If you are surprised #BlackLivesMatter joined war on Israel, you haven’t been paying attention
No longer can Jewish Community groups like the ADL claim they are unaware.
For years we have been documenting the efforts by anti-Israel activists to stoke racial hatred of Israel through the concept of “intersectionality” – the notion that all revolutionary struggles, particularly against racism, are connected.
The almost exclusive focus, however, is Israel. Hence, Israel is falsely blamed for local police shootings of blacks in the U.S. based upon false and misleading claims I debunked in my post, Exposed: Years-long effort to blame Israel for U.S. police shootings of blacks.
The movement to connect Ferguson-to-Palestine launched after the Michael Brown shooting, and has been a singular focus of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists ever since.
Anti-Israel activists played an active role in stoking violence in Ferguson, as I documented in Intifada Missouri – Anti-Israel activists may push Ferguson over the edge and Anti-Israel activist still stoking fires in #Ferguson.
A good history also is in How The Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Movements Converged.
No other country except Israel is used as pervasively as the connector for intersectionality. It’s a seedy tactic meant to exploit domestic U.S. racial tensions having nothing to do with Israel, and to turn those tensions into racial hatred of the supposedly “white” Israel. Underlying it all are anti-Semitic stereotypes of omnipresent Jewish manipulation, such as those spread by Oberlin College professor Joy Karega.
There have been successes at the campus level, such as at Oberlin, of inserting anti-Israel language into list of Demands from Black Lives Matter protesters.
Many of the leading Black Lives Matters leaders are also anti-Israel activists. They receive encouragement and support from people like Marc Lamont Hill for linking Israel to problems of black in the U.S.:
So, with that said, it’s no real surprise that anti-Israel activist managed to insert anti-Israel language into the newly released Black Lives Matter platform statement, in the Invest-Divest section which accuses Israel of genocide and being an apartheid state (emphasis added):
In addition, approximately 3 billion dollars in US aid is allocated to Israel, a state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military occupation of Palestine for decades….
The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded apartheid wall.
These accusations have been debunked so many times — yet Black Lives Matter adopts the propaganda talking points of the anti-Israel left and Islamists.
The reaction has been swift from liberal Jewish groups which naively didn’t understand what was happening behind the scenes to create a race war against the Jews under the guise of anti-Zionism.
The Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston issued a statement which reads in part:
We are deeply dismayed by elements of this platform, specifically the co-opting and manipulation of a movement addressing concerns about racial disparities in criminal justice in the United States in order to advance a biased and false narrative about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. To conflate the experiences of African-Americans and Palestinians oversimplifies complex matters and advances false equivalencies that diminish the unique nature of each.
JCRC cannot and will not align ourselves with organizations that falsely and maliciously assert that Israel is committing “genocide.” We denounce an agenda to wage economic and cultural warfare against Israelis, including efforts to mobilize against state and local efforts that reject the “BDS” movement. We reject participation in any coalition that seeks to isolate and demonize Israel singularly amongst the nations of the world.
As we dissociate ourselves from the Black Lives Matter platform and those BLM organizations that embrace it, we recommit ourselves unequivocally to the pursuit of justice for all Americans, and to working together with our friends and neighbors in the African-American community, whose experience of the criminal justice system is, far too often, determined by race….
The Forward collects several similar statements, including this one:
For some Jews of color, particularly African American Jews, who had embraced the popular movement, the language of the new platform was especially troubling.
“It broke my heart,” said Stacey Aviva Flint, a student at Chicago’s Spertus Institute who is African American and Jewish and writes on parallels between black and Jewish nationalist movements.
“I understand what Zionism was about when it first started. You had a group of people who were seeking self determination. And self determination was also something that African Americans desperately needed and wanted,” said Flint.
“[In past months], I really thought, ‘a movement is starting, I want to support this, as African Americans are being targeted by the police,’” Flint said.
“This dashed my hopes.”
Flint said that calling Israel an apartheid state would only “muddy” Black Lives Matter’s message. “Now people don’t see Black Lives Matter as a legitimate platform.”
The Anti-Defamation League has previously embraced Black Lives Matter, including providing lesson plans for use in schools [Update 8-5-2016 – ADL took down the lesson plan, but *someone* had already saved it to Wayback Machine]:
The ADL tonight issued a statement and tweets rejecting the anti-Israel platform:
We reject the #BlackLivesMatter Platform's criticism of the US & Israel as “complicit in genocide." It’s repellant and inaccurate.
— ADL (@ADL) August 4, 2016
We're ready to work with all who are prepared to undertake this type of effort.
Our full statement: pic.twitter.com/iBiuDjMD62
— ADL (@ADL) August 4, 2016
#BLM Platform mischaracterizes #Israel, supports #BDS-alienates Jewish allies & bears little resemblance to reality https://t.co/CXGlgXUktw
— ADL (@ADL) August 4, 2016
So what to make of all this?
My big takeaway from this doesn’t focus so much on the anti-Israel activists. They are nasty, hateful, and in many cases bigoted, people. I expect no less from them than to abuse the American civil rights movement by hijacking it for their own purposes without regard to the damage they do the movement.
