The Pro Palestine Movement Two Years After Genocide  ## Metadata - Author: [[It Could Happen Here]] - Full Title: The Pro Palestine Movement Two Years After Genocide - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/801e5823-4b5f-4902-bc93-8e681e8d0d00 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Palestine Moved To The Center Of US Politics** - Two years of genocide pushed Palestine from a niche issue into the core of American political life. - This revealed deep ties between US domestic priorities and imperial foreign policy, changing how voters view elites. Transcript: Dana El Kurd We're recording this on November 5th, 2025. We had a very interesting night last night where Zohran Mamdani was named the mayor of New York City. And a lot of think pieces since about how this means nothing and actually means everything. And the pro-Palestine movement is winning. It's really not winning enough, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, we're in an interesting moment in American politics. I think the Palestine question is obviously very, very relevant. So, yeah, Ahmed, welcome to the podcast. Ahmed Moor Thank you, Donna. Huge pleasure to be here. Dana El Kurd All right. So maybe we can start with kind of an introduction to yourself. You can tell us about your experience as an activist, as an organizer. Sure. Yes. As a researcher. Yeah. Ahmed Moor So I was born in Gaza, in Palestine, in Gaza, in Rafah. And my family moved here when I was a kid and became naturalized, so American citizen when I was 10 years old, so that was in the mid-90s. And, you know, went to college right after 9-11, and like lots of people, was galvanized around that experience. I think there was a period I was a journalist both in Beirut and in Cairo, and often you'd meet American journalists roughly of my generation. And all of them would indicate that, you know, I became engaged around the Middle East because of 9-11. I think 9-11 was, for our generation, a big learning opportunity for people. The global war on terror, the war in Iraq, galvanized a lot of the left. And I'm thinking now of MoveOn.org. And so this is really the environment that I grew up in. Today, I mostly work with The Guardian, with The Nation, mostly write about Palestine, Israel, and American foreign policy. And as you mentioned, I'm a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace, where I host a podcast, Occupied Thoughts, where we spend a lot of time thinking through policy matters related To Palestine. I have ideas about how things have changed, but that's just a quick introduction to me and my work. Dana El Kurd No, thank you. We're approximately the same age. I won't tell you exactly how off. But yeah, I just am reflecting so much these days on how much the war on terror was a formative moment politically for our generation and its interaction with the Palestinian issue. I think that's starting to really be understood more widely. I think maybe it was more fringe or like a very select kind of understanding of the left would have that kind of analysis. For sure. Ahmed Moor I mean, just to put a fine point on it. I mean, that was the I would say generational awareness that we've been lied to. We've lied to by Dick Cheney, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, all of that cohort, those people. You can see how that's rebounded today in Maine with Graham Plattner, somebody who fought two or three tours and then subsequently worked as a mercenary with Blackwater, was radicalized, I would say, through that experience when he was watching these happy-go diplomats swimming in pools in a diplomatic compound when just outside a savage war was being waged or an insurgency. So I would say that, you know, Palestine is so deeply interwoven. Palestine is a long history of having been lied to for people here in the United States domestically. That came to a head around the Iraq war. We were lied into that war. And I think you saw the way that the Biden administration particularly stuck with the playbook and alienated huge numbers of voters in 2024. So Palestine is kind of indispensable to understanding how our elites in the United States have been captured by special interests, by corporatist interests. And we're beginning to see that, I think, rebound in meaningful ways. And of course, congratulations ([Time 0:03:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/06cbd52c-c4a8-4977-a32e-4d7a13bd2ff6)) - **From Foreign Policy To Empire Analysis** - Activist analysis shifted from isolated foreign-policy critiques to a holistic critique of empire. - Organizers now link domestic resource allocation and working-class struggles to imperial wars abroad. Transcript: Ahmed Moor So the biggest thing I've seen is that the analytical frame has changed. We used to talk about foreign policy adventurism, wars for oil, those kinds of things. Now I think the analysis is very correctly focused on empire, the way in which resources domestically, the real working class effort to build a life in the United States is subsumed By wars of really imperial