SEPTEMBER 5, 2025 | OPINION | By Fiona Frankel
Arching over I-80 in San Francisco, Calif., an enormous hot pink billboard presents a bold message: “Protesting Israel but silent on Congo? Makes you wonder why.” In the corner of the sign, the company: JewBelong.
The sign’s position is clear, promoting the exhausted Zionist talking point that criticism of Israel is merely a guise for the widespread promotion of antisemitism. Still, on the surface, the argument has gained traction. The coverage of the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government has indeed been far more extensive in the United States than that of similar crises, though reporting on the former remains suppressed as well. Indeed, the very cell phones on which we consume horrifying images of mass starvation in the Gaza Strip are made of materials inhumanely and often forcibly mined within the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
To be clear, JewBelong and similar pro-Israel organizations are concerned with the interests of no country besides Israel —and, perhaps, the United States, as it continues to bankroll this genocide. This very billboard is a virtual admission of the Israeli government’s culpability in illegal, genocidal practices comparable to those of the Congo toward its own people. Still, this message reflects the widespread pro-Israel lobby, eager to characterize any governmental critique as anti-Jewish sentiment.
It is true that as Palestinian children are starving to death by Israeli blockades, doctors are being stripped of baby formula before they enter the region and desperate refugees are being gunned down at aid sites, there are also other crises occurring globally. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, regional violence has displaced roughly nine million people, and the nation’s structural dependence on cobalt mining has led to hundreds of thousands of people working in subhuman, exploitative conditions, as well as widespread environmental degradation. In Sudan, 30.4 million people—more than half of the population—are in need of humanitarian support, as violence has continued to escalate over the past two years between the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces over control of the nation.
But JewBelong, emblematic of this tired argument, is simply weaponizing these crises to reinforce its own Zionist argument. There is no real concern for exploited Congolese workers or Sudanese refugees, nor any tangible action taken by the pro-Israel lobby. Realistically, Zionists cannot afford to argue for the liberation of these regions while simultaneously perpetrating and supporting the ethnic cleansing of two million Palestinians.
Those who are supporting the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan are overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian advocates, as these three crises stem from an anticolonial perspective that often includes regions such as Tigray, Puerto Rico, Haiti and Hawaii that have been plagued by ethnic cleansing at the hands of colonizing actors. In the anti-Zionist fight against a nation whose biggest ally is undoubtedly the United States, this intersectional advocacy is perhaps most inconvenient and yet most prevalent. Pro-Palestinian advocacy has been the constant target of violent counterprotests, doxxing, government scrutiny, deportation, incarceration and a host of punitive measures within American institutions. Still, this repression has not stymied the inclusivity of anti-Zionist activism, especially given the overlap in imperialist forces between crises.
Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler made his fortune by exploiting Congolese resources, and in turn used this wealth to finance a luxury property and private jet on illegal Israeli settlements. Lev Leviev, another Israeli businessman with an estimated net worth of over one billion dollars, is the former chairman of Africa Israel Investments, whom UNICEF cut ties with following the investment of his wealth in the construction of Jewish-only homes in the West Bank. Israeli surveillance technology used by the Mossad is built of materials inhumanely mined in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are in turn used to enforce apartheid and exterminate Palestinians from their homes. The systemic mass exploitation of and subsequent devastation inflicted upon regions of interest benefits imperialist forces, as is seen between the Congo and Palestine.
JewBelong’s billboard is provocative yet unexceptional, as the organization has a history of promoting gaudy one-liners with little nuance and lacking factual basis. During Pride month in 2024, eight months after Israel began its siege on the Gaza Strip, JewBelong displayed a similar billboard commending Israel on its Pride parade and asking the blunt question: “Where was Gaza’s parade?” Netanyahu echoed this sentiment less than a month later, likening the “Gays for Gaza” slogan to “chickens for KFC.” These eye-catching soundbites are representative of reaching Zionist arguments: in this case, a critique of queer support for Palestine, as if gay Palestinians are begging for the right to fly the rainbow flag rather than escape from Israeli carpet bombing altogether. But they are also deeply flawed, insensitive, and deserving of discussions that Zionist organizations such as JewBelong are not eager to have.
The intersectionality between liberation movements is not a given, and global focus on a particularly pressing issue in a given moment is natural. However, when national attention flocks to certain natural disasters during their occurrence, this does not mean that there is a blunt ignorance toward every other human rights issue facing the country. As was tiredly repeated in 2020, Black Lives Matter does not mean white lives do not. The #MeToo movement was not an attack on men but rather a focus on sexual assault survivors, who were most often women. It is time for the Zionist movement to come to terms with the failures of ‘whataboutism’ when it comes to pro-Israel advocacy. People are protesting Israel because it inflicts mass starvation on innocent Palestinians, a cause often intertwined with the Congo and similar liberation movements, but perfectly sound on its own as well.