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Okay, but what has any of this actually accomplished for the Palestinian people with which the movement is ostensibly so concerned?
You claim that the pro-Palestine movement is rallied around a singular cause of preventing Israel's "genocide". In your opinion, did the movement succeed in preventing said genocide?
Many pro-Palestine activists likewise claim to want to establish an independent Palestinian state, a goal that has not come a millimetre closer since 1948.
"Boycott, Divest, Sanction" died on its arse. No major American tech company can afford not to do business with Israeli tech firms. Neither can the US, if they want to stay competitive with China.
Netanyahu is still a free man. The US still provides plenty of armaments to Israel. Israel's economy is thriving. The likelihood of Israel facing ICC charges for genocide appear ever slimmer. Hamas is militarily weaker than it was prior to October 7th. The Abraham Accords remain in effect.
Let's say AOC secures both the Dem nomination and the presidency. At the end of her first term (in 2032) do you honestly think relations between the US and Israel will have significantly changed in any way? Do you honestly think an independent Palestinian state will have been established?
"But Mamdani is mayor of New York!" "Multiple European countries have recognised the state of Palestine!" "Lots of Americans agree with us!" "AOC will be the Dem nominee in 2028!" I have to ask – so what? Changing people's minds and "raising awareness" is only valuable in so far as these are instrumental goals – if they never translate into actual policy shifts and material gains, they're meaningless. Bragging about meaningless symbolic victories like this is what you do when your movement has nothing real to show for itself, and it's frankly embarrassing. The pro-Palestinian movement is not "an underdog": they have accomplished none of their ostensible goals. What's worse, they don't even seem to be embarrassed by this. They're not earnestly engaging in soul-searching and trying to figure our what they can do better – they're just carrying on business as usual.
Funnily, @ymeskhout has not one but two articles on this very particular pathology.
Comparisons with BLM are illustrative. There's no question that BLM was "very successful in shaping public opinion". And yet six years on from the movement's peak, what material goals have they accomplished? Police departments remain un-defunded, prisons have not been abolished, and if there's been any meaningful decline in the rate of black Americans getting killed by police officers, I'm not aware of it. By any objective, material metric, the movement must be judged a failure in its ostensible goals. Likewise here.
P.S.: I think it's rather telling that you don't say the pro-Palestinian movement has "been very successful in shaping public opinion in favour of Palestine in the past few years", but rather that it has "been very successful in shaping public opinion against Israel." The pro-Palestinian movement purports to want to put an end to the "genocide" and to establish an independent Palestinian movement, goals at which (according to the activists themselves) it has obviously failed thus far. But if these goals are just smoke and mirrors for the real goal of ostracising and harassing Jews, then I must acknowledge you've had slightly more success in that venture. The top-level post was inspired by my longstanding impression that so-called pro-Palestine activists are motivated less by genuine concern for the welfare of the Palestinian people and a desire for them to achieve national self-determination, and more by a hatred for Israel and the people who live there. This interaction with you has done nothing to disabuse me of this impression.
No they are not, because support for BLM rose in the weeks after George Floyds death, and then within a few month fell off a cliff. Support for ending aid to Israel is on the rise for 3 continuous years.
Yes, it will quite obviously entirely change the US policies towards the whole of the Middle East, including Israels enemies. If you are in denial about this, I suspect you are in a minority, even among zionists.
Aipac is spending 40 million on one senate race in Michigan, and they spent 30 million to primary Thomas Massie.
Well like any movement, they build their case gradually. See the pro-life movement.
If you believe the US-Israel relationship is built on some billion shekels, then sure that's a possibility.
But what about the extensive interoperability created from decades of joint ops? What about the co-developed missile defence systems? Multiple mid-level officials across the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, as well as key committees (Armed Services and Foreign Affairs) have entire careers, doctrines, and planning assumptions built around the US-Israel relationship, and favour continuity. Multiple laws, MOUs, and bipartisan resolutions across 8 decades have created locked-in commitments. Changing this needs a historically rare sustained coordination across both parties to amend many, many layers of complex legal procedures over a foreign policy issue.
