How October 7 drove a wedge into the Democratic Party

As the members of the House of Representatives most sympathetic to the pro-Palestinian left compete for their seats, the challenge for the burgeoning activist class is how to marshal and sustain national political energy. Supporting electable candidates is critical for some activists, less consequential for others, and completely ignored by much of the movement. One of the more disciplined and professionalized far-left organizations is Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist group seeking to shift the Democratic Party further to the left and end its support for Israel; it established a separate PAC, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, to promote specific candidates. Some headline-making protests, such as last year's occupations of Grand Central Terminal and the Statue of Liberty, were productions of the Jewish Voice for Peace, carefully coordinated for maximum impact.

Since October, Jewish Voice for Peace has grown its online mailing list from 43,000 to more than 343,000 and now has more than 23,000 dues-paying members, said Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action. According to Miller, it is impossible to identify as a progressive and as a Zionist. However, this will not stop JVP from defending Squad members like Bowman who do not identify as anti-Zionist.

However, the largest volunteer-led electoral organization committed to the anti-Zionist project is not the Jewish Voice for Peace Action, but the Democratic Socialists of America. There hasn't been this much new interest in DSA since Sanders' presidential campaigns. It is one of the few unapologetically pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel organizations backing candidates in this year's Democratic primary, even as some long-standing DSA members have publicly backed away from the election. condemnations of Israel. Over the past decade, the DSA had made support for, or at least tolerance of, BDS a litmus test for candidates. After losing volunteers for much of the Biden era, DSA is now expanding its ranks. According to Chris Kutalik, communications director for DSA, at least 2,400 new dues-paying members have joined since October, bringing the total to about 78,000 members.

It would be easy to confuse DSA and Jewish Voice for Peace with Palestinian-led organizations like Within Our Lifetime and the Palestinian Youth Movement: they all question Israel's legitimacy to some extent. But both Jewish Voice for Peace and DSA aim to work within the Democratic Party even as they hope to reorient it. Within Our Lifetime and the Palestinian Youth Movement choose a different course. Unlike the Jewish Voice for Peace, which seeks to show solidarity with Palestinians and Arab Americans, the Palestinian Youth Movement is emphatically “not a solidarity movement,” says Munir Marwan, one of its organizers. “Our elected officials, our representatives, do not represent us.”

Within Our Lifetime, which promoted the march past Memorial Sloan Kettering, is not concerned with what the political establishment calls “optics.” Within our lifetimes, a medical institution funded by a supporter of Israel is not an innocent bystander. And Hamas's terrorist attacks can be considered justified in the context of 75 years of colonial rule. “We hear the numbers coming down on what actually happened, with the Israeli government first starting by saying 1,400 Israelis were killed, the next day we hear a lower number, and the next day we hear a lower number,” says Abdullah Akl, an organizer with the group, told me. “The actions of October 7,” he added, have “very little evidence, very little to actually respond to.” (There is ample evidence for the Hamas attack and to support the Israeli death toll.)