This is from Chapter 2 of the book I’m writing, which will be called “When Tears Can’t Save Them: Why the Pro-Palestine Movement Failed to Stop a Holocaust, & How It Can Still Win.” The image above shows the “earthquake bomb” that the Zionist entity dropped on Syria after the U.S. overthrew Assad.
Though there is a path to victory for the pro-Palestine struggle, we are now operating within a situation where the imperialists have been able to exact historic amounts of damage, both on a material and human level. By the end of the 2024 U.S. election cycle, the empire and its Zionist proxy had already been able to inflict harm which was comparable to that of the Iraq war, in which hundreds of thousands lost their lives.
According to a July 2024 study by The Lancet, the Gaza death toll was at that time potentially as high as 186,000, when accounting for all of the disease, starvation, exposure to the elements, and untreated injuries which were killing massive numbers of people. As of December 2024, the Zionist entity had had almost five months of time where Gaza was out of the news cycle, and where it could commit atrocities without even the most superficial restraints. Then the entity received another massive gift, even greater than the nomination of Kamala Harris: the successful overthrow of Syria’s President Assad by the United States and its proxies.
During the weeks prior to Assad’s departure, “Israel” was already acting as if it knew that major defeats for the resistance were about to occur, and that it would be able to get away with practically anything for the foreseeable future. On October 25, it struck an Iranian nuclear facility, even though this was supposed to be Iran’s red line. Right after it reached a ceasefire deal with Lebanon in November, “Israel” immediately began violating the agreement. Then, when Washington and Turkey overthrew Assad, the entity was enabled to go on one of the most widespread campaigns of aggression it’s ever carried out. It invaded Syria, seizing the country’s sacred peak Mount Hermon and setting up new settlements throughout the newly stolen lands. On December 15, it detonated the “earthquake bomb,” which created a blast so massive that it caused Syria’s ground to shake. It was carrying out an unmitigated assault upon the region, and it seemed like no one would be there to challenge it; Washington’s puppet government in Syria had no desire to fight the Zionist entity, and Iran had lost an important passage for transporting weapons to Hezbollah.
As ever-more of the people throughout West Asia were coming under threat from the Zionist war machine, the entity felt more emboldened than ever when it came to Gaza. In a lament from the last day of the year, the anti-imperialist writer Caitlin Johnstone observed this connection between the weakened state of the regional resistance, and how brazenly the Zionist entity was now violating the rights of Gaza’s people:
The IDF has built a beachside resort on the coast of northern Gaza where its soldiers can take a break from committing genocide to relax, get massages, drink iced coffee, and eat ice cream and cotton candy by the shore. Meanwhile, the last hospital in northern Gaza has been burned down by the Israeli military after days of violent siege warfare on the medical facility. The IDF is now saying that it may stay in southern Lebanon past the 60-day limit it agreed to in its ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, which means we may soon be looking at yet another protracted illegal Israeli military occupation…the US-backed al-Qaeda affiliates who are now in charge in Syria announce that they probably won’t be holding elections for another four years…The US-centralized empire thrives on lies, manipulation, callousness, and stupidity. The entire world is made worse by its existence. It degrades the collective soul of our species. It’s bad for Americans, and it’s bad for everyone else. Humanity will be much better off when this murderous power structure finally crumbles.
The empire’s defeat had been delayed, letting the extermination intensify and expand into new territories. Washington’s overthrow of Assad had ramifications which were so horrific, on such a widespread scale, that the empire’s spokespeople have needed to continue heavily managing the narrative on Syria even after Assad has left. This is apparent from how as Syria’s post-Assad Salafist regime has begun a mass murder campaign against Alawites and other minorities, the regime’s state media is portraying the victims of the massacres as pro-Assad partisans.
