Anti-Israel activists have been attempting to hijack the Ferguson, Eric Garner and #BlackLivesMatter protests since early August, just after Michael Brown was killed.
I documented the infiltration and hijacking in a series of posts and an Op-Ed in The NY Post:
This is all part of a larger effort, particularly on U.S. campuses, to use “intersectional” theory to tie domestic race issues into Palestinian complaints about Israel, among other ways, through exaggeration and in some cases fabrication of alleged Israeli training of U.S. police. That way, any use of excessive force by a U.S. policeman is cause for anti-Israel activists to blame Israel and try to stoke hatred of Israel in domestic communities.
It’s a sick tactic, but it is one deeply ingrained in the anti-Israel movement in the U.S., which has sought to foment and exploit racial tensions long before Ferguson.
One of the groups spearheading the attempt to co-opt the #BlackLivesMatter movement is Dream Defenders, which carries a Tides Foundation logo on its website. The Tides Foundation is a major funder of left-wing activist groups, including groups exploiting the Ferguson riots and conflict.
I’ll have more on its efforts in the future, but for now it’s worth focusing on a trip the group organized to tie Ferguson into the Palestinian dispute. The #DDPalestine hashtag is used for the event.
The group produced a video (embedded at bottom of post) of a “flash mob” it organized in Nazareth in Israel (which they referred to as being in “Palestine”):
On a historic trip to Palestine, freedom fighters from Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, New York, Ferguson, and Atlanta were able to witness firsthand the effects of Israeli apartheid and occupation, and to learn from the people who are actively resisting on the front lines.In Nazareth, the delegates decided to do a solidarity demonstration as a call for support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign that was called for by Palestinian civil society in 2005.This demonstration was coordinated by Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter, and features “Ella’s Song” by Sweet Honey in the Rock, sung by Charlene Carruthers, National Director of the Black Youth Project 100 and Dream Defenders’ Executive Director Phillip Agnew; poet, artist, and New York Justice League member, Aja Monet; rapper and Ferguson/Hands Up United organizer Tef Poe, and Ferguson/ Hands Up United organizer, Tara Thompson. Dream Defenders Ciara Taylor, Steven Pargett, Sherika Shaw, and Ahmad Abuznaid, journalist Marc Lamont Hill, New York Justice League organizers Cherrell Brown and Carmen Perez, and Maytha Alhassen, a University of Southern California Doctoral Candidate, are seen preforming the debke, a traditional Palestinian folk dance….
It wasn’t much of a flash mob — more like a dozen or so U.S. activists forming a circle and giving speeches as a very few onlookers watched.
(via Dream Defenders Video)
Nonetheless, the flash mob and the trip are being trumpeted on anti-Israel websites like Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada as a big breakthrough in the struggle to connect domestic racial tensions to the Palestinians struggle to destroy Israel. The group met with, among others, Omar Barghouti, a founder of the international anti-Israel boycott movement.
It’s a good example of how the anti-Israel propaganda machine works: Take a small gathering of activists, a professional videographer, and make a non-event seem like a huge victory over Israel.
The trip also was written up in Ebony Magazine by recently graduated Stanford University student and Students for Justice in Palestine activist Kristian Davis Baily, who has been arguing the case for Why Black People Must Stand With Palestine.
Among the attendees on the trip was Marc Lamont Hill, TV commentator and professor. His Instagram account has photos from the trip.
I didn’t know a lot about the specifics of Hill’s politics on Israel, though I knew he was hostile to Israel over the summer Gaza conflict.
I didn’t realize how far gone he was. Lamont Hill’s appearance in the Dream Defenders video, which he has tweeted , tells me he has completely ingested the anti-Israel Kool-Aid:
We came here to Palestine to stand in love and revolutionary struggle with our brothers and sistersWe come to a land that has been stolen by greed and destroyed by hateWe come here and we learn laws that have been co-signed in ink but written in the blood of the innocent and we stand next to people who continue to courageously struggle and resist the occupationPeople continue to dream and fight for freedomFrom Ferguson to Palestine the struggle for freedom continues
Here is the full video:
Solidarity Demonstration in Nazareth : Ferguson to Palestine from Dream Defenders on Vimeo.
UPDATE: This happened:
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