DNC in Coalitions with Pro-Terror Palestinian Parties: Palestinian Popular Struggle Front

DNC and Affiliates in Coalitions with Pro-Terror Palestinian Parties (full series)
NDI/CAP | Fatah | Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
SI Adopts Terror Advocates’ Views and Issues
PA Accepts Terror Advocates’ Framing

Palestinian Popular Struggle Front

PPSF is a Palestinian political party and a member of SI with the status of “consultative party.” Two groups have the name PPSF. The one referenced here is based in the Palestinian Territories and led by Ahmed Majdalani, who is also a top PLO official. He has held several senior positions in the Palestinian Authority.

The group does not appear on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations and does not appear to have taken credit for any terrorist attack in recent history.

However, PPSF has committed terrorism against Western targets and still incites terrorism. PPSF has relations with terrorist groups and states that it provides undescribed contributions to their activities.

PPSF boasts of its record of violence on its website and provides a list of its “martyrs” from 1968 to 1986.

A July 2022 article on its website brags about PPSF being “one of the first of these [violent Palestinian] factions to hijack planes in order to draw the world’s attention to the issue of our people.” This refers to its July 1970 hijacking of a Greek airliner and holding of 49 passengers and six crew members hostage. PPSF demanded that Greece release seven Palestinian terrorists, including two PPSF members who had thrown grenades at the Israeli airline El Al’s offices in Athens in November 1969. That attack killed a two-year-old boy and injured 14 others. Greece complied with their demands, and the hostages were freed.

PPSF is politically aligned with Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, but it endorsed the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7. It applauded “the resistance to the occupation in the heart of its settlements and its usurps on the Gaza border”—a reference to the massacring, torturing, injuring, and kidnapping of civilians inside Israel proper.

It also met with leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist group immediately after the October 7 invasion started. The PPSF said the two groups were planning how to jointly handle the aftermath of the “military operation of the Palestinian resistance on the outskirts of the Gaza Strip.” PPSF’s website referred to the murdered Israeli civilians as “settlers,” adopting the semantics of those who try to justify targeting noncombatants.

PPSF’s article also said PPSF is allied with the Axis of Resistance, which consists of Iran, Syria, Hamas and other Iran-backed Palestinian terrorists, Hezbollah, Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq, and the Houthi terrorists in Yemen.

Majdalani, acting simultaneously as PPSF secretary-general and a senior PLO official, has vowed to preserve the Palestinian Authority’s salaries to imprisoned terrorists and the families of killed terrorists.

PPSF presents a moderate version of itself that purports to be left-wing and democratic. It criticizes both secularism and Islamism and offers its ideology as a fusion of both called “faithful secularism.” It’s better described as communism with an Islamist flavor.

PPSF called on every world leader to “follow the example” of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and explained that it considers the Chinese Communist Party to be its “comrades” in December 2023. In July 2022, PPSF heaped praise upon China for its implementation of Marxist-Leninism and celebrated the influence of Comrade Mao Zedong and Comrade Deng Xiaoping.

The bio on its website for PPSF’s original leader, Samir Ghosheh, chronicles his achievements. It particulary boasts that he established close ties between PPSF and the Soviet Union, Cuba, Vietnam, Bulgaria, and Poland (when the latter two were part of the East Bloc). Today, PPSF is pro-Russia and sides with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against Ukraine.

How DNC Groups and Global Left-Wing Coalitions Violate Their Own Standards

The five left-wing organizations—the Democratic Party, National Democratic Institute, Center for American Progress, Progressive Alliance, and Socialist International—appear to be violating their own published principles and regulations. There appears to have been no move inside either of the two international coalitions to expel any of the three pro-terrorism parties.

The DNC is in clear violation of its official party platform by being a co-member of PA while it has Fatah and PNI as members. Fatah and PNI officials are on the PA board, and the PNI secretary-general apparently serves in an unspecified role in the PA. The DNC further violates its own standards by failing to complain to the PA’s leadership about the inclusion of Fatah and PNI in the coalition and its board. This stands in stark contrast to the current DNC platform states:

We will give hate no safe harbor. We will never amplify or legitimize the voices of racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim bigotry, or white supremacy.

We will stand up to the forces of authoritarianism, not aid and abet their rise, and we will speak and act with clarity and purpose on behalf of human rights wherever they are under threat.

As for NDI, its stated mission is to “work in partnership around the world to strengthen and safeguard democratic institutions, processes, norms and values to secure a better quality of life for all.” Its stated values include promoting fair elections, the inclusion of diverse voices, equity, pluralism, civic participation that allows for the exercising of political and civil rights, and the rule of law consistent with human rights.

None of that is compatible with being officially associated with two coalitions that include Fatah, PNI, and PPSF.

The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is an authoritarian regime that hasn’t even had a presidential election since 2005. PPSF idolizes communism and the Chinese dictatorship and is on the opposite side of NDI regarding the Russia-Ukraine War. PNI praises the Marxist-Leninist PFLP terrorist group. What’s democratic about any of that?

CAP’s stated mission is focused narrowly on the U.S., but its stated values include a progressive foreign policy that “promote[s[ peace and shared global prosperity.” The proclaimed goal of its National Security and International Policy Department is “advancing progressive national security policies that are grounded in respect for democratic values: accountability, rule of law, and human rights.”

None of those values and goals are compatible with being a recognized “associated partner” of a coalition that includes Fatah and PNI as members and has their officials on its board.

