Organization Trends
The DSA’s Extremism Goes Beyond Israel
Recent statements by the Democratic Socialists of America about Hamas’s attack on Israel highlight its radicalism in other areas.
Rashida Tlaib, giving her "Israel is an apartheid state" on the House floor in July 2023. Credit: Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib/Facebook.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) has been in the news a lot lately, and rightly so. While Hamas militants were murdering Israeli civilians, the DSA was exclaiming “long live the resistance!” and promoting “solidarity” demonstrations in response to the terrorist atrocities. It was abominable, and many elected officials on both sides of the aisle condemned the group in the strongest terms. Representative Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) has been particularly outspoken, for which he should be commended, while Representative Shri Thanedar (D. Mich.) renounced his DSA membership, since the group “is unwilling to call out terrorism in all its forms.”
Though the attacks were a watershed moment, anti-Israel rhetoric is nothing new for the DSA. The group voted to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement in 2017, and two years later established an official working group to expose what it called “Zionism’s settler-colonialist and imperialist roots” and advocate “a free Palestine, from the river to the sea”—a phrase with unambiguously malevolent meaning.
Read the rest of this article here.
This article originally appeared in the National Review on October 31, 2023.
