Intifada Until Victory: On Nakba Week 2025
77 years ago, on May 15, 1948, the newly birthed Zionist entity began a genocidal campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing that led to the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians from their ancestral homelands and the establishment of the fascist, settler colonial project now commonly known as “The State of Israel.” The Zionist militias that carried out this coordinated campaign of terror and mass expulsion were—as the Zionist entity is today—backed by Western imperialism, that saw a strategically located partner in crime, an outpost that would help further the imperial goals of regional domination and exploitation. In the years since, the Palestinian people have struggled, resisted, and most importantly, fought tooth and nail to regain their rightful homes, destroy the entity, and realize liberation. These heroic people have been met with further genocide, ethnic cleansing and forced displacement as the land that they are “allowed” to exist upon has been reduced to a suffocating fraction of what was originally their home.
This is not only a history lesson, but also a lesson in strategy and tactics. After the righteous and justified Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, and the subsequent escalation of Zionism’s well-established aim to conquer and settle the entirety of historic Palestine and the surrounding regions, the world once again came to cast its gaze upon Palestine and her people. A million flames were lit in the hearts of people around the globe who woke up every day to see new horrors taking place in Gaza and the West Bank. We also saw resistance, which heartened colonized people and their true allies in the United States and the entire world, teaching us where true liberation, comes from. This renewed concern for the plight of the Palestinian people and the images of struggle have radicalized an entire generation of students and militant workers. Many of us took part in the encampment struggles and the struggles in the streets, growing and learning. The movement in the US, led by organizations like the Palestinian Youth Movement, Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetimes, Jewish Voice for Peace and others, is stronger than ever, in spite of repression from Biden and Trump's fascist administrations.
Where does DSA as an organization stand on one of the most important struggles of the century? There have been many controversies surrounding DSA’s relationship to the broader Palestine solidarity movement in the USA. We in Liberation are all too aware of the fallout caused by the unjust and chauvinistic dissolution of the BDS & Palestine Solidarity Working Group in 2022, which led to the sustained boycott of DSA by Palestinian-led revolutionary organizations. We remember the tabling of MSR-12 which would have formalized DSA as an explicitly anti-Zionist organization in principle and praxis, and committed us to binding electoral and membership standards to tackle the liberal Zionism within our ranks. We remember every time a DSA elected official chose allegiance to the Democratic party platform over Palestine solidarity. We remember when our struggles to implement anti-Zionist resolutions in local chapters were stymied by rightists who wring their hands at just armed struggle, and who are more concerned about the blowback from their friends in yellow unions and liberal electeds, than the use of bombs dropped from jets proudly made by members of the UAW and Machinists.
Despite ebbs and flows at the national level, the fighting spirit of Palestinian liberation has inspired the rank and file and their local chapters who have pressed on and refused to settle for tailism. 55+ chapters have now passed their own versions of MSR-12, explicitly committing to anti-Zionism in principle and practice, allowing them to win the good faith and trust of their local Palestine solidarity organizations and build stronger coalitions. DSA’s IC- Palestine Subcommittee has successfully launched multiple Boycott, Divest & Sanction campaigns that have been adopted by chapters and are now being carried out. Labor for an Arms Embargo grows and develops. Chapters are organizing pickets, petitions and local divestment drives, several of which have been successful. Resolutions being brought forth by popular demand for debate at DSA’s 2025 convention shed hopeful light on the ever-shifting nature of Palestine solidarity in the hearts of our members. As the 77th anniversary of the Nakba comes upon us, chapters all over the country are organizing events to commemorate this turning point in history as part of a coordinated Nakba Week of Action.
We are entering a new phase of the struggle not just in our organization, but in the Palestinian Liberation movement as a whole. As Palestinian activists get black-bagged off the streets, Zionism and its torchbearers continue their campaign of slaughter and genocidal ethnic cleansing with the backing of an administration firmly in support for the settler-colonial project. DSA is being transformed, reforged in the crucible of history. We are choosing to leave the fence-sitting, white-majority pleasing, peaceful “revolution” behind. Revolution is the violent overthrow of one class by another. Nothing less.
Liberation Caucus is a product of this new phase. We understand that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. That weakness, complacency, and passivity serves no other purpose than to put us on the side of our oppressors, and into the dustbin of history. We understand that Palestine is the temperature gauge by which our movement is measured. Let us be unequivocal–Liberation Caucus stands in unwavering solidarity with the Palestinian people, in word and deed. We recognize and affirm their total and unimpeachable right to self-determination and to struggle in pursuit of that self-determination by any means necessary, principally armed struggle. We honor the martyrs who have given their lives for the struggle, every child, mother, father and sibling whose universe was stolen. We feel their pain as our own, our siblings in struggle for a free Palestine from the river to the sea and for a world that knows no exploitation, destitution, or structurally determined murder. Comrades, we seek liberation. There is no other way.
ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE
FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA, PALESTINE WILL BE FREE
BRING THE INTIFADA HOME!