DSA’s Anti-Israel Turn: From Socialist Roots to Post-Oct. 7 Radicalism

A new American Jewish Committee explainer traces how the Democratic Socialists of America moved from acknowledging Israel’s right to exist to embracing a one-state framework — and how the October 7 massacre hardened, rather than softened, that trajectory.

By Khurram Ali Raza

Faith & Freedom News  |  Published September 1, 2026

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest socialist organization in the United States, has hardened into one of the most consistently anti-Israel forces on the American left. A new explainer video from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) traces how the group’s positions on Israel, Zionism, and antisemitism evolved — and how Hamas’s October 7, 2023 massacre accelerated that shift.

From founding principles to rejection of Israel’s right to exist

Founded in 1982 as a merger of democratic-socialist groups, the DSA initially operated within a broader progressive tradition that included support for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one. Its founding leader, Michael Harrington, described Zionism as the Jewish people’s national liberation movement and affirmed Jewish self-determination, according to the AJC video.

Over subsequent decades, the organization’s platform moved steadily leftward. By the 2010s and especially after the rise of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, DSA chapters and national resolutions increasingly framed Israel not as a flawed democracy but as a colonial, apartheid project that, in the group’s own language, must be dismantled.

Key milestones highlighted in the AJC analysis include:

• Growing endorsement of BDS and the demand to end U.S. military aid to Israel.
• Rejection of the two-state solution in favor of a single state — a framework AJC and other critics say would end Israel’s status as a Jewish-majority country.
• Language, used by some DSA voices, labeling Zionism itself as racism or settler-colonialism.

“Our position is a free Palestine with the capital in Jerusalem. I think that could be safely read as a one-state solution.”

October 7 as inflection point

The October 7 Hamas attack — which killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel, the majority of them civilians, and saw more than 250 people taken hostage — did not, according to the AJC video, prompt reflection or condemnation of the perpetrators within much of the DSA. Instead, the organization argues, it intensified the group’s anti-Israel posture.

In the immediate aftermath, the AJC video points to a DSA-promoted rally in New York that featured slogans some read as celebrating the attacks, and says the organization’s refusal to unequivocally condemn Hamas prompted several prominent progressive lawmakers to leave the group. It also cites instances in which DSA voices and local chapters, in AJC’s account:

• Described the massacre as “resistance” or framed it as an inevitable response to “occupation.”
• Opposed or remained silent on clear statements of solidarity with Israeli victims.
• Renewed calls to cut all U.S. support for Israel while, AJC contends, offering comparatively little criticism of Hamas’s charter, its governance of Gaza, or its use of human shields.

“October 7th was largely inevitable.”

“When elected officials or public figures mainstream antisemitism or anti-Zionism or lend legitimacy to terrorist organizations like Hamas, AJC believes leaders across the country have a responsibility to speak out.”

The AJC video argues this response was not an aberration but the outcome of years of ideological radicalization within the organization. By treating Zionism as the root problem and Israel’s existence as the original sin, AJC contends, the DSA left itself with little coherent language to denounce the deliberate killing of Jews for being Jewish — a characterization DSA leadership has not endorsed and that reflects AJC’s own framing of events.

Why it matters

DSA’s membership and influence have grown significantly since 2016, particularly among younger progressive activists and in certain Democratic primary contests, even though the organization is not affiliated with the Democratic Party and does not itself function as a political party. Several members of Congress and local elected officials have ties to the organization or its political ecosystem.

As the group’s positions on Israel harden, the AJC explainer argues, the implications extend beyond foreign policy debates into domestic discourse about Jewish safety, free speech on campus, and the boundaries of acceptable progressive politics. AJC frames a central tension: an organization that describes itself as opposed to all forms of oppression has, on the question of the world’s only Jewish state, adopted a framework that AJC and other Jewish organizations view as incompatible with opposition to antisemitism. DSA has not been quoted in this account responding directly to that characterization.

AJC describes itself as a non-partisan 501(c)(3) organization that does not endorse or oppose candidates for office. Understanding DSA’s trajectory — from its democratic-socialist origins to what AJC calls its post-October 7 “maximalism” — has, in AJC’s telling, become part of a broader contest over the direction of the American left.