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December 24th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
As the U.S. correspondent for Mondoweiss, a sizable portion of my beat involves covering congressional legislation that connects to Israel/Palestine.
There’s hundreds of political websites, but we know the mainstream media won’t tell the whole story. Take the recent Iron Dome vote. Just months after Israel’s murderous attack on Gaza, the House overwhelmingly approved another $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer money for the Israeli military. The final vote was 420-9.
For most outlets the story ended there. But at Mondoweiss we get to look deeper – where there’s a much more complicated story about where this movement is gaining ground, and how political shifts actually happen.
If you believe this kind of journalism makes a difference, we need your help now:
To wit: in 2019, Rep. Ayanna Pressley was the only Squad member to vote in favor of an anti-BDS resolution. But this fall, she was one of the only Democrats to vote against the Iron Dome funding.
What changed? At Mondoweiss we’ve done multiple stories on how Massachusetts activists are fighting to push local lawmakers on Palestine. Pressley’s shift is proof that they’re having an impact.
“It has been incredible to see so much momentum building for the Palestinian liberation movement, and I’ve heard from many longtime organizers that they can’t imagine having this much support even 2 or 3 years ago,” Massachusetts student Calla Walsh told me this year. “I certainly have not been paying attention to this issue for long enough, largely because I have always been told that it’s ‘too complicated’ for me to understand the history or take a position. I think that notion has been dispelled because many folks, especially young people like me, are realizing that no matter how complex the history of Palestine is, there is only one right side to take on an issue of apartheid and human rights abuses.”
In contrast to Pressley, we saw Rep. Jamaal Bowman voted in favor of the additional funding. In November Bowman joined a J Street trip to Israel, where he met with Israeli officials. These moves prompted multiple Democratic Socialists of America chapters to call for Bowman to be expelled from the organization.
If you believe these stories need to be investigated, analyzed, and reported on honestly, can you make a gift to Mondoweiss today?
While many mainstream outfits have framed the whole saga as little more than leftist infighting, we believe there are deeper questions: where does commitment to Palestine and Palestinians fit in when groups are trying to build mainstream political power? Are more progressives waking up to the limitations of liberal Zionism?
Politicians might push policy, but the contours of what can be accomplished are determined outside of Washington.
That’s why, in addition to developments like the Iron Dome vote, we also cover resolutions, protests, letter writing campaigns, boycott efforts, university events, and city council races. Just in 2021, we covered stories out of Arkansas, California, DC, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington state.
These stories aren’t just important in their own right, and they don’t just matter today. Those local campaigns and many-layered stories are precisely where the political givens of tomorrow are being forged. We all have to understand them so we can all help move them forward.
Please help us cover US politics even more thoroughly in 2022 – so you can be even better armed to shape it.
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