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From Ferguson to Gaza: Palestinian and black activists have forged a bond
New York Times
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One hot Saturday in
August 2014, Sandra Tamari scrolled through social media and learned that a
Black teenager named Michael Brown had been fatally shot by a police officer in
nearby Ferguson, Missouri. Her heart “just sank,” she recalled, when she learned
that Brown’s mother had stood on the other side of the police tape while her
son’s body had been lying in the street for hours.اضافة اعلان
Tamari, who is Palestinian-American and lives just outside St. Louis, had spent the previous weeks mourning the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy. He had been kidnapped, bludgeoned, and burned to death in Jerusalem by Israeli teenagers. The incident was part of a cycle of violence that culminated in the 2014 Gaza War that summer, which killed more than 70 Israelis and more than 2,200 Palestinians.
“I was already in so much grief about what was happening in Palestine,” she said. She could not shake the parallels in her mind between Michael and Mohammed. To her, they were both teenagers stolen from their families by racially motivated violence.
A week later, she and about 15 members of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL PSC) joined the protests that sprang up after Brown’s killing. Before they left, her husband grabbed some old white cloth and made a banner that read, “Palestine Stands with Ferguson.”
A pro-Palestinian protest in Manhattan on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. The relationship between the African American quest for civil rights and the Palestinian cause has become tightly intertwined, but brings political risks, like straining the alliance between African Americans and Jews.
A decade later, the Palestinian cause in the US has become tightly intertwined with the much more powerful African American quest for civil rights, an alliance that has been both strengthened and tested in the four months of war since Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.
African-American writers, leaders, athletes, and celebrities have spoken in support of Palestinians as Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip pushes the number of dead past 26,000 people.
Histories intertwined: The background of the Black-Palestinian alliance
Many Black people who support Palestinian rights say they see the Palestinian cause in the context of the African-American experience as the displacement, oppression, and deprivation of a minority group.
The roots of the relationship between African-Americans and Palestinians stretch back decades, to the early days of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Even then, the question of Palestine was fraught for activists of that era, some of whom saw their struggle more aligned with that of a Jewish diaspora still recovering from the horrors of the Holocaust and fighting to build a new and fragile nation.
Yet the views of some African-Americans have shifted, especially as Palestinian and Black activists began to collaborate during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and both sides began to see their respective causes as linked.
A New York Times (NYT)/Siena College poll in December showed that African-American voters were more likely than white or Hispanic voters to sympathize with Palestinians. The poll showed that 34 percent of Black voters sympathized more with Palestinians in the conflict, compared with 28 percent of Black voters polled who said they sympathized more with Israel. As with the other groups polled, younger voters said they were more sympathetic than older voters to Palestinians.
The poll showed that 17 percent of white voters and 27 percent of Hispanic voters sympathized more with Palestinians.
For the Palestinian cause, the alignment with the Black social justice movement in the US is a chance to move away from the fringes of American politics and boost its profile by tapping into a much larger, more powerful political network.
For African-Americans, the tighter bond infuses fresh energy and urgency into social justice causes. Yet the relationship also presents new challenges and pitfalls, upsetting historic alliances with some American Jews and raising difficult questions about the extent of Black support for Israel in the midst of rising anti-Semitism. And it resurfaces tensions among Black leaders over how the conflict fits into their own political goals and priorities.
Much of the national debate over Israel is over terminology itself: what counts as support for the Palestinian cause and whether that veers into anti-Semitism. Colonialism and apartheid, part of the lexicon of the Palestinian cause that resonates so powerfully with African-American activists, are terms rejected by many Jews as offensive and anti-Semitic.
The relationship between Black and Jewish people has been strained in the past over accusations of anti-Semitism against Black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan.
On October 14, 2023, Farrakhan, who has led the Nation of Islam (NOI) for more than 40 years, drew parallels between Palestinians caught in a humanitarian crisis and Black people in America in a sermon. Based on this, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (NOI) of anti-Semitism.
