The Temporal Alibi: how the "American Left" uses Palestine to Avoid their Reflection

The "American left" doesn't want to win, it can't afford to. It wants to feel righteous, condemning the zionists in Occupied Palestine from the safety of their stolen land, naming the Nakba while sleeping on annihilated indigneous nation's territory. It calls itself radical while refusing to ask a single question about the treaties broken beneath its own feet. The left has mastered the language of settler colonialism, as a weapon to point elsewhere, as sheer deflection for the crimes all settlers benefit from. It has never once turned that weapon on itself, not because it's part of a failed strategy, but by choice, and it's why it keeps losing. They, like almost all "Americans", refuse to see their own reflection in the mirror, because they refuse to look.

Ask yourself: when did the "left" last win an offensive battle? Not defensive positions like, stop a pipeline, delay an eviction, or win a temporary reprieve undone within a year. When did the left last seize something, take something back, force a reversal of a structure that had already won? Anything? The right wing start and win offensive battles, they seize courts, capture states, rewrite laws and consolidate power. The left reacts, justifies, argues, defends, explains. It mourns its strategic failure, while the right acts out its tactical offensive. This is why the left in "America" is no left, it's a knowing and willing facilitator of American Fascism, they're part of the facade, part of the lie, from Hasan Piker, to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to Bernie Sanders. None of these people are friends of the Palestinians. They're not paid to be, they can't afford to be, as it would show their complete hypocrisy more clearly to their audiences, and those viewers might start to ask uncomfortable questions about America's past, questions which they're stopped from asking as Empire fails to educate them about the crimes their ancestors committed.

None of these character campaign for things Palestinians ask for: material pressure by cutting weapons contracts, blocking arms shipments, using Leahy Laws, or supporting the International Criminal Court. None push for real divestment, or legal assistance and don't protect Palestinian voices. They don't try to break the siege, or follow Palestinian-led strategy. They don't suggest sabotaging, disrupting or blockading the American logistics or infrastructure networks that enable the zionist Genocide. They don't mention Palestinian resistance, life or futures. They are no allies, only self-interested grifters for American Empire.

This asymmetry of strategic posture between left and right is no accident, but the consequence of what I call the 'Temporal Alibi', which is the belief that settler colonialism is an event, not a structure. Settler colonialism, like that taking place in Palestine for 80 years now, isn't a past conquest confined to history. Ask the indigenous nations peoples that survived the First American Genocide, who have been confined to the fraction of what remains of their ancestral lands. It's an ongoing system of land possession, continued cultural erasure, indigenous absorption and memory-holing reality, that shifts forms, but never stops.

Patrick Wolfe was precise, it's a structure, "an ongoing logic of elimination." The elimination shifts modes from men on cavalry horses murdering innocent people on Navajo lands, to courtrooms where people illegally held hostage without charge are condemned to death in Tel Aviv. From slaughtering buffalo by driving thousands of them to their deaths off ravine edges in the now "folksy" Mid-West, to imprisoning Ahmad Manasra, a 12 year old child for throwing a stone towards an IOF zionist tank. The structure is still operating, spreading like a virus, but much of "the left" has stopped trying to even see it, nevermind acknowledge or dismantle it. They have settled for their own containment, sleeping on stolen land, condemning the exact same crimes in Palestine that they benefit from today in America. If any American reading this feels defensive, notice that feeling, that's the deflection rising, the defensiveness creeping upon you. It's the sound of the mirror being placed in front of you that you refuse to see.

"Which left?" The liberal left, for whom condemnation is a substitute for action. The academic left, for whom theory is a substitute for organising. The Democratic Socialists and electoral left, for whom lesser-evil voting is a substitute for independent power. The online left, for whom posting is a substitute for being there. And then there are the others. Indigenous-led land back campaigns, abolitionist formations, predominantly black mutual aid networks. They are already doing the work, shouldering the burden the rest fail to support. If you just thought "I'm on that second list", stop. Supporting isn't the same as being, and being isn't the same as leading. When did you last follow their lead into something that cost you anything?

What would it look like to treat the Black Hills not as a closed case, but as the open wound it is, infecting American society? What would it cost an American, standing on their stolen land? In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled in US v. Sioux Nation that the taking of the Black Hills was illegal, a "ripe and rank case of dishonourable dealing." The court awarded over $100m in compensation. The Sioux refused, didn't accept the money, they want their land back. The money sits in an account, accruing interest, now worth over a billion dollars, unclaimed for more than 40 years. The illegality isn't in dispute, the justice is, and the land remains illegally occupied. Why is this not a daily headline on the left? Why is the left outraged by a new pipeline, but not the original theft that makes the pipeline possible? Why can the left name the Nakba but not the Black Hills? Ask yourself.

"But that's complicated," "there are legal barriers," "practical barriers, political barriers." No. There's a billion dollars, a court ruling, and a refusal to accept anything other than the land that was stolen, land that's theirs, even as defined by settler laws. The rest are excuses people tell themselves so they can finish reading and make coffee. It wasn't considered complicated by European settlers to murder indigenous nations. Legal barriers were ignored, practical barriers were removed and political barriers were championed as "civilising", turning the mass annihilation of a people, a culture, a future into a positive in the warped minds of white supremacists. So if all those could be overcome, what we face today can be too, they just don't want to, because they like their privilege, their luxury, their life, at the expense of yours.