overreach. The whole idea of empire for me was an antiquated one. I didn't think it had a whole lot of relevance today, but I think I and many others who may have thought in that way missed the point. Reality is that the empire is intact. I think that awareness that our efforts domestically are deeply, deeply intertwined with what's happening, what we're doing elsewhere is important and it's emergent. It's new. When I was in graduate school, you would hear people talk about how they're engaged with domestic policy or people talk about their interest in foreign policy. And I was mostly interested in foreign policy. But today to try to draw that differentiation is really meaningless. And again, you see that in the race in New York. Mamdani did run on affordability. He ran on a domestic policy program. But equally, 38%, I think, of voters were heavily motivated by his foreign policy interests and his foreign policy perspectives, which, again, from a policy point of view, he can't Really impact, but nonetheless are supported by this idea that our taxes, what we do domestically, is having a huge impact everywhere else in the world and that American empire is sprawling And a challenge for people domestically as well. ([Time 0:15:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/63bdea53-b88d-4bbb-8b49-0dc11bf41012)) - **Electoral Strategy Faced A Reality Check** - Electoral faith among some organizers eroded after perceived institutional betrayals. - Newer strategies emphasize reconstituting parties instead of seeking incremental inclusion. Transcript: Ahmed Moor From a pure activist point of view, you know, I used to have a real belief in electoral politics. That was shaken deeply through the DNC, through the grassroots effort to be heard. Uncommitted, yeah. The uncommitted movement, precisely. We'll see where things go. I mean, the truth is that, you know, the person who was just elected in Jersey is a typical, I believe, AIPAC Democrat, Mike Sherrill. My perspective domestically is that we need to be aggressive. We need to be forceful in calling for a total reconstitution of Democratic Party. No half measures. And I think Zeran Mamdani did a good job of illustrating what that could look like. Yeah. Dana El Kurd I mean, there's always a tension in this very money captured system that we have that at certain level, it doesn't really matter liberal or Republican, they are captured. But I think what the New York City race has demonstrated is like that can only go so far. You still need some public support, which is why, of course, they're going after gerrymandering and all of that. But yeah, it's an uphill battle. But I think if this democracy is to exist, we are in a better footing than we were, you know, on this discussion. ([Time 0:17:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/eb681e4a-a104-4d38-a54d-1e589ec692dd)) - **Shift Toward Settler Colonialism Frame** - The movement's framing moved from rights-based claims to critiquing settler colonialism and state legitimacy. - Debates now question whether a Zionist ethno-state can be legitimate or reformed within existing frameworks. Transcript: Dana El Kurd I also am wondering what you think of this characterization, which is that I think before this genocide, and I don't mean to create this binary, but it has been a very transformative Event. Before this genocide, I think a lot of Palestinian-American organizing in spaces discussed the issue of Palestine in a rights-based approach way. So about human rights, about ending apartheid, about extending rights. And I think the framing for that has also changed. It is really a critique of settler colonialism and the legitimacy of these nation states. First of all, what do you think of that characterization on my end? But also, what do you think of the tension then that poses for the Palestinian national liberation movement that still wants a state. Ahmed Moor Yeah, you're right. Again, the analytic frame has shifted. We've gone from a contested conversation around 1967, the June War, when Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan, Gaza from Egypt, Jerusalem as well from Jordan, the Golan Heights From Syria, and a small sliver of land from Lebanon to 1948. That's what we talk about now. And that's correct. And I think for many Palestinians or Palestinian Americans, that has always been the starting point of the conversation. But now we have the political legitimacy to say, wait a second, this whole state was founded upon separate and unequal on Jewish supremacy, on a point of view that we reject as Americans And we should reject everywhere in the world. And so I think that that's the first meaningful change that I've seen when we talk about Palestine. And then, of course, settler colonialism is built into that analysis. Things get a little bit different when you zoom out. Let me just talk about domestic. I think that when you talk to people on the left, the universalist argument, everybody's created equal is very, very powerful and resonant. And it's the one that I believe in. But what's happening