Now, the NOI is suing the ADL for defamation for its characterization of the religious group as anti-Semitic.
The oppressed looking out for the oppressed
Still, for the Palestinians, having joined with a broader social justice movement buoyed by a generation of Black activists, it means the cause stands to become a permanent feature of mainstream American politics.
“Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims—we are a small number of folks,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR). “It is absolutely imperative for us to be thinking about building a wider tent for the Palestine movement here in the US, and we have accomplished that.”
Abuznaid co-founded the Dream Defenders, a social justice organization of Black, Latino, and Arab youth, which led a 40-mile march in Florida from Daytona Beach to Sanford, the city where Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was killed by George Zimmerman. In 2015, a year after Ferguson, Abuznaid organized a trip to Israel and the West Bank for his Black colleagues.
Abuznaid and a small group of Palestinian and Black activists nurtured the new relationship, leading campaigns together. One of those Black activists is Montague Simmons, the director of strategic partnerships for the Movement for Black Lives.
The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during and after Israel’s creation in 1948 “resonated in a deep and abiding way,” Simmons said.
African-American activists became well-versed in the fight for Palestinian rights: the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, Israel’s practice of jail detentions without charges, and the blockade and control of Gaza. By the time Israel began bombarding Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas attack, many young Black activists in the US were convinced of their common cause with Palestinians.
Pro-Palestinian protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza interrupt President Joe Biden as he delivers remarks at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 8, 2024. The relationship between the African American quest for civil rights and the Palestinian cause has become tightly intertwined, but brings political risks, like straining the alliance between African Americans and Jews.
But for decades, leaders of African-American social movements identified their struggle with the plight of the Jews. They saw their own history as enslaved people, as reflected in the book of Exodus, in which Moses delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.
Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds of slaves to freedom, was known to some only as “Moses.” The evening before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. told his audience that, like Moses, he might not make it to the Promised Land with his people, but he had “been to the mountain top” and seen it.
In 1967, when Israel launched preemptive strikes against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, more radical elements of the Black rights movement began to identify with the Palestinians, according to Michael Fischbach, author of “Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color.”
Before then, Black leaders saw Israel, many of them Christians, as an underdog in the Holy Land fighting for survival. But after its victory against neighboring Arab states, leaders like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) openly accused Israel of being a beneficiary of America’s imperialistic aims.
“The question of the Arab-Israeli conflict divided the Black freedom struggle,” Fischbach said.
Terrance Woodbury, co-founder of HIT Strategies, a Democratic polling firm that focuses on underrepresented communities, said that African-Americans today “are rejecting the false choice that they have to either support the state of Israel or call for the humanitarian relief of brown babies.”
Black social justice activists have grappled with where they stand and made up their minds to support the Palestinian cause, according to Simmons. Now, he said, Black leaders will need to choose.
Simmons said when he speaks to African-Americans weighing their response to the conflict, he poses the same question he did during the unrest in Ferguson: “Are you on the side of the oppressed or not? There is no real choice.”
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
Tamari, who is Palestinian-American and lives just outside St. Louis, had spent the previous weeks mourning the death of Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a 16-year-old Palestinian boy. He had been kidnapped, bludgeoned, and burned to death in Jerusalem by Israeli teenagers. The incident was part of a cycle of violence that culminated in the 2014 Gaza War that summer, which killed more than 70 Israelis and more than 2,200 Palestinians.
“I was already in so much grief about what was happening in Palestine,” she said. She could not shake the parallels in her mind between Michael and Mohammed. To her, they were both teenagers stolen from their families by racially motivated violence.
A week later, she and about 15 members of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL PSC) joined the protests that sprang up after Brown’s killing. Before they left, her husband grabbed some old white cloth and made a banner that read, “Palestine Stands with Ferguson.”
A pro-Palestinian protest in Manhattan on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2024. The relationship between the African American quest for civil