The First American Genocide, the greatest crime against humanity to have ever been perpetrated, is deemed old enough to have been aestheticised. The frontier has become a film genre, the plantation is prestige television, the Trail of Tears is a museum exhibit with good lighting, portrayed as a voluntary removal. As Aryeh Deri, Israel's Interior Minister said in 2024: "We need to encourage emigration from Gaza, anyone who thinks 'we will stay there', is wrong." Words that could have been said by white European settlers in the 1830s. That is precisely the language Europeans used to genocide the indigienous in North America.

The violence of the First American Genocide has been erased, reprocessed, repackaged and sold back to the population today as entertainment, as heritage, as the "exact price that will be remembered for generations" of civilisation. That was Benny Gantz speaking in 2021, paraphrasing Andrew Jackson's 'lessons taught to indigenous nations'. An indigenous American whose ancestors were slaughtered, whose land was stolen, whose family was destroyed, can watch a John Wayne film today and see their own genocide celebrated as heroism. The left doesn't ask how that feels, as it’s too busy watching the same films, enjoying the patriotic gaslighting that they claim to oppose today in Palestine. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's founding prime minister said, "The old will die and the young will forget." That's the Temporal Alibi in a sentence: the goal is never justice, just to be the ones who write the history.

The zionist Genocide can't yet be aestheticised in the same way. The bodies crushed under the rubble are still warm, the dead still have names, cameras are too close in time for people to look away. The left can see that structure, as it's still happening, it can't see the structure that has already won, which it operates from, because it's the winning that has made it invisible.

Ask yourself, what is the left's theory of victory? Not survival, not resistance, not moral witness, but victory? What would it mean for the left to actually win, to reverse the structure, to return the land, to enforce the treaties, to make the colonisers pay? The left doesn't have a theory of victory, as that would threaten their own existence and survival. It therefore creates a theory of mourning, a theory of righteousness, being correct while losing. It doesn't have a theory of winning, because to win would mean it has to look in the mirror and see reality for what it is. But what is that reality they refuse to see?

The right has a theory of victory: complete domination, and it's winning. The left takes part in this process, because it means it wins, it still exists and survives. The right has a strategy: seize every lever of power, rewrite every rule, break every constraint. The right has a timeline, not in decades, but in lifetimes. The right is playing a long game, the left is playing the wrong game, because to play it right, actually means losing their privilege. What would it take for the left to stop managing this self-serving defeat and start demanding existential return?

In 2024, Beinart published a video essay arguing pro-Palestine activism frightens Americans as it threatens not just the zionist entity's legitimacy, but America's. He quoted Mahmoud Mamdani: if Americans truly recognised Native American colonialism, it would destroy the American sense of self. He just named the analogy, he was right about that, because the entire American identify is built on a grotesque lie.

Beinart saw the structure, and then completely failed. In 2025, Beinart announced he would speak at Tel Aviv University. The "Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel" pleaded with him to cancel. They reminded him that Tel Aviv University, develops weapons systems used in the Gaza genocide, its venture capital firm invests in armed drone technology, its Institute for National Security Studies developed the Dahiya Doctrine, which calls for the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure as a deterrent. They told him the university offers scholarships to active duty IOF reservists who have served during the zionist Genocide. PACBI told Beinart that crossing the picket line whitewashes genocide. Palestinian scholars told him, don’t do this.

Beinart spoke anyway, because white man knows best.

Two days later, he wrote, "I made a serious mistake. I let my desire for that conversation override my solidarity with Palestinians." This was without any hint of irony. Then he went back to teaching at Colombia University New York, went back to the stolen Lenape land he lives on and works from, and did nothing. What did his apology cost him? A few days of bad tweets, a critical article or two, a temporary minor dent in his reputation. He apologised, the world moved on.

Now ask yourself: what would it cost Beinart to apply the same framework to the land where he lives? He teaches at CUNY, he lives on Lenape land: has he apologised for that, or called for the return of the Black Hills? Has he asked whether his salary, paid by a state that stole the land and never returned it, is legitimate? His apology was for Tel Aviv. His silence is Brooklyn.

Why is one apology possible and the other unimaginable? We’re told the American Empire's structure is old enough to be irreversible, but it isn't. It's easy to forget about, for him, to eulogise in history and on film reels, for some. It has been aestheticised into normalcy by settlers, including by hypocrites like Peter. To act on it would cost Beinart his job, his home, his identity, his place in the world, his ego. To act on zionist occupation of Palestine costs him nothing he isn't willing to lose. In the words of Knesset member, Ariel Kallner: "the only goal of the war is to erase Gaza, level all of Gaza, every street, every house, every school, every mosque, every hospital, leave nothing." Because General William Tecumseh Sherman and his ilk took a "scorched earth" policy in places like Georgia, New York and elsewhere, Beinart can forget he benefits from the settler colonialism he decries today.