on the right as well is an America first argument. And the word protectorate comes up repeatedly. Why are we investing so much in a protectorate? Tucker Carlson, powerfully, I think, for his audience, and this is probably the most influential commentator in the United States today, but powerfully, you know, said that this Country has half the size, half the economy, the state of Connecticut. Why have we invested so much political capital, so much money in something which is so immaterial, especially when it pays a big negative dividend in lots of different ways? So the nativist argument is meeting the universalist argument. But the core analysis around settler colonialism, around the lack of legitimacy for a supremacist state gives rise to both of those arguments of access to the substrate, I would say. Palestinians want to see a Palestinian state. Now you're going back to Palestine. I don't know what that means today. ([Time 0:18:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5f5a2381-b84f-45e1-8da7-59f29d32ea2c)) - **Organize Aggressively In Civic Life** - Palestinian Americans should organize more aggressively across civic and political institutions. - Leverage newfound visibility to compete for positions, platforms, and influence without self-censorship. Transcript: Ahmed Moor What people have in common is a common reference point, the Nekba. They have a common understanding around the legitimacy of Israel as an ethno-state, which takes Jewish supremacy as its point of departure. But it's a very diverse diaspora. I mean, our first Palestinian American in Congress is Justin Amash, who is on the right. Dana El Kurd That's right. I always forget about him. Ahmed Moor Yeah. I mean, he had relatives who were murdered in Reza at a church in northern Reza, which dates back to, I think, the 11th century. So we're a diverse diaspora. I think the Palestinian diaspora in the United States is integrated. It's educated. That's the passport for lots of Palestinians around the world. It's how you get out, it's how you build a life. We have a very high literacy rate in Palestine, exceeds 99.5%. But I think where the diaspora hasn't, at least in the United States, done as effective a job, and this is kind of the natural trajectory, I think, of diaspora communities generally, I don't know that we're as aggressive and organized as we could be. And I want to emphasize the word aggressive. The idea that we can go out and compete at all levels of government, that we can go out and assert our understanding of history, backed by facts, we should be doing more of that, especially When you look kind of across the board when it comes to people who are doing well in medicine or in business you know where there's been a real career risk for speaking out and for being Assertive we can do more now and and we should use the leverage gain through two years of genocide the most expensive access to leverage I can imagine to push much harder politically. ([Time 0:27:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/527b0b29-1edf-438a-9c02-ebb91b6f13b2)) - **Intersectionality Strengthens The Movement** - Intersectional organizing now ties Palestine to broader movements and domestic issues. - Effective political wins often come from non-Palestinian groups speaking principled truths, not solely from diaspora actors. Transcript: Ahmed Moor I think this is where when I was in college, I didn't know the word intersectionality. That wasn't a concept that really was one that people thought about. You know, you would host an event and you would invite your friends, some of whom would be in the black students group, some of whom would be in the queer students group and just regular Left groups. But today I'd say that activists have a much more complete sense of how you almost have a social quilt and a compression on one part of it will impact everything else that's related to It. And we're all interrelated in that way. Left organizing groups, not exactly Palestinian organizing groups. I think if I could offer gentle criticism of Palestine organizers, there's been too much, and you saw this with Uncommitted, too much effort to ingratiate yourselves to the existing Power apparatus, to ask for a seat at the table, when it's somebody like Zoran Mamdani, again, who demanded a seat at the table, an unrelenting focus on the issues, achieved access to A platform that nobody wanted to cede. And I don't think that following the rules exactly or being friendly about accessing platforms within the Democratic Party is going to yield a huge benefit to Palestinian Americans Or people here. I'd say the most principled organizing is the organizing that's going to win. And today that comes from non-Palestinian groups. And I'm okay with that. I don't really think it matters if the best argument is coming from somebody whose family comes from South Asia through Uganda or somebody whose family emerges from, you know, the Balota Refugee camp. That doesn't really matter to me. ([Time 0:29:46](https://share.snipd.com/snip/35d1fd84-96c3-468a-97f6-938d81a844b4))