For Palestinians, a lack of leverage has always accompanied their century-long struggle for self-determination. Without a capacity to disrupt the Israeli status quo — and operating against a highly resilient Israel that is immune to exogenous shocks while deeply integrated into American imperial hegemony — Palestinians have limited resources to draw on. Because of this, generations of international supporters have rallied for the cause. Palestine attracted international solidarity in the twentieth century at a level surpassed only by the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. Palestinians mobilized international volunteers in their ongoing struggle at levels exceeding what the Algerians, Vietnamese, and South Africans received in their own victorious campaigns.

Now operating on a different terrain, twenty-first-century Palestine solidarity is tasked with an even more audacious mission: mobilizing the masses in a neoliberal world rather than relying on the deterrence and vanguardism of a now-bygone bipolar world. The same global shifts that have set the stage for a Palestinian genocide are also what make the United States the prime site of international solidarity with Palestine at the moment its people need it most.