Beinart isn't just a hypocrite, he represents a symptom of the American Disease. He's what the Temporal Alibi looks like in a single lifeform: a person who can see the structure, name it, teach it, write about it, and still live inside it without ever asking the one question: am I any different?

What will the world look like in 150 years? If the zionist project succeeds, if the land is fully stolen, the population fully annihilated, the resistance fully crushed, what will people be saying and thinking about it all? The zionists of 2180 won't see themselves as we see them now, and most likely, neither will our ancestors. They will see themselves as Americans see themselves today. They will make Hollywood films from the 51st State's film industry in Haifa about brave zionist pioneers rode horses through Gaza, chasing Hamas fighters dressed as cartoon villains, murdering children in the name of civilisation, calling them "savages."

The genocide will be aestheticised. The rubble will be a fun museum exhibit for children to play on, dressed up like zionist cowboys and Palestinian Indians, the dead will be a number in a footnote, names unknown, a people erased and forgotten. The zionist coloniser will be the hero cowboys Americans pretend they are today. When Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second zionist president said: "We must erase any trace of their existence and any memory of them", this will be eulogised by zionists like Americans still talk about Manifest Destiny today and the complete erasure of indigenous peoples from the landscape. Ben-Zvi was talking about the lessons he'd learned from how the Europeans colonised the Americas, not coming up with unique thought.

An indigenous American today can watch a Clint Eastwood film and see their own ancestors cast as savage obstacles to progress, something to be exterminated like rats. As General Philip Sheridan said: "The only good Indian is a dead Indian", and as zionist terrorist "soldiers" chanted in 2024, "We came to erase the children of Gaza", both are admitting elimination is a virtue. That's how the American left will feel in 150 years, they will watch the Oscar-winning epics about the brave zionists who tamed the savage Gazans. They will eulogise about how it was probably necessary for progress too, how it was bad, but can't be undone, settlers living on stolen land in Occupied Palestine will make the same excuses Americans make today for why they can't do anything about the past. Beinart's grandson will still be nepotistically grifting his grandfather's contradictory hypocrisy. The left will do nothing, because by then, the structure will be normalised, and the left will have no theory of victory, only a theory of mourning, still. Neutered.

Moshe Dayan, after the 1967 war, gave a eulogy for a fallen soldier that revealed the core of the settler's self-understanding, "We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and the cannon's mouth, we will not be able to plant a tree or build a house." An American pioneer in the 1850s could have said the same words. John Wayne's characters lived these words. We all know about or have watched these words as plot lines, and that's what will happen, because we are letting it.

It has already happened, in America, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Canary Islands and they are trying it again in Palestine. Until the original settler sin is addressed, the American left has no strategic victory to win, it will just replicate partaking in a system designed to ensure the right does. It is time people woke up, saw the mirror of the American Fascist Empire, and finally looked into it to see the reflection of what comes back.

Not because they support zionists necessarily, but because they can't admit or remedy the same process that has already been completed on the land where they stand. Because they can call out the Nakba, while celebrating Thanksgiving, a celebration of the start of a genocide. They can criticise zionist's murdering innocent people in Gaza, while going as tourists to the Black Hills to see "Mount Rushmore", a ancient sacred mountain to the Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho peoples, now desecrated and defaced carved with the faces of genocide leaders of the past. Because they can condemn the zionist settler, but can't admit they are one. zionist European immigrant Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich said in 2024: "there is no such thing as a Palestinian people." That's what American President Andrew Johnson said in 1866, that "the so-called Indians have no rights to the land whatsoever".

The left that wants to win refuses the Temporal Alibi, not only for Palestine, but for itself. Defensive battles keep people busy: offensive battles end things. It shouldn't be 'stop the pipeline', but 'return the land the pipeline is on so the owners decide.' Not 'delay the eviction', but 'return the land the eviction clears for the owners to adjudicate.' Not 'mourn the dead', but 'demand the living be given back what was stolen.' This is generational justice, that the left and right in America refuse to see, but the mirror is still in front of them, they're just refusing to even see it. The left that wants to win tells a different story, not one about privilege, complicity and performative guilt, but a story about theft and return, debt and repayment. This story includes a future for everyone except the ruling class, a future where the descendants of the colonised aren't perpetual victims, but actual architects as allies of the return.

Ask yourself, what will be said about you in 150 years? Will you be the one who normalised settler colonialism as a settler, who watched Gaza burn, while watching the films about Gaza burning, who felt sad and did nothing? Or will you be the one who refused, who broke with this false alibi, one that a lot of other people already know is a lie, because they've seen the mirror and looked into it? The Temporal Alibi isn't a law of nature, but a choice to see and do nothing, a choice to condemn and stay home, to be right and lose. What choices are you making? Not tomorrow, today, right now, on the land where you stand?

The mirror is there. The question is whether you will look into it. Without consciousness, we can't take collective action together, as one, to overcome Empire, which is in all of our interests. The first step in the revolution is unlearning and the confrontation, with ourselves, with our colonised minds. Stop refusing to look at the mirror in front of you, it is your first key to liberation. As James Baldwin wrote in 1953, "people who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction." It's about time to look into the mirror.