Above photo: Red line march in Washington D.C., on June 8, 2024. Laura Albast.
A nationwide day of anti-Trump protests is ignoring Palestine and the Gaza genocide.
NOTE: The Democratic Party-aligned groups organizing the Hands Off March did not include Palestine in their demands, but that should not stop anyone who is attending the march from giving Palestine visibility and making the demand to end the genocide and free Palestine from illegal Israeli occupation. – Margaret Flowers
On April 5, protesters will converge on Washington to hold a massive march in support of Palestine.
The President has changed since the last big event in DC, but many of the demands have not. Activists are calling on the United States government to stop bankrolling the genocide in Gaza and sever ties from apartheid Israel.
The additional element this time around is the Trump administration’s vast deportation program, which has targeted multiple university students for participating in protests.
“This movement is made of students, workers, teachers, artists, activists, healthcare workers, tech workers and people of conscience all over the world who will not back down in the face of repression and intimidation, and will never back down so long as Gaza is under attack,” reads a statement on the march’s website. “That’s why on April 5th we are standing up to Trump and his ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, we are standing up to repression, and we are standing up to the US’s continued facilitation of the genocide in Gaza.”
Meanwhile, there will be hundreds of other rallies, marches and protests taking place on April 5. These efforts oppose the Trump/Musk right-wing agenda and are sponsored a number of unions and progressive organizations, like Indivisible, Women’s March, Public Citizen, and the UAW. This day of action calls for the administration to take it’s “Hands Off!” Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Public Lands, libraries, people’s bodies, and free speech among other things.
There’s no component of the “Hands Off!” action that leftists would find especially objectionable, save a curious call for Trump to leave NATO alone. However, there is a very glaring omission when one looks over its website: Palestine.
There’s a variety of ways to look at what’s sometimes derisively referred to as “The Resistance.” That is to say, liberal opposition to Trump.
On one hand, it completely failed to stop his initial rise or hold him accountable after his first term ended, which is precisely why he has become president again.
On the other hand, leaders like Trump have a way of radicalizing people and exposing the true face of capitalism and U.S. foreign policy. There are undoubtedly thousands of young people who became aware of politics via the horrors of the first Trump term, only to eventually develop an analysis that transcends the contours of the Democratic Party.
We will see it this time around too. People’s Forum Education Director Layan Fuleihan points out that the upcoming Palestine march is drawing attention from new faces.
“We have seen a swell of support for this crucial demonstration,” says Fuleihan. “Student organizations, mosques, labor activists, and so many others have been working day and night to fill buses. Many people who have not protested for Palestine in the past but are shocked at Trump’s wanton crackdown on civil liberties are signed up to attend. And teams of volunteers are going out every day distributing thousands of flyers and posters all over the DC area.”
During the Iraq War protests, Palestine remained a divisive issue among many progressives, but what’s the excuse for ignoring the issue now? In recent years, we’ve seen dozens and dozens of polls showing that Israel’s popularity has greatly diminished among Democratic voters. A February survey from The Economist found that just 9% of Democrats sympathize with Israelis more than Palestinians.
Organizers of the “Hands Off!” events might be ignoring the issue, but the inevitable tension is not going away.
Earlier this month, IMEU Policy Project, IfNotNow, Gen-Z for Change and Justice Democrats sent the DNC a letter pointing out how Harris’s support for Israel hurt her campaign and warning that the issue could impact the midterms.
“The chasm between the Democratic base and the Harris campaign could have been narrowed and course-corrected months prior to the election,” read the letter. “The pattern of disregarding and ignoring the issues Democratic voters care about, may it be rising costs of living or ending U.S. complicity in war crimes abroad, will not lead to winning elections.”
Randy Fine
If you want a sense of how normalized anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic sentiment is within U.S. political culture, take a look at Florida’s 6th Congressional District where State Senator Randy Fine just won an election fill Mike Waltz’s vacant seat.
In 2018, Fine (who claims to be a massive fan of Free Speech) tried to shut down Lorde’s concerts in Florida because the musician publicly backed the BDS campaign.
In 2019, he attacked a Jewish constituent for organizing a panel on Israel and Palestine, referring to the man “Judenrat”, which is word that was used to describe Jews who collaborated with Nazis.
“First, there is no ‘Palestine,’” he said in response to the event. “Second, having a bunch of speakers who advocate for the destruction of Israel but promise that this one time they won’t, is a joke. We should not engage these bigots. We crush them.”
After a 42-year-old Army veteran killed 14 people with his car in New Orleans in January, Fine tweeted, “Muslim terror has attacked the United States — again. The blood is on the hands of those who refuse to acknowledge the worldwide #MuslimProblem. It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”
He’s consistently celebrated civilian deaths in Gaza. When a Twitter user sent him a picture of a dead Palestinian child buried under rubble, he responded, ““Quite well, actually! Thanks for the pic!”
When Jewish Currents‘ Alex Kane asked Fine about the remarks he said, “I don’t personally feel bad when human shields are killed.”
After Israel killed 26-year-old Turkish-American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, Fine tweeted, “Throw rocks, get shot. One less #MuslimTerrorist. #FireAway.”
He claimed that local lawmakers were “putting every Jewish child in the state at risk” for backing a ceasefire resolution. In October 2023 he arranged for “Regards from Randy Fine” to be written an Israeli artillery shell to be fired at Gaza. “Special delivery from me to Hamas,” he wrote on Facebook.
Fine claimed he would move to Israel if Kamala Harris won the 2024 election. After Hamas returned the remains of Shiri Bibas and her two sons to Israel, Fine wrote, “‘innocent palestinian civilians’ took a baby and a little boy hostage. They strangled them a month later. And then mutilated their bodies to try to hide it. There are demons that live on Earth. They deserve no state. They only deserve death.”
At a public meeting last month, Fine told an attendee in a keffiyeh to “enjoy your terrorist rag.”
He recently called for people who distribute anti-Israel literature to be jailed for 5 years.
Fine’s candidacy was publicly backed by Trump, who encouraged him to run for the seat in the first place.
Fine’s victory comes amid more brutal Israeli attacks on Israel and a reinvigorated domestic crackdown on Palestine protesters. Students are being disappeared for supporting Gaza under the guise of an antisemitism strategy.
Call for your country to stop sending Israel weapons and you might be tagged as a terrorist. Call for Palestinians to be slaughtered and you might get elected to congress.