Israel delegitimizers are kleptomaniacs, consistently appropriating the grievances of others. https://t.co/3C9k9nc3JU
— Bella Center (@MidEstParallelU) August 3, 2016
My bigger ire is directed at the groups who didn’t understand the nature of the Black Lives Matter movement and didn’t have the guts or honesty to stand up to the lies about the Trayvon Martin and Michel Brown false racial narratives. Those same groups turned a blind eye towards well-documented evidence of infiltration and hijacking by the worst anti-Israel activists.
So, consider this a positive wake up call. No longer can Jewish Community groups like the ADL claim they are unaware. You now know what we’ve known for years — the issue is what you are going to do about it.
[Featured Image: Omar Barghouti, Co-Founder of BDS Movement]
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Comments
The liberal Jews also missed the racism, sexism, etc. of class diversity schemes.
They missed the anti-native elements in the left-wing human and civil rights movements.
They probably support the selective exclusion of “=”.
They overlooked the sexism in feminism or female chauvinism.
They don’t appreciate the “final solution” nature of abortion rites or that Planned Parenthood et al are channeling Mengele (i.e. clinical cannibalism).
They probably missed that the Pro-Choice religion that they helped establish is founded on the doctrine of selective and opportunistic principles.
First, they came for the conservative Jews… But, they were the “good” Jews.
Thank you for your voice professor, and your uncovering these seedy tactics. As George Orwell wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”
I guess it’s a revolt against the revolution, eh? 🙂
No surprise.
Just Obama/Jarrett’s Brownshirts doing what they’re told.
My life matters. Your life matters. All lives matter. Right?
Well, except for the babies, selectively, when they are determined to be inconvenient or unwanted, or deemed more valuable as spare parts by Planned Parenthood et al. The Pro-Choice Church’s baby trials in abortion chambers have sacrificed an extraordinary number of lives for democratic leverage, monetary schemes, and exotic cars.
Individual dignity matters.
Intrinsic value matters.
Natural imperatives matter.
The goal of civilized people is to reconcile moral and natural imperatives. The resolution may be found in Judaism. It is not found in the “secular” religion pulled from the twilight zone.
Yeah, the “reform” Jews, the “progressive” Jews, the “liberal” Jews are waking up, if ever so slowly. They’re rediscovering that Judaism is not the boogeyman spun by left-wing narratives. That their religious/moral philosophy is both equitable and tolerant. They don’t need to adopt a “secular” religion, least of all Pro-Choice ethics, morality, and science, in order to reconcile moral and natural imperatives.
Class diversity, easy. Apartheid, of course. Perhaps a little genocide, too.
The effort to pass Prohibition in this country succeeded because the organizations behind the movement were focused on the single issue. American from many walks of life and of many political and religious persuasions joined together under a common banner. Organizations like GOA, 2nd Amendment Foundation, and the NRA have the success they have because of their single-issue focus that permits disparate elements to join forces towards goals they have in common.
OTOH, organizations like the TEA Party, that started with a single-issue agenda and then turned its attention to other matters, tend to have less success (in any of their pursuits) for lack of focus and for the alienation of potential supporters by adopting other causes. BLM is undermining its own potential for any kind of “success” (however they may measure that and however likely or unlikely it may be) by similarly dissipating their focus and alienating potential allies.
Intersectionality, used to single out Israel, is another form of antisemitism, and deserves to be labeled as such.
Maybe the idea itself is antisemitic, since it is disproportionately used to foment bad feelings against Jewish Israel.
“Intersectionality is a conspiracy theory that was specifically devised as an excuse to blame the Jews for everything. It has always been BS.
The BLM movement is the confluence of Marxism and racism.
The boys at the Frankfurt School are smiling. They’ve succeeded in fracturing the American people so that there can me a Marxist “struggle”.
What will they do about it? The same as they’ve always done: put Jewish interests a distant second to “progressive” interests, which currently include BLM. They can no longer be official members of BLM, so they’ll be the “loyal opposition”, supporting it from the outside. They’ll condemn its antisemitism but support all its other demands, so why should it care? It’ll be like after Crown Heights; after the ADL’s shocked “epiphany” then, after its shocked realization that black antisemitism is real, did it change even one substantive policy? Did it do anything different than it had done before? No. This will be the same again.
BLM are a bunch of cowardly thugs and anarchists.
Same with the New Black Panthers.
They have no interest in bettering this country, only extorting money for their own gain.
From the department of schadenfreude …
The new black panther’s leader, Ali Muhammad was just robbed at gunpoint and called the police for help… lol.
The population of Gaza and the West Bank increased by 106% from 1990 to 2008, from 1.9 to 3.9 million and the UN estimates that in 2010, its population was half-a-million higher, at 4.4. million. Some genocide. Eichmann would have been fired had he put up these numbers.
Some genocide. Eichmann would have been fired AT…
EXCELLENT point!
Here is my proposal for a revolutionary struggle:
Resist Socialist Oppression!