It has recently come to the attention of the Southern New Hampshire DSA that one of our US Congressional Representatives is hosting some Know Your Rights trainings for people in the Granite State to learn the ins-and-outs of what ICE can and cannot (legally) do. To start off, I’ll simply say that having Know Your Rights trainings is a good thing! That being said, our organization cannot have anything to do with the ones run by Maggie Goodlander, because our org is committed to anti-Zionism, and Goodlander has demonstrated that she is a Zionist. In her most recent statement on the genocide Israel has been conducting on the Palestinians since October of 2023, she chastised Israel for not ending the war while voting on every bill to fund the genocide and ending that same statement by saying the Israel must remain “Jewish” and “democratic.” These are, of course, mutually exclusive terms. What then of the Arab population currently residing in Israel? I suppose that they must be kept at low numbers or made second class citizens in order for Israel to be “democratic.” It is not possible for a country to be both an ethnostate and a democracy, and this is the heart of the issue.

What has precipitated the creation of this article is the need to explain why being anti-Zionist is a requirement to truly defend the rights of immigrants. The best way to do this is in long-form, I believe, as to not come off as petty troublemakers but rather to demonstrate that this position is the only position a principled socialist organization like ours can take by understanding that immigration rights and the genocide in Gaza are not separate, but interconnected issues brought into our world by the material demands of global capital. Our position is brought about by analysis, not a reflexive need to be annoying. This writing is not for the people who are onboard with the genocide in Gaza, it would be a waste of our time, but rather for the sympathetic parts of our coalition which might find it frustrating that we refuse to reach across the aisle to “combat fascism.” It is simply not possible to combat the rising tide of reactionary rule at home if we don’t also stand against it abroad. The reason for this is that, fundamentally, both of these things (deportations by ICE and the genocide in Gaza) are fueled by the logic of an ethnostate, fueled by white nationalism.

Let’s take for example one of the most visible recent ICE detentions, likely the first one that signaled we were living in a fundamentally different regime – the one which targeted Mahmoud Khalil. It’s not a coincidence this violent deportation apparatus was first used to target campus protesters who voiced their support for Gaza. Mahmoud Khalil in particular provides a view into how this is all connected. Khalil’s family was expelled from Gaza following the Nakba, the first ethnic cleansing of Gaza that Israel’s founding settlers enacted on the Palestinian population. As a result, he and his parents lived in a refugee camp in Syria. Syria, being a war-torn country thanks to countries such as Israel and the United States constantly destabilizing it (and yes, that is also related to Israel’s attempts at disciplining, replacing, and genociding Palestinians – Syria was where the Palestinian diaspora went and would provide aid to Palestinian liberation movements), was needless to say not a great place to be. Khalil ended up emigrating to the United States in search of a better life, like many other people. This story is similar to many others. The genocide in Gaza is an abomination, but it is logical. Think of the soulless AI slop Donald Trump has “truthed” about turning Gaza into a Riviera. It is about capital. The genocide and settlement of Gaza is a business opportunity. It fuels the military-industrial complex here, while bolstering the housing market in Israel. On the graves of dead Palestinians, a luxury condo
will be built for a landowner in Tel Aviv to accrue yet more wealth while companies like Elbit Systems and BAE win more government contracts and skyrocket on the stock market from the bombs used.

This is no different from how our immigration system serves to function. Our immigration system is broken, but that is not a mistake! Immigrants leave countries that the US has forced into subservient roles, some war torn just like Syria, looking for a better life. Once here, they maintain their desperation and willingness to accept low paying work by maintaining the precarious uncertainty of their legal status, which greatly benefits capital, who are free to exercise total power over a helpless and desperate workforce. It is
often said that we need to “fix” our immigration system and offer more pathways to citizenship. While that is certainly true, the system isn’t broken at all. It is operating entirely as intended. Desperate immigrants are easier to exploit, and the US is responsible for a lot of the conditions that make people immigrate here in the first place.

Then there is, of course, the reason why these crimes against humanity are appealing in the first place. Both Israel and the United States were founded on similar principles. They were (and in Israel’s case, are) both settler colonial ethnostates that make new money and new markets by slaughtering the indigenous populations, while using racial castes as a way of reinforcing legal control over the territory. It is easy for many people to see that the current immigration crackdown is one fueled by racism and nativism. The pollsters and hucksters of the Democratic Party seem to have all of the data that Palestinian liberation is popular, but lack the will to commit to it. At the DSA, we are not going to sell out Palestinians for the sake of not “rocking the boat” or “combating fascism.” The genocide in Gaza should make anybody understand this but it goes beyond moral outrage. “One struggle, one fight” is not an empty aphorism. We will stand against the exploitation of the working class here in the United States no matter who they are, and we will stand against the genocide of the Palestinians for the same reason. As we have seen, it’s even possible those targeted by ICE lay at this exact intersection!

Goodlander, your “solidarity” with our immigrant community is empty as long as you allow Israel to remain an ethnostate that denies Palestinians equal rights. The two-state solution is a farce. Israel controls what and who gets to enter all Palestinian territory yet somehow we have to pretend that there’s even the possibility it could govern itself? If someone else can take your land, turn off your water, cut off your food supply, and prevent the open movement within your own borders, it’s hard to call that anything
but an occupied territory. That is fundamentally what it means for Israel to remain “Jewish.” This becomes clear when applied to other countries. Should Germany remain German? Should the UK remain British? Nevermind that it is impossible to define neat borders around ethnicity; these are also often the statements used by the far-right for the same reasons that ICE is cracking down mostly on people of color with “Hispanic sounding” names. It’s white nationalism, not anything else. Why should anyone trust that you mean it when you say you don’t want white nationalism here when you’re comfortable with it elsewhere? As things stand, it comes off as nothing but political opportunism.

As such, Southern NH DSA has no interest in the Know Your Rights trainings hosted by Goodlander, despite the fact that we think that it’s important work. We will instead work with those who stand by our principles, unlike the Democratic Party who, to this day, has yet to find the courage to stand up for Palestine and, by extension, our immigrant population. You cannot be for one and not the other.