Are you willing to bet AOC can girlboss her way through such overwhelming institutional inertia and rewrite war plans and agreements to overturn 8 decades of sustained policymaking?
@FtttG 's point is that these movements rarely impact foreign policy, abortion is a domestic matter. But the fact that both BLM and Palestine protests erupted across Europe, Australia and New Zealand clearly shows they were US culture war exports.
There seems to be a motte and bailey in your argument. The fact that AOC cannot completely over night turn Israel into a pariah, does not mean that she (or someone like her) cannot take serious steps to disadvantage Israel.
Aipac is spending 100 million or more each cycle now to keep their representatives in congress and senate. That is a big increase from previously. They are quite obviously doing this because "their" candidate winning is important to keep the rest of Dems in line.
I think we will see, but a DSA member winning statewide in a swing state (which seems possible at this point) is a rare moment indeed. It quite obviously will have knock-on effects.
You said
That's some strong vocabulary, and does insinuate that by 2032-36, we would have seen the type of policy reversals that I described. That institutional inertia, i.e. the airtight legal architecture and bureaucratic path dependence, is the decisive factor in the US-Israel relationship. And anything short of overturning those thick set of constraints, even by a trifle, is frankly a consolation prize. Realistically, yes, aid packages can be delayed, conditions can be dictated, criticisms can mount, and specific arms transfers can be slowed or scrutinised. Variants of that have already happened in limited ways under Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.
Re AIPAC, consider that it is a human organisation run by humans with very human judgements that are neither perfect nor 100% rational. Yes, public opinion has turned against Israel and even American Jews by extension.
Yes, they're a fundamentally pro-Israel lobby, and obviously wish to preserve a pro-Israel public consensus for that reason alone. That by itself isn't evidence of anything.
AIPAC is headed by American Jews. They are naturally concerned by the rise of rancid antisemitism both online and IRL that doesn't care to distinguish Netanyahu from IDF/Mossad from Israel from regular Jews. And that could directly impact their immediate livelihoods. In their minds, protecting American Jews is analogous to defending Israel.
To you, this wave of antisemitism may be justified or at least excusable, because this time the Jews have truly earned it by bombing Palestinian babies. But to the group whose ethnic and cultural history is marked by the Holocaust, multiple ethnic cleansings and pogroms, and all around scapegoating, that just brings up very unpleasant memories irrespective of context. So yes, they want "their" candidates to win. But even if they don't, the US-Israel relationship would still be protected by institutional inertia.
And I dont believe this at all. Yes, the institutional inertia is a factor, but Israel has had such a chokehold on some politicians that it goes way beyond this. We are in a position now where the US is depleting its own missile defense in a war that serves no obvious benefits for anyone except Israel.
This is interesting. So we are supposed to believe that hundreds of millions are being spent by what is arguably the most successful lobbying operation to ever exist, and it is all for no reason at all? Because nothing can change! Yeah, I am going to trust Aipacs judgement on this, over yours.
You say this like the institutional apparatus that no single President can overturn is somehow ancillary to "some politicians". It all comes down to Zionist Inc, who are "beyond" supposedly anything?
Pointing to high spending and a few costly policy choices (missile stocks, etc.) does not by itself demonstrate that the relationship is held together by a uniquely captured political class rather than by a thick combination of strategic continuity, bureaucratic path dependence, legal commitments, and mutual military utility. Those layers can absorb a good deal of friction before they actually reverse. The fact that the relationship remains costly for the US does not prove it is irrational from the standpoint of the institutions that maintain it, it only proves that the costs of reversing it are real and that the institutions have so far judged them worth bearing.
And the engine behind this is the strength of the American state apparatus itself.