This cover story mirrors the Zionist rationale about how all of the civilians “Israel” has targeted are Hamas combatants; the ideology behind the Syrian atrocities is in many ways a mirror of Zionism, so their propaganda often employs the same dehumanizing tropes. This display of violence has exposed the true nature of the liberal order which installed the Salafites to power, like the Gaza genocide did; and because Syria has been brought to this state, the Zionist entity can further advance its own genocidal campaign. Both projects of evil are interconnected, meaning the “revolution” that ousted Assad was a pivotal event in the story of Palestine’s holocaust. The Palestinian genocide simply couldn’t have gotten this far without the Syria regime change project’s participants and supporters; this is the conclusion Scott Ritter came to. On December 13, Ritter said that the plans of the martyred Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar partly relied on there being a strong Hezbollah, making Assad’s fall instrumental in prolonging the genocide:
To wear down Israel, Sinwar needed the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance to carry out a delicately balanced war of attrition with Israel designed to break Israel. It almost succeeded. The key was always Hezbollah. The ability of Hezbollah to engage Israel in a costly war of attrition which never crossed the line into a full scale conflict was what made the Sinwar gambit almost succeed. Hassan Nasrallah’s leadership was critical. In the end, Nasrallah’s death at the hands of Israel served as a precursor for the balancing act to fail. A ceasefire agreement was agreed to so that both Israel and Hezbollah could regroup. This was not a strategic victory for Israel—far from it. The potential of renewed fighting was a sword of Damocles hanging over Israel’s head. But this potential only existed if Hezbollah remained physically connected with Iran. Syria was the linchpin for this connectivity…The loss of Assad’s Syria dealt a huge, perhaps fatal, blow to the Axis of Resistance. Iran’s ability to meaningfully threaten Israel hinged on Hezbollah acting as a loaded pistol aimed at Israel’s head. But this pistol depended on the physical connectivity between Iran and Lebanon. Which means it depended on Assad’s Syria.
This would have been avoided if the left, the political force which was supposed to be leading the pro-Palestine movement, had mounted a serious opposition towards the CIA’s dirty war in Syria. But the left overall refused to do so, and this was a crucial factor behind why the empire succeeded.
When I place this blame upon the left, I’m not just talking about the “progressive” and “socialist” figures who repeated all of the atrocity propaganda about Assad. Another indispensable player within this story of left-wing complicity is the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which countered the Syria narratives in form while failing to resist the war in substance. Since Washington activated its jihadists inside Syria in 2011, the PSL had been objecting to the “chemical attack” accusations the empire was leveling against Assad.
The PSL did take the correct position, in that it didn’t affirm the “Assad gas attack” narratives either from the war’s earlier years or from the post-Douma era. The problem was that during the most crucial moments, the PSL didn’t take an active role in leading the movement to resist the war on Syria, and functionally helped lead people away from this movement. What the PSL did was pivot its focus towards anti-Trumpism after the initial Palestine protests died down, rather than working to revive the anti-Zionist movement. This enabled the empire managers to keep Palestine out of the discourse, as well as propagate the psyops about Syria’s “revolution” without meeting any significant challenge.
When I say that PSL helped de-center the anti-Zionist struggle, I don’t accuse it of having stopped talking about Palestine entirely. It still brought up Gaza in its rhetoric, like it still objected to the Syria regime change narratives. The issue was in how it chose to lead the protest movement amid 2024’s expansions of the genocide. The PSL has a significant role in protest organizing, with its front organization ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) having been a prominent facilitator of the Gaza marches. PSL is the primary face of the Palestine protests; when someone sees these demonstrations in the news, often the signs from the crowds feature PSL’s name at the bottom.
The PSL also has considerable ideological influence over the most theoretically advanced sections of the antiwar movement. PSL has been able to gain respect from many of the activists who have a serious anti-imperialist analysis, because its rhetoric on imperialism is better than that of most other left orgs. Yet in terms of its practical activities, the org has chosen to tail behind the Democratic Party. Thereby, it’s led many people with great potential towards embracing this backward strategy. It’s gotten them to focus on building an anti-Trump movement, making it so that Palestine hasn’t gotten enough attention.
When the PSL took part in the January 20 “We Fight Back” protest project, this was the effect that its efforts had. The problem with this project wasn’t that its rhetoric omitted Gaza; Gaza was certainly one of the things it focused on. The problem was that it made Gaza into only one among a series of topics which it emphasized. When Gaza was no longer the most “trendy” thing to talk about, the PSL came to treat Gaza as a secondary issue, placing it alongside a series of other issues which related to anti-Trumpism. And history had already shown that doing this would set back the Palestinian struggle. This was the same model of operating which led PSL, and the other groups within the antiwar coalition, to fail in their task of ending the Iraq war.
