Workers Party of Massachusetts

Liberal Zionism: 2026 - Points of Orientation

The U.S. ruling class just voted to merge its military with the IDF. We believe it’s worth some time to reflect on how we got here, to highlight the significance of the present moment, and consider what the future needs if we are to win.

To understand the current moment, we must first look back to the Nakba in 1948 where 750,000 (~80% of) Palestinians were displaced, 15,000 were killed, more than 500 villages were leveled to kick off the mostly-EuroAmerican imperial conquest of the land that Israel now occupies. From there, zionist settlers, in cycles of destruction and expansion, have continued to carve up more and more Palestinian land and lives. These zionists were always supported by a larger empire–first the British and then the U.S. These colonial empires spent decades invading this region, overthrowing government after government. These wars were never about democracy or human rights or even about fighting religious extremism. They were all aimed at one thing only – to prevent socialist and nationalist revolutions from organizing to stop the west from stealing their resources. These were cynical wars that killed working people, just because they had the courage to stand up for themselves and nationalize their own oil and control  their own trade routes. For an example relevant to our present moment, ever since the people deposed their CIA-installed monarch in the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and thus gained control over their oil and the Strait of Hormuz, Iran had become the boogeyman of West Asia. More about this here.

Today, we are finally seeing substantial resistance to these egregious and terroristic western attacks on the people of this region. The Iranian military is imposing real costs on the U.S., Israel, and their Arab client states. This moment would not have been possible without the courageous self-defensive actions taken by Hamas and the Palestinian resistance on Oct 7 that sparked a wider struggle in the region. In the response to Israel using this attack as a pretense to intensify its genocide and aggression to unprecedented levels, U.S. public opinion has shifted against Israel. In order to counter this, the bourgeois establishment has offered some token candidates and figureheads to pay lip service to the pro-Palestine and antiwar movements. 

At the forefront of this counter-movement are politicians like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, and the rest of the DSA clique that is eager to siphon off real antiwar action into the pockets of the Democratic party. By accusing Hamas of war crimes, these public figures launder the image of the US empire and the so-called IDF, minimizing their own constant atrocities that have until now gone basically unchecked. The claim that one must condemn the Palestinian resistance to have political support in the U.S. is blatantly untrue. It is simply a convenient excuse to continue the Democratic party’s goal of redirecting revolutionary energy into support for the status quo. Groups like Ansar Allah, Hamas, and Hezbollah have an explicit right to self defense against colonization by Israel through armed struggle and will continue to do so. This is even the letter of international law, however useless those are in practice. Whether or not they have the support of liberal “leftists” in the imperial core is of no real consequence. We must recognize that the use of revolutionary language by these liberal grifters is nefarious and we must abandon any supposed “leftist” who is tied to the Israel-supporting democratic or republican parties.

Now let’s look at zionism’s future. In 2022, polling shows 64% of democrats had a favorable opinion of Israel. Compare this to now just 34% in 2026. But at the same time, the U.S. empire needs Israel to serve as a “landed aircraft carrier” in West Asia to further the economic interests of the Epstein class. This contradiction means that in order to continue to be relevant in the eyes of the people, Democratic politicians have to posture like they are resisting sending weapons to Israel, while never denying that Israel must exist. This is what brings us to the recent vote integrating the IDF and the U.S. military. This move allows money and weapons to continue to flow to Israel, no matter how "progressively" they try to sell these positions.  

Democratic politicians might do things like acknowledge that Natanyahu is a war criminial, but they will always stop short of recognizing that Israel as an entity is built on genocide and land theft, and that ridding it of one leader will do nothing to change anything about its continual systematic imperial genocide. This means that these politicians are simply virtue-signaling when they spout these empty platitudes about the Palestinian cause, and they will never go so far as to upset their donors and real constituents, the Epstein-affiliated ruling class. This type of liberal zionism allows politicians to gain personal clout for “speaking up for Palestine and opposing Israel” while doing nothing to stop the genocide, and in fact materially supporting its continued existence. Demanding mere “leadership change” or “ending weapon sales” for Israel will change nothing for Palestinians, but it will suck energy from the real movement and direct it to the Democratic party, where it can be reliably snuffed out. 

To have any real political impact for Palestine, we must reject and work outside of the mainstream political parties. Those parties are bought and paid for by the wealthy, whose interests align with Israel’s. We must build a revolutionary vanguard party of working people that are class-conscious and principled. Dismantling Israel’s backer–the U.S. Empire– is the only way forward. It’s the only way the targets of this collective colonization can win back their own land, their own lives, the only way that workers can finally be free to decide their own destiny and shake off the chains of their imperial overlords. This is a huge task, but the path before us has been paved and continues to be refined through the unequaled action of revolutionary socialist movements around the world.

The Workers Party of MA explicitly demands an end to all forms of U.S. aid to Israel in our program, and will work towards the dismantling of Israel’s existence within our lifetimes. 

Free Palestine