I repeat, we're talking 8 decades of joint planning, co-developed systems, intelligence sharing protocols, formal MOUs, and career tracks across the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community have embedded the relationship into the operating assumptions of the national security bureaucracy. Key committees treat this continuity as the default. Legal and procedural commitments accumulate over time. Once a foreign policy relationship reaches that level of sustained institutionalisation, reversing it would require the entire state apparatus crafting a uniquely exigent response against its own characteristic habit to resist abrupt shifts. That is a much higher bar than generating noise or imposing marginal costs.
You are free to trust AIPAC’s revealed sense of urgency more than the institutional analysis. But urgency is not the same as fragility. A lobby can be highly competent at defending a structure that is still deeply embedded, and still feel the need to spend aggressively when the political weather turns against it.
Zionists, Mossad, the CCP, competent as they are, are still run by humans. They're not the calculating hiveminds you see in Hollywood. IRL conspiracies are messy, imperfect, and boring. Internal churns happen, personalities and egos clash, some of them are rank incompetents who simply knew the right people, and some of them are greedy bastards who just want to add more zeroes to their bank account.
All of these facts sit comfortably together.
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Even domestically, I'd say BLM's material gains were fairly meagre (for everyone other than Patrisse Cullors and co.).
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Just like support for BLM was on the rise for six continuous years (the Ferguson riots were in 2014) before abruptly falling off a cliff in 2020. Very interesting!
Remind me to check back with you in six years. I
suspectknow AOC is not quite as incorruptible as you would have me believe. I look forward to the day the DSA turns on her for being a "Zio stooge" and claim that Mossad has some dirt on her that means her hands are tied.Eighty years since the founding of Israel, an independent Palestinian state has not come a millimetre closer. How much time do you people need?
"Building a case gradually" suggests that you're winning tangible stepping-stone victories along the path to one's terminal goal. But I will reiterate that, aside from meaningless symbolic victories, the pro-Palestine movement has accomplished nothing, in the US or elsewhere.
The idea that anyone could consider the pro-Palestinian movement an example of a "successful political movement for change" is so laughable that I literally thought you were joking at first brush.
I dont think she is incorruptible at all. However there are multiple people in line to take her mantle as leader of the left if she does not deliver. Remember AOC crawled back to DSA this year to ask for their endorsement and promised not to support the iron dome. This is after they had un-endorsed her over this. She quite obviously did this because she sees where the wind is blowing, and was worried Mamdani would outshine her as the standard bearer of the left.
Yes, and winning multiple pro-Palestinian senators + winning primaries against pro-Israel incumbents in congress in one midterm, would be one of these stepping stones.
I was specifically asking you what would happen if AOC took office and failed to deliver. She would obviously have no reason to care what the DSA think of her after becoming leader of the free world. Her concern then would be on securing re-election, not appealing to the far left.
No, it wouldn't. The entire American senate could have Hamas tattoos on their foreheads, and that wouldn't in and of itself necessarily translate into any kind of material victory for the pro-Palestinian movement. Electing politicians who agree with you is necessary but not sufficient for accomplishing your material goals.
A whole lot of wishful thinking and a fundamental failure to understand the word "material".
The billions of dollars of aid that we give to Israel is "material", and the US depleting its missile-interceptors to defend Israel in a war started on Israels behest is materially good for Israel and bad for America.
I have to say the confidence that you have that there is nothing that could ever change the US-Israel relationship is interesting. It would also indicate that all zionist orgs who are freaking out about Mamdani or Ms Rachel, and the Ellisons buying CBS to turn it into a zionist propaganda hub, are just dumb. The should just understood like you do, that there is nothing they can do to effect the relationship between the US and Israel.
Yes, I know. I'm asking you what material things the pro-Palestinian movement has accomplished. So far you haven't been able to name one.
I don't think Mamdani's policies will have a meaningful impact on the basic relationship between the US and Israel, nor on the existence of Israel, nor on the hypothetical existence of an independent Palestinian nation state. I do believe his policies and rhetoric could make life meaningfully worse for Jews living in New York (and in the rest of the US), and that is entirely legitimate for American Jews to freak out on that basis.
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