in the best interests of the community. I received much criticism. I was called a traitor, genocide supporter. I pushed back knowing that people were expressing emotions rather than expressing clear constructive thinking. I answered with reasoning and logic.It is a related question, and I hope legitimate to ask, even in the few days since the document appeared, or perhaps earlier in discussing it with others, have you encountered from family, friends, workmates, or fellow organizers criticism or even anger over your choice to sign, and, if you have, how do you feel about that and respond to it?

I have not received any backlash from the statement. I gave noticed that it is widely distributed having thousands of retweets and hundreds of comments, many being positive. Harris is the only logical choice and people are being to realize it.Whether Harris or Trump wins, how do you see your own broad post-election personal priorities? Will the fact of your voting for Harris in Arizona have any impact at all on what you do post election?

I believe that whoever wins we need to strengthen the Progressive wing of the Democratic Party. If Harris wins we need to have a strong Progressive wing to influence her in the right direction. If Trump wins, the Progressive wing needs to organize for 2026 and 2028.Finally, were there any other lessons you took from being part of the collective document process that you would like to share?

I believe that a reasoned statement always needs to be part of the process. The statement acknowledges all our concerns with the genocide, how reluctant we are in the choice we have to make but the right choice we did make.


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Michael Albert

Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.

How Can Movements Advance Palestinian Rights This Election — And Beyond?

By Anthony Tirado Chase

October 30, 2024

Image credit: Nissa Tzun via Flickr


For the first time, those seeking change in U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine have real leverage. Wielding it effectively requires both moral and strategic considerations.

This is a crucial inflection point in the movement for recognition of Palestinian rights. A moment of unprecedented opportunity. But, potentially, also a moment of tragically missed opportunity.

The opportunity is that there is a powerful movement, finally, pushing U.S. foreign policy toward a more just position on Israel-Palestine. The U.S.’s bipartisan consensus for an ironclad relationship with Israel has long relegated claims for basic Palestinian rights to the margins. The Democratic Party side of that previous bipartisan consensus has, however, been slowly cracking over the last decade. Even before Hamas’ unconscionable Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians, Democratic voters were for the first time more sympathetic to Palestinians (49 percent) than to Israelis (38 percent). In the year since Oct. 7, an unprecedented coalition has mobilized to protest Israel’s brutal response of accelerated ethnic cleansing, systemic war crimes and forever war.

This leads us to where we are on the eve of the 2024 elections: For the first time, voters who want to stop U.S. support for Israel’s war machine have both a base in one major party and the leverage in a few key states to be politically salient.

At the same time, a majority of Americans still sympathize with Israel over Palestinians with 68 percent viewing Israel “very or mostly favorably.” In an Oct. 2024 YouGov poll, 61 percent of Americans felt it very or fairly important for the U.S. to “cooperate closely with Israel,” versus 16 percent who say it is not important (22 percent don’t know). This increasingly fractured but still overall pro-Israel environment has been a conundrum for the Kamala Harris campaign. Despite shifts among Democratic voters, Joe Biden embodied the long-standing consensus in close support of Israel. Harris’ rhetoric is slightly more distant, but she clearly has made a choice to not break with Biden’s policies, at least for the duration of her presidential campaign.

That has led to the “Abandon Harris” movement — along with some prominent Palestinian figures — endorsing Jill Stein’s presidential campaign. The Green Party presidential candidate earned 0.26 percent of the vote in 2016. Stein is currently polling at roughly 1 percent nationally. By contrast, a recent Michigan poll has Stein at a considerably higher 2 percent in that swing state (with Harris having a 1 percent advantage over Trump). Consequently, while Stein may be a marginal candidate, she is also a serious factor in Michigan. This is evidenced by the attack ads Democrats are running there against Stein, as well as the Republican PAC-funded ads that seek to surreptitiously boost support for her.

The rage of those driven to support Stein is understandable. Yet, some have posited that it might also be self-defeating. The Green Party is after all a fringe party without national infrastructure (and led by an eternal candidate who Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently characterized as “predatory”). Aligning with it might very well lead to a path of political irrelevance, signaling a retreat from an ethical responsibility to engage in the frustrations of power politics in favor of virtue signaling from the sidelines.

Meanwhile, some on Stein’s campaign have openly proclaimed a far more nihilistic purpose, which is to punish Democrats by effectively costing them the election. This comes at a time when Trump has been openly supportive of Israel “finishing the job” in Palestine, saying that “Biden has been holding [Netanyahu] back” — not to mention his simultaneous promise to bring analogous ethnic cleansing/“mass deportation” policies to the United States (as well as the threats he poses to women, LGBTQ+ people, Black people, migrants and all who stand in the way of his White Christian supremacist movement).

Such a “strategy” runs the risk of fracturing a budding intersectional coalition for Palestinian rights in favor of one-issue politics, effectively ignoring allies who may be balancing their support with other issues they also consider urgent. Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman expressed her disappointment in the fragmenting of this coalition by saying “what Harris does after she is elected is going to be completely and entirely dependent on how well our coalition survives. That is the only way we can push her, whether it’s on Palestine, reproductive rights, housing, FTC regulations or unions.”

It is not just the spurning of intersectional alliances that is problematic. Absolutist rhetoric in demonizing potential allies can be equally counterproductive — a prime example being Stein’s running mate Butch Ware, who has been demonizing potential allies by suggesting that Muslims who vote for Harris will burn in hell for it. (Ware also commemorated Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks with praise for the operation and denounced Harris as, among other things, “a Nazi … married to a committed Zionist.”)

There is a political price to be paid for rhetoric that burns bridges with needed partners. These are tactics that can turn a moment of opportunity for positively impacting Palestinian rights into fringe shouting into the wilderness. It is not a path to substantive policy change. Humanizing opponents is key, even if their conversion is not likely. As Mark and Paul Engler put it: Movements don’t win by converting opponents, but rather by “turning neutrals into passive supporters and turning passive sympathizers into active allies and movement participants.”

The best way to do that is to foster a culture of empathy for the emotions felt by all — something the prominent reproductive rights advocate Lorettta Ross refers to as “calling-in.” Rhetoric that closes off possibilities for mutual recognition is self-defeating. In other words: It is both moral and strategic to think in ways that are nonviolent, inclusive and human.

Others, such as the Uncommitted National Movement, have taken a more calibrated position that moves at least partly in that direction. Uncommittedhas refused to endorse Harris, but in more reasoned language that recognizes the substantial difference between Harris and Trump. Uncommitted rejects Trump for his plans to “accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of antiwar organizing” and also spurns Stein out of fear a vote for her would “inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency.” Indeed, Uncommittedhas gone so far as to say that “It’s clear Netanyahu will be doing everything in his power to get Trump elected. And we have to do everything in our power to stop him.”

This equivocal Uncommitted position is understandable, given both Harris’ formal stances and her rejection of Uncommitted’s request to be represented by a speaker at the Democratic National Convention (a request supported by a broad range of Democratic Party actors, speaking both to the inroads mentioned earlier and their limits up until now). It is also, however, a confused position. It seemingly acknowledges that Harris is the better option and that Trump is an ideological bedfellow with Netanyahu, but doesn’t take that to its logical conclusion. Perhaps they are fenced in by the rhetorical maelstrom of those more eager to criticize Harris than Trump? Whatever the motivation, the mixed messaging might end up being self-defeating.

Uncommitted’s position is part of the difficult conundrum facing those advocating for change in U.S. policy. How do movements turn shifts in public opinion into real policy change? Or, to put the question more specifically: How do movements effectively push the U.S. to take positions that actively advance Palestinian human rights when there is no ideal champion in the race?

There is clearly no blueprint for a journey into uncharted territory, but there are both short-term and long-term considerations to take into account. In the short-term, if the Green Party receives enough support — or enough people stay neutral — thatcould help Trump win, thereby giving Netanyahu what he wants regarding Israel-Palestine. Alternatively, Harris nonetheless may win and Palestinian activists will have thereby shown their political irrelevance — i.e., that the nationwide mobilization on behalf of Palestinian rights can be and should be ignored by Democrats concerned with winning elections.

A third, more promising scenario for activists concerned with Palestine is that they find themselves in a position to take credit for slim margins of victory in key states like Michigan. That could potentially be leveraged — in the longer term — for further influence with U.S. policymakers, at least within the Democratic Party.

If the work of connecting the short-term to the long-term is to result in real change — both during and after the U.S. presidential election — there are guiding principles from nonviolent, coalition building movements around the world from which to learn. Here are a few such principles to consider in the hopes that the movement against Israeli war crimes in Gaza can be a powerful political force to change U.S. foreign policy toward Israel-Palestine as a whole.

1. Engage power: Change comes from engaging complicated structures of power rather than assuming they are static. Much of the hesitancy in supporting Kamala Harris comes from assuming change in the Democratic Party is not possible. This is naïve. The Democratic Party moved from being the party of slaveholders and Jim Crow to the party of the civil rights movement and affirmative action to rectify histories of racial discrimination. More recently, the energy behind Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign forced a more progressive Democratic Party platform, one element of which led to the creation and passage of the U.S.’s most meaningful climate legislation. These changes don’t happen without movements engaging power structures.

There are no perfect partners in a two-party system; change in imperfect partners is a more realistic goal. The radical climate change group Climate Defiance, drawing from author Rebecca Solnit, perhaps put it best, saying: “A vote is not a valentine. It is a chess move.” Self-righteous indignation from the fringes may be psychologically satisfying, but change comes from building power in the short and long-term, not being separate from it.

2. Engage morality: Taking power seriously means also taking morality seriously. Human rights scholar author Shadi Mokhtari wrote powerfully in the wake of Oct. 7 on the need to combine moral clarity (plainly calling out gross injustices by any and all parties) and moral complexity (recognizing the validity of multiple emotional frames through which communities see contentious politics). In her words, we need moral clarity to call out the “Israeli state’s deplorable and devastating violence against Palestinians as well as the maddening ways the United States government facilitates and funds it.” At the same time, we need moral complexity to shed light on “Palestinian suffering while also recognizing the immense pain wrought by Hamas’ cruel acts of violence … and within the context of Jewish populations’ historical traumas and suffering.”

In short: condemnation is important but insufficient. It is urgent that we develop a political morality that calls out injustices while also recognizing that, to end such injustices, we must confront the depths of emotion, memory and experience that justify them. If not, we risk being reduced to seeing politics as a futile zero-sum game in which one side must lose for the other to win. Unfortunately, a failure to engage moral complexity has too often characterized discourse around Israel-Palestine.

3. Engage law (consistently):Prizing a singular narrative over moral complexity results in mutual dehumanization — one side is less than human, hence not worthy of international humanitarian law’s protections. The relentless dehumanization of Palestinians has justified Israeli extermination tactics just as, in a vicious circle, Hamas’ targeting of Israeli civilians is justified by an analogous denial of humanity. The moral failure of mutual dehumanization has real world consequences; it justifies the endless cycles of war crimes that we see playing out on the ground.

Even if we must have the moral clarity to state the obvious — that the Palestinian side is paying a (far) higher price in these cycles of Israeli-Palestinian war crimes — it lacks integrity to only denounce violations from one side. As Ta-Nehisi Coates says, “If you lose sight of the value of individual human life you have lost something.” Selective denunciations of war crimes do not just surrender moral integrity, they also sap such denunciations of their political power. A clear position that all targeting of civilians is unacceptable is essential if law is to have moral and political weight, rather than be solely rhetoric evoked when convenient.

4. Engage agency: Activism grounded in all of the above principles helps us move past monolithic conceptions of identity and, instead, engage the agency of complex individuals and communities. One of the frustrations of recent arguments around Israel-Palestine has been how complex groups are reduced to a singular monolith, ignoring the intricate histories of Israel and Palestine. To the contrary, each “side” has a history of internal political divisions, ideological evolutions and battles over positions and tactics.

Monstrous acts are committed, but not all are monsters. It is true that after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and the Israeli nationalist frenzy that has followed it is easy to reduce Israel to Netanyahu and Palestine to Hamas. In that context, it is tempting to feel the choice is solidarity with one of those actors against the other. To buy into this binary, however, empowers those most invested in total war without distinction. And it thereby erases the agency of those with a different political imagination of how to address this conflict.

There is a reason why Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders contributed to Hamas’ birth. It is the same reason that, prior to Oct. 7, Israel was invested in boosting Hamas’ power, diminishing the feckless Palestinian Authority, and focusing its particular ire on those organizing nonviolent resistance — be it through international law and human rights or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Israeli leaders knew the political advantage to their expansionist project of an enemy equally dedicated to total war. Nonviolent opposition is precisely what these leaders feared most.

Analogously, in the heyday of the post-Oslo peace process — with staged Israeli withdrawals from Palestinian territories underway and Hamas deeply unpopular among Palestinians — Hamas engaged in a series of suicide bombings to kill civilians in public places. The purpose was not a military victory but rather a rational political calculation on how to best undermine momentum behind implementing Oslo. Then, as after Oct. 7, Israel responded to Hamas’ bait with unrestrained collective punishments, unleashing a fresh cycle of violence which empowered Hamas.

In essence, those extremes got what they wanted: the marginalization of peaceful political possibilities in favor of the myth that violence is the only way to deal with the savage other. It is essential that activists not take the same bait. Israel is not simply Netanyahu and his extremist allies, and Palestinians should not be reduced to Hamas.

One can better and more honestly advocate both for an end to Israeli war crimes and Palestinian self-determination by embracing pluralism and agency on all sides. Forgetting this pluralism — and the agency of different Palestinian political actors — undermines the sort of political imagination needed not only to effectively resist Israeli war crimes in the immediate, but to also build a just Palestine in the future.

More than anything, what is needed is a movement informed by principles that effectively advocates in the immediate — but is also sustained by a vision of the future. The throughline in all of the principles listed above is that forms of resistance are not just tactics, they are how we constitute what such struggles hope to achieve in the future.

As feminist and gender studies scholar Judith Butler writes, “Liberation struggles thatpractice nonviolence help to create the nonviolent world in which we all want to live. I deplore the violence [in Israel-Palestine] unequivocally at the same time as I, like so many others, want to be part of imagining and struggling for true equality and justice in the region, the kind that would compel groups like Hamas to disappear, the occupation to end, and new forms of political freedom and justice to flourish.”

Activism that lacks such a vision of the future, contenting itself with immediate outrage, blinds itself to the world of political possibilities that human agency can bring. Without dismissing the righteousness of such outrage, we cannot be imprisoned by it. There is an urgent necessity to build power in ways that are grounded in self-conscious political practice. A practice that is informed by pluralist agency and engages power via principles of moral clarity, complexity and consistency is the path to movements that create real change. 


Anthony Tirado Chase is a professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College. Chase has published widely on human rights and transitional justice in the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States. His books include "Human Rights at the Intersections: Transformation through Local, Global, and Transnational Challenges" (co-edited with Mahdavi, Banai, and Gruskin, Bloomsbury, 2023); "Handbook on Human Rights and the Middle East and North Africa" (Routledge, 2017); "Human Rights, Revolution, and Reform in the Muslim World (Lynne Rienner, 2012); and "Human Rights in the Arab World: Independent Voices" (co-edited with Amr Hamzawy, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).