Democratic Leadership Still Hasn’t Caught Up to the Party’s Base on Gaza

In These Times, September 4, 2025, by Stephen Zunes
Nearly two years in to the U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, there are clear signals the Democratic Party’s
base is moving far away from supporting the Israeli government and its war machine. And while party leadership is beginning to show some hopeful signs it might be starting to listen to constituents’ changing attitudes on the issue of Israel and Palestine…

Interview: Rabbis protest of ongoing genocide in Gaza and growing Jewish resistance

KSQD Community Radio, August 18, 2025 [1-hour]:
Zunes and Rabbi Chaim Schneider discuss the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the growing Jewish resistance to what is being done in their name.
On Monday, August 11, roughly 18 San Francisco Bay Area rabbis and cantors sat down in the street, after speaking in front of the barricaded Israeli Consulate building, in opposition to Netanyahu’s plan to re-occupy the Gaza Strip and to express dismay at the unrelieved starvation and suffering of the people of Gaza and all hostages–on both sides–enforced by the Israeli and U.S. governments. The civil disobedience action yielded no arrests, although the group escalated from blocking Montgomery Street to sitting in the intersection of Montgomery and Sacramento for approximately half an hour of singing and prayer.

Video: Israelis continue to say no to war.

Zunes Facebook Video July 17, 2025: Meanwhile, the Trump administration and the leadership of both parties in Congress continue to say yes. As the U.S./Israeli-imposed famine on Gaza increases, I keep getting solicitations to contribute to Democratic candidates who insist on arming and funding Israel’s siege, bombing, and occupation. Meanwhile, the Democratic leadership refuses to support their party’s nominee for New York City mayor who opposes such war crimes…

Pro-Palestinian Student Protests Are Nothing New

The Progressive March 3, 2025 by Nyki Duda quoting Zunes:
“Stephen Zunes, a veteran of the anti-apartheid movement in solidarity with Black South Africans in the 1980s and a regular contributor to The Progressive, sees parallels between that movement and the student movement in support of Palestine. Much like the Gaza solidarity encampments, Zunes told me, the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign against South Africa “included encampments, what we called shantytowns, modeled after the poor living conditions of South African Blacks” living under white rule. But while students in the 1980s were punished—Zunes was arrested for his activism—they were not targeted with bans from their campuses or harsh legal charges, as pro-Palestinian student protesters are now facing. “Where shantytowns were allowed to stay up for months during the anti-apartheid struggle, encampments [for Gaza] were torn down within hours at the same universities,” Zunes says. Vincent Boudreau, the City College of New York President who called police in against protesters, was Zunes’s classmate at Cornell, and was also arrested multiple times for his anti-apartheid activism. “And here he is,” Zunes says, “calling the cops to come in and attack people.” [source]