PA’s charta, agenda and guiding principles state that it is “committed to democracy and its institutions” and “will strongly oppose any attempts to curb democratic rights.” It states it will work to advance human rights, social cohesion and social justice, tolerance and diversity, sexual equality, LGBT rights, a free press, and so on.

Fatah and PNI are clearly in breach of those standards.

What’s especially hypocritical about their inclusion is that the PA was formed largely as a response to SI’s inclusion of parties who violate their declared principles, such as ones that are undemocratic. The turmoil resulted in 59 parties leaving SI between 2013 and 2022. More members belong to both coalitions.

PA’s published guiding principles state that members who are guilty of “serious infringements of the principles and guidelines of the Progressive Alliance” can be suspended or excluded by a two-thirds majority vote of the board.

Why hasn’t PA done this, and why hasn’t the DNC used its influence as a member to push for it?

As for the SI coalition, its statutes, ethical charter and declaration of principles commit it to advancing democratic socialism and the laundry list of expected values like free elections, human rights, freedom, social justice, pluralistic democracy, gender and sexual equality, political rights, social rights and peace, and dialogue and understanding between peoples.

It is also obliged:

• “To fight against all ultra nationalist, fundamentalist, xenophobic and racist trends and to refrain from all forms of political alliance or co-operation, at any level, with any political party inciting or trying to inflame prejudices, ethnic or racial hatred” (emphasis added).
• “To reject and resolutely oppose any drift to authoritarianism as well as any political system which allows or practices the violation of human rights to conquer or impose its power (political assassination, torture, arbitrary detention, press censorship, banning or repression of peaceful demonstrations, etc.).”

It also rejects communism (which is basically a synonym for Marxist-Leninism) and states that “freedom from arbitrary and dictatorial government is essential.”

As mentioned, the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority is a dictatorship that hasn’t had a presidential election since 2005. PPSF is dedicated to communism and China’s dictatorship and is on the opposite side of SI regarding the Russia-Ukraine War. PNI exalts and befriends Marxist-Leninist terrorists. And all three have honored the genocidal, anti-Semitic and theocratic Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists who carried out the October 7 barbarism.

SI’s ethical charter not only prohibits such groups from being members, but it obliges SI to actively “fight,” “reject,” and “resolutely oppose” them.

SI has an ethics committee tasked with “monitoring the respect of the present code of conduct by all the member parties and it is empowered to formulate recommendations or even proposals of sanctions.”

It has kicked members out before.

Most recently, it ended the membership of A Just Russia-Patriots for the Truth because of its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. PPSF also sides with Russia against Ukraine but remains a member.

In 2011, SI suspended the membership of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) of Bosnia and Herzegovina because of its radical “nationalism and extremism.” It then expelled SNSD at its annual conference in 2012.

At that very same meeting where it suspended SNSD, SI astoundingly decided to upgrade the Fatah to full-member status and promote PNI to the status of a consultative member.

In January of that same year, SI responded to the eruption of the Arab Spring by throwing out the Tunisian dictator’s Constitutional Democratic Assembly party. SI vaguely said the decision was made due to “extraordinary circumstances” and because it “reflects the values and principles which define our movement and the position of the [Socialist] International on developments in that country.”

SI also removed Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party due to its authoritarianism and because its “use of violence, with scores dead and injured, is totally incompatible with the policies and principles of any social democratic party anywhere in the world.”

All three Palestinian SI members either have a history of violence or promoting violence.

Just like Mubarak’s regime and party, Fatah runs the Palestinian Authority as a dictatorship, violently suppresses protests, prosecutes online dissent, bans pro-LGBT activity, and allegedly tortures political prisoners. A key example is how a prominent activist who criticized Fatah and the Palestinian Authority for being undemocratic and corrupt was imprisoned in 2021. He died shortly thereafter, most likely from having been beaten to death.

Why is it that SI’s ethics committee responded to the violations by A Just Russia-Patriots for Truth, SNSD in Bosnia and the ruling parties of Tunisia and Egypt but not to the similar violations committed by Fatah, PNI and PPSF?

PPSF Boasts of Ability to Rally Global Left

The pro-terrorism Palestinian parties have much to appreciate from being members of the two international left-wing coalitions.

PPSF recognized the value of the left-wing for its efforts in a July 2022 article in which it boasted of its ability to rally the “global progressive movement.” It singled out its relationship with the Chinese Communist Party as particularly important.

PPSF explained that it has “distinguished relations” with “a large number of communist, leftist, democratic, and nationalist parties in the Arab world and with the socialist forces and parties in the world through the Socialist International and the Alliance.”

It is unclear what “the Alliance” is referring to, but it’s probably the PA. PPSF isn’t a member of the PA coalition, but Fatah is. PPSF often speaks as if it and Fatah are a single entity because they are unified under the PLO umbrella. It would likely view any successful exertion of influence on PA by Fatah as its own accomplishment.

A few days after the Hamas-led October 7 attacks, PPSF called upon “Arab progressive forces and parties” and worldwide progressive, communist, socialist and leftist parties to politically rally against Israel while “emphasizing the right[s] of our Palestinian people and the resistance movement.” It specifically asked them to assist the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority in “confronting the occupation.”

PPSF is undoubtedly trying to exploit its membership in SI and its indirect influence on PA via Fatah.

In the next installment, while SI condemned the October 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, it has otherwise parroted the demands of Palestinian extremists.