Twin Cities Democratic Socialists — who endorsed two DFL Minneapolis councillors — release statement in support of attacks on Israel

In the wake of the recent attacks on Israel — which saw hundreds of civilians killed, raped, and kidnapped by Hamas — the Democratic Socialists of America moved quickly to express their support for the attackers. Yesterday, the Twin Cities chapter echoed this:

Indeed, their statement makes a direct link between the mass-murder in Israel and local politics in Minnesota:

We, the Twin Cities chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, are also resolved. We are resolved in our fight to support the efforts of Palestinians, in Palestine and in the diaspora, in their efforts to free their people. Just as Palestinians took to the streets after George Floyd was murdered, we are resolved to show the same solidarity in defense of Palestinian liberation. We are resolved to build our capacity as a chapter to take our fight to city halls, to the state capitol, and to the halls of national power in the USA — to end all US financial support for the Israeli settler apartheid regime. We are resolved to strengthen ties between Indigenous movements, locally and across Turtle Island, and the anti-racist and anti-colonial international movement for Palestinian liberation. We are resolved to work toward rematriation of land in good relationship in the movements against the violent state and state-sponsored settler dispossession and mass killing of the Santee Dakhóta, the Anishinaabe, and other Native communities of present-day Minnesota. Justice for our Palestinian relatives can also unequivocally be named “Land Back”. We are resolved to enshrine the right to freedom of movement in Palestine, in the USA, and around the globe, and to fight border fascism wherever it rears its hideous head. We are resolved to work to ensure that our own DSA chapter and nationally endorsed elected officials not only vote against military funding for Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid, but also work towards the ending of US-sponsorship of Israeli occupation of Palestine. We are resolved in our commitment to not fear the backlash that comes from being vocally, and boldly, in favor of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and Palestinian freedom, for as socialists and internationalists, we are often the only ones willing to take a stand for justice, even when it is unpopular, or even dangerous. We are resolved to proclaim “From the River, to the Sea, Palestine will be free!” today and until liberation.

To the Twin Cities DSA, both Minnesota and Israel are “stolen land” that needs to be “decolonized”; only the means differ.

You might think this is a nutty fringe group. You’d be half right, but they are no fringe group, at least not in Minneapolis politics. Three of the thirteen members of Minneapolis’ city council are either outright members of the DSA (Robin Wonsley) or endorsed by it, including two DFLers, Aisha Chughtai and Jason Chavez, who are also members of the DSA.

In May, the Star Tribune reported: “The DSA isn’t a political party, but its far-left pull is growing within the Minneapolis DFL. “

The leadership of the Minneapolis DFL Party is now peppered with DSA members and supporters, including City Chair Briana Rose Lee. Lee has maintained there’s nothing mutually exclusive about being a DFLer and a fan of the DSA, noting that Democrats often join any number of movements and political organizations.

If you were wondering how deep in the sewer city politics is, there you are.

In 1976, a German member of the left wing Revolutionary Cells, Wilfred Böse, was a leader of the hijacking of Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris. After diverting the plane to Entebbe in Uganda, Böse separated the Israeli passengers from the others. When one of the Israelis showed Böse the tattoo he had received as an inmate of Auschwitz, Böse replied: “I’m no Nazi! I am an idealist!”