Israel is the Confederacy

On September 24th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations at its headquarters in New York City. In the course of his speech defending the genocide of Palestinians and the regional war of domination that he has overseen, he asked the assembled representatives what would happen if a ballistic missile hit the UN and reminded them about Israel’s terrorist attack against the Lebanese people using explosives-rigged beepers.

As he made all of these threats, Israeli diplomats walked around the hall, visibly taking note of which country’s representatives had left the room in protest. One approached an Iranian, offering him a Starlink device (produced by the richest person in the world, Elon Musk) as a reminder that the Israelis are committed to destroying their government.

From the podium of the general assembly, Netanyahu smeared socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has consistently been vocal in support of Palestinians’ rights and has called for Netanyahu’s arrest for war crimes. Netanyahu was forced to land an hour and a half away from the city. Outside the UN, hundreds protested, including incoming members of Congress Melat Kiros, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Chris Rabb (DSA members endorsed by DSA and Justice Democrats); veteran Army doctor who volunteered in Gaza Adam Hamawy (Justice Democrats); Army intelligence whistleblower Chelsea Manning; and more than a dozen socialist politicians.

In their current elections, Israeli politicians are campaigning on who will kill more people. Israel has gone from committing ethnic cleansing to genocide in Lebanon. Its regional war has already directly endangered countries whose populations add up to hundreds of millions. The Greater Israel ideology that motivates its leaders guarantees that the conflict will expand and fossil-fuel related economic interdependence risks connecting the Russia-Ukraine war and conflicts in North Africa in a world war that further spreads violence and harms standards of living across the globe.

A supermajority of Americans are opposed to the U.S. government’s policy of military support for Israel, which has resulted in the U.S. military massacring Iranians and bombing their civilian infrastructure, causing our own cost-of-living to increase. In the last three years, Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank have killed eight Palestinians who are American citizens and detained many more while they actively demolish and steal the property and land of Palestinian-Americans.

A recent Senate vote to simply investigate these attacks against Americans, introduced by Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, failed 47-51, all Republicans except one voting against, all Democrats except one voting in favor. In April, votes brought by Bernie Sanders to halt weapons and equipment won 40 and 36 votes as compared to 27 and 24 votes in July 2025 and only 15 votes in April 2025. H.R. 3565, the Block the Bombs Act, was introduced in the House of Representatives in May 2025 with four cosponsors and now has 81, soon to increase with the addition of incoming socialist legislators.

Democratic Party primaries this year have been defined by debates about U.S. support for Israel, Medicare for All and the rising cost-of-living for working people, and the White House’s corruption and authoritarianism. The same phenomenon has played out around the world as masses of people question their governments’ complicity in atrocities and take action. The Palestinian struggle for self-determination has become a global freedom struggle for democracy.

In response to their reputation being permanently tarnished, Israel and its supporters align themselves with the far-right and directly interfere in the politics of other countries. The AIPAC lobby spent $34M to unseat Republican critic of Israel Thomas Massie. Trump’s ICE agents – whose budget has increased eight-fold – arrests and attempts to deport pro-Palestine students, anti-Zionist rabbis, and socialist politicians. Individual pro-Israel voters testify that they are choosing between their loyalty to Israel and democracy. Pro-Israel workers organize against forming unions in their workplaces and file legal claims alleging discrimination against their unions. Local police visit people at their homes for social media posts online.

This repression began under the Biden administration and has been carried out by many Democratic politicians. Nearly all of the most powerful politicians and the oligarch advisors to the current administration are pro-Israel. Chuck Schumer proclaims himself a guardian of Israel. Peter Thiel and Palmer Lucky make money off of producing technology that is used to exterminate Palestinians and surveil Americans.

The crackdowns on speech, protest, and voting are meant to intimidate us into forgetting that we are the majority. In the struggle against slavery, abolitionists found themselves in much the same position we are in now, as Noel Ignatiev recounted:

When William Lloyd Garrison and the original abolitionists began their work, slavery was the law of the land, and behind the law stood the entire machinery of government, including the courts, the army, and even the post office, which banned anti- slavery literature from Southern mail. The slave states controlled the Senate and Presidency, and Congress refused even to accept petitions relating to slavery. Most northerners considered slavery unjust, but their opposition to it was purely nominal. However much they disapproved of it, the majority “went along,” as majorities normally do, rather than risk the ordinary comforts of their lives, meager as they were.

But to try to preserve itself, the Slave Power resorted to reaching into other states and robbing their citizens of their rights. How did people react to the South’s attacks on their freedom so that they could keep others oppressed? Adam Rothman and Barbara Fields write that

The answer is that overreaching by the slaveholders taught many white Americans—at least in the North—that the agenda of the slaveholders threatened their own rights. The Gag Rule of 1836–1844 prevented members of the House of Representatives from considering antislavery petitions from their own constituents. Under the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, federal marshals could require Northern citizens to assist in recapturing fugitive slaves. The Kansas–Nebraska Act set off a bloody contest over the introduction of slavery into territory where it had previously been banned. The Dred Scott decision called into question the ability of white citizens to exclude slavery anywhere in the country. These milestones of antebellum politics convinced many white Northerners that their own rights would be trampled and their livelihoods cramped—and that they, too, could be made into slaves—if the “slave power” were left unchecked. Even white Northerners who mistrusted abolitionists and disdained black people were attracted to the new antislavery party.

Self-interest will continue to lead the vast majority of Americans to conclude that the U.S. government’s relationship with Israel must end. But passive supermajority public opinion can only be turned into majoritarian political power through organizing. The role of the socialist movement is to connect the day-to-day issues of people who work for a living to the need for a political system of, by, and for the anti-genocide, working class majority.

Democratic backsliding in the U.S. will not stop until we are able to force our government to stop enabling Israel’s genocidal rampage. Liberal elites who condone concentration camps and famine abroad will not be reliable allies against mass deportations and rigged elections at home. The leaders most attacked by the Trump administration and Republicans are the most pro-Palestine politicians, who are also the most pro-worker politicians because they are socialists. More than two-thirds of the corporate and billionaire spending in politics since Citizens United in 2010 has come in the last three years, much of it aimed at defeating politicians who criticize the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Internationally, ascendant far-right figures and parties are united by support for Israel. The U.S. government meddles in foreign elections so that their preferred candidates will collaborate with Israel against the wishes of their populations. A movement for democracy that ignores Israel’s role in the spread of authoritarianism misses the moral issue of our time.

Israel is lobbying for legislation in Congress that would increase joint defense industry research and production and intelligence sharing between the two governments so that exchanging intelligence “shall not be suspended, reduced, or otherwise materially limited except on the basis of a specific and identifiable national security concern determined by the President.” The charter for the “Board of Peace” responsible for managing the occupation of Gaza names Donald Trump – the pedophile billionaire who has raised running for an unconstitutional third term – as permanent chairman regardless of his political office.

To win an arms embargo, end Israel’s genocide, halt the erosion of our rights and liberties, and attempt to avert catastrophic war, we must embrace nationwide political struggle.

Israel is the Confederacy.