The Democratic Socialists of America rebuked Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over Zionism — and proved their own irrelevance
Leftists have made opposition to Zionism their most central issue. But what do they actually aim to achieve?
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to journalists on Capitol Hill in June. Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images
By Eric Alterman July 12, 2024
The Democratic Socialists of America’s decision to withdraw their conditional endorsement of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a near-perfect illustration of how left-oriented political and cultural organizations are using anti-Zionist litmus tests in order to ensure their irrelevance to real-life politics in America.
Ironically, that irrelevance extends perhaps most profoundly to the issues leftists profess to care about, like Israel-Palestine. Because the truth is that the intense focus on support for “Zionism” among leftist organizations does nothing whatsoever to threaten the existence of the state of Israel. It merely ensures those organizations won’t be anywhere near the metaphorical “room where it happens” when it comes to influencing the making of policy vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine.
DSA’s announcement came not long after Ocasio-Cortez, who is running for reelection, hosted an online panel discussion about the relationship between antisemitism and anti-Zionism with Amy Spitalnick, chief executive of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and Stacy Burdett, formerly of the ADL. During that conversation, Ocasio-Cortez said that “antisemitism, hate and violence against Jews because of their identity is real and it is dangerous,” and that “when the Jewish community is threatened, the progressive movement is undermined.”
And she added a point rarely aired in discussions of the dangers antisemitism poses to our polity: “It is also true that accusations and false accusations of antisemitism are wielded against people of color and women of color by bad-faith political actors, and weaponizing antisemitism is used to divide us.”
If anything, the conversation should have been seen as a win for the left. Ocasio-Cortez was mainstreaming the common leftist complaint that accusations of antisemitism, especially since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, are often aimed at people who merely criticize Israel in a manner that the accuser does not appreciate. That point is key to maintaining the public’s understanding that harsh criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is legitimate.
Yet somehow, DSA decided that Ocasio-Cortez’s statements constituted, as they wrote in a statement abandoning their endorsement, “a deep betrayal to all those who’ve risked their welfare to fight Israeli apartheid and genocide.”
What could DSA have to gain from such a move? Together with Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most influential leftist politicians currently in office. She has more than 13 million followers on X, formerly known as Twitter, and another 2 million on Instagram. Her impressive and eloquent performances in Congressional hearings have brought attention to scores of issues that leftists prioritize, which the powers that be would usually prefer to ignore.
Regarding the war in Gaza, she has gone further in her criticism of Israel’s actions than the vast majority of her colleagues, including by accusing Israel of genocide. She has endorsed the controversial view, put forth by various mainstream human rights organizations both in Israel and globally, that Israel has become an “apartheid state” — a stance that would likely constitute political poison in all but a miniscule number of congressional districts in the United States.
But the job of the progressive politician — which Ocasio-Cortez, unlike DSA’s leadership, understands — is to build coalitions that can work toward creating real change. Statement-making “no” votes on acts that are bound to pass may be ego-warming, but they cannot be the end goal of progressive politics.
By cutting ties with the most popular politician they are ever likely to ally with, DSA has made it clear how little they care about that essential work.
What would have been good enough for them? According to one piece published by a DSA member on the group’s website, Ocasio-Cortez would have had to meet 11 demands; four of the first five listed address Israel and “Zionists.” These include opposing all aid to Israel, “military or otherwise”; embracing BDS; withdrawing her endorsement of President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign “due to his active support of the genocide in Gaza”; and promising never again to “platform Zionists.”
There are two fundamental points that need to be made about these demands. The first is that they would force no palpable change either in U.S. policy or in the lives of the Palestinian people. The second is that they would be politically suicidal for any candidate, anywhere in the U.S. Being a lone voice on a given issue has its purposes, but effectiveness is not one of them.
Questions of pragmatism aside, it’s also curious that the DSA, like so many leftist political and cultural organizations and publications, has made uncompromising opposition to Zionism their sole most fundamental principle. Not, say, economic inequality; increasing threats to women’s reproductive freedom: the rampant mistreatment of immigrants; racist police enforcement; or mass incarceration.
All of these are issues on which DSA might reasonably hope to be more influential than on American policy toward the Middle East. There is no indication whatsoever that all the left’s efforts so far have had any impact on the U.S. policymaking that actually affects Palestinians. In fact, just about the only action President Biden has taken to rein in the Israeli attack on Gaza — denying the sale of 500 lb. bombs — was recently reversed.
Clearly there is not a lot of strategic thinking going on the far left today. As DSA’s choice regarding Ocasio-Cortez tells us, what really concerns them is political purity.
But it’s purity of a strange sort.
I find it a little silly when people talk about decreasing their own carbon imprint, given how little doing so matters given the global scale of the sources of climate change. But at least they’re directly addressing their role in a real problem. Those focused on the ill-defined specter of Zionism are moving in the opposite direction. It’s not as if quitting a high-status literary mag over its publication of a sensitive, thoughtful essay by an Israeli author — as the staff of Guernica did — is going to help anyone. Canceling PEN’s World Voices Festival did not help the people of Gaza much, either. The takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia, and similar such actions at campuses across the country, have also proved rather short on discernible results.
By insisting on such stringent standards with no visible impact, this segment of the left only succeeds in telling those liberals and leftists who do not share their views — or do not share them with sufficient intensity — that they are not welcome in the ranks of progressive politics. Coalitions, and any chance at actual progress, be damned.
American Jews have been the second-most reliable liberal political constituency in the U.S. for the past half-century, after Black Americans. At the same time, a declining, but still significant majority of them continue to see their support for the continued existence of Israel as a Jewish state as essential to their personal and collective identities. True, many Jews, especially young American Jews, now consider themselves to be anti-Zionist, but they remain a minority by a considerable margin, and all polls indicate that they will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Telling some of America’s most loyal liberal citizens that they are not welcome to join the battle against racism, inequality, sexual repression, or even Islamophobia because they think BDS is misguided — or would like to see a “two-state solution,” however unlikely, rather than a “Free Palestine from the river to the sea” — is not merely insensitive. It is also incredibly stupid.
To the degree it divides, weakens and destroys the relevance of the left, it increases the likelihood that the country will fall victim to the reelection campaign of former President Donald Trump, who has begun to use “Palestinian” as a catch-all slur, and is sure to give Israel substantially freer rein in not only its war in Gaza, but also its sub-rosa annexation of the West Bank. With him will come his MAGA movement’s homegrown version of fascism; one in which the most vulnerable among us — precisely those the left is supposed to want to protect — are certain to suffer the most. It will begin, alas, with the Palestinians.
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