It Could Happen Here What’s Happened to the Israeli Left
Mar 2, 2026
Danielle Cantor, mutual aid organizer and co-founder of Culture of Solidarity, draws on community food security and political education work across Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories. She discusses mutual aid’s rise from COVID relief, how relief work exposed structural abandonment, shifts in Israeli politics after October 7, protective presence in the West Bank, and the personal costs of dissent.
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Mutual Aid Began As Food Rescue During COVID
- Danielle Cantor describes Culture of Solidarity forming during COVID-19 to rescue restaurant and hotel food and redistribute it to vulnerable communities.
- The group became a collective in March 2020, running a community center and food programs funded entirely by the community with no salaries to avoid institutionalizing aid.
Mutual Aid Revealed Structural Causes Not Individual Failure
- Mutual aid work revealed structural causes of poverty and pushed the collective to learn about root causes rather than just provide charity.
- They chose to stay unfunded by NGOs and avoid salaries to prevent creating a dependency-preserving industry.
October 7th Hardened Identities And Deepened Polarization
- Post-October 7th polarized Israeli society and made discussions about occupation more fraught, increasing defensive identity reactions.
- Danielle says the violence and scale of death exposed contradictions and hardened divides, making education work harder but more urgent.