Why did people in the US fail to stop our government from funding and facilitating a genocide in Gaza? How do we stop the next monstrous crime of US imperialism?

In October 2023, Israel launched a genocidal campaign of collective punishment against Palestine in response to the October 7th Al-Aqsa flood that righteously broke through the apartheid wall. Israeli aerial bombardment reduced Gaza to rubble, Israeli bombs and ground troops massacred Palestinian civilians, and Israel blocked humanitarian aid from entering Gaza while destroying its infrastructure. In the West Bank, Israeli settlers stole more Palestinian land, and the Israeli military carried out more vicious attacks on the Palestinian people.

While we could go on in further detail about Israel’s genocidal crimes, let us emphasize that all of these crimes were funded, supported, and facilitated by the US government. The US continued to supply weapons, military collaboration, and economic support to Israel. during its war on Gaza, gave Israel diplomatic cover, and worked to prevent a ceasefire, despite the irrefutable evidence of a genocide being carried out before our eyes. That means that all of us living in the US are in some way complicit.

Millions of people in the US protested the US-Israel genocidal war on Gaza, from mass rallies, to voicing our dissent, to more militant actions. The spring 2024 student encampment protests shook complacency by refusing to allow college campuses to go on with business as usual while the US collaborated with Israel to commit genocide. Those and other militant actions were met with repression, with riot cops deployed and student protesters facing suspension, expulsion, and criminal charges. Repressive measures under the Biden and Trump administrations—including blatant suppression of the constitutional right to free speech, as well as ruining the careers of those who spoke out for Palestine—  worked to silence many and prevent another wave of militant protest on college campuses. Many college professors, including those who wax eloquent about decolonization, were deafeningly silent as their students were being arrested and punished by their college administrations for protesting.

Unfortunately, the protest movement has not been able to overcome the repression it faced, and that had a lot to do with its internal weaknesses. An obsession with safety—with making protests safe—held back many protesters from taking the risks necessary to shut down business as usual. Careerist activists used the movement to advance their standings, social media clout, and self-serving organizations, as they have in every mass protest movement since 2011. The 2024 election sowed confusion and capitulation, with all too many people who should have known better, voting for genocide. Among the more radical ones in the mass movement, political purity tests often prevented a process of unity–struggle–unity to bring together the greatest number of people possible around a firm stand with Palestine.

The simple fact is that we have, so far, failed in our duty to the people of Palestine. We live in the heart of the empire that oppresses people all over the world, that gives Israel its weapons and diplomatic cover. We were not defiant enough to force the rulers of the US to stop the genocide.

This summer, Behind Enemy Lines – Anti-Imperialist Resistance is asking you to do some serious soul-searching: how are we going to stand with Palestine? How are we going to stop the next monstrous crime of US imperialism? What kind of resistance will it take? How can that resistance withstand the inevitable repression it will face?

We invite you to read our writing, especially our summation of our determined-but-admittedly-failed efforts to shut down the 2024 Democratic National Convention, available at behind-enemy-lines.org. And we invite you to join us this summer, going out with this flyer to festivals and concerts, street corners and subways, to bring people broadly into anti-imperialist resistance. The empire is the enemy. From the belly of the beast, we choose to resist it.