In 2013, the author Ron Jacobs described the essence of why the 2000s antiwar movement failed; namely that its leaders had linked their efforts to the Democratic Party, whether directly or indirectly:
The closeness of some members of the larger coalition, UFPJ [United now For Peace and Justice], to the Democratic Party essentially insured that anti-imperialist elements within the antiwar movement would ultimately be marginalized. Although ANSWER’s analysis was (and is) more consistently anti-imperialist, it has its own problems, especially in its appeal to many in the antiwar left…In my opinion, it is virtually impossible to oppose the machinery of US imperialism without an anti-imperialist understanding of the US role in the world. Any other approach limits the success and the goals of any antiwar movement. This is exactly what happened. The presence of the Democratic Party in the antiwar movement and its ability to siphon off so many activists into various politician and single-issue campaigns pretty much guaranteed the election of a Democrat in 2008
Though ANSWER and PSL weren’t the orgs with the most substantial ties to the Democratic Party, they did contribute to this problem where social movements become dependent on the Democrats. PSL’s standard practice is to appeal to liberals, or to radical liberals, rather than working to connect with the broader masses. This is apparent in how during the first months of the Gaza protests, PSL was the primary org that pushed for the use of street blockages. By employing this tactic, the PSL could realistically only hope to win over the kinds of people who were already connected to the movement, and who were looking to take big actions (whether or not these actions were strategically sound). This kind of insularity is what Gus Hall, the Communist Party USA leader, called “petty bourgeois radicalism”:
The very premise of petty-bourgeois radicalism is that it is impossible to win the working class in the struggle against capitalism. From this it follows that mass concepts of struggle are not possible, necessary or realistic. This leads to actions based on small elite groups––or to individual action. Because this concept is not concerned with winning over masses, it promotes and condones actions that alienate masses. There is an inner logic to this path. Specific actions are taken because there is a lack of confidence in mass–in class–actions. These ill-considered actions result in widening the gap between the petty-bourgeois radical movements and the masses. This widening gap then becomes “proof” that you cannot win masses and therefore the line of conduct of these movements is justified. Each step leads to a further isolation. This is the inner logic of petty-bourgeois radicalism.
These two problems within the movement–dependence on liberals, and adventurist tactics–go along with each other. Actions that keep organizers isolated also keep them from expanding their circles beyond the spaces the Democratic Party controls. This further incentivizes them to use messaging that will exclusively attract liberals, which leads them to promote the same distractions which keep the genocide out of mainstream discourse. The leaders of the “protest cage” tied themselves to the Obama-style political brand, and this brand underwent its total collapse with Trump’s second victory. Now the genocide’s perpetrators are in place to accelerate and expand their extermination campaign, while feeling confident that this time they won’t experience as much of a backlash as earlier.
While I was writing this chapter in March of 2025, “Israel” carried out a bombing campaign throughout Gaza where well over four hundred people were murdered. This comes after “Israel” has largely dismantled the UN’s humanitarian aid networks for Gaza, and shut off the electricity for Gaza’s one remaining desalination plant. More children keep dying of sickness, untreated injuries, hunger, and exposure to the elements, which all further encourages the Zionist entity to pursue its ethnic cleansing plan. In the same week, the Trump White House started a massive bombing campaign against Yemen, bringing the Gaza model of destruction into another country. That’s the true purpose of these latest U.S. strikes: to make Gaza the “new normal.” The imperial strategists hope that by attacking the West Asian region so brazenly, they’ll pressure Iran and Russia into appeasing Washington, leaving China more vulnerable to U.S. attacks.
How far the imperialists will get in this scheme depends on the success of the global workers movement. It’s this movement that drives anti-imperialist resistance, and that threatens the imperial state from within; which shows that our top priority, alongside the pro-Palestine mobilizations, must be to advance the class struggle. To carry out this task, we will need to do away with the practices that have created so many setbacks, both for the pro-Palestine struggle and on all other fronts. This doesn’t mean trying to outcompete the PSL over who gets to guide the protest cage; the protest cage is a trap, and protests must not be what we center our practice around. Our primary task is to build organizational power for the workers, not just through the unions but also through our own independent proletarian institutions.
The PSL’s liberal-adjecent messaging is only one part of why it failed the pro-Palestine movement. The deeper reason behind its failure is that it never tried to establish a serious presence within the unions, or to take a truly active role in the proletarian struggle. Its work has been almost exclusively limited to protests and electoral campaigns, and the failures of the pro-Palestine movement prove these things are not sufficient. They can even set the struggle back when carried out for the purpose of liberal tailism, like PSL does. Yet from the perspective of PSL and the other established left orgs, this organizing model was their only option, because they hadn’t already established the institutional workers power which would have allowed them to do more.
The organizations that carry the pro-Palestine cause forward will be the ones that have prioritized assisting and leading the workers’ struggles. They’ll have gained a substantial base within the masses; they’ll have gained the power to rally large numbers of workers towards leveraging their economic strength; and they’ll be free from the corrosive influence of the NGOs, letting them build a movement that’s truly independent from the Democratic Party. If we orient our practice around these goals, we’ll be able to mobilize the masses in a sustainable way, making the empire unable to distract from its crimes or break up the movement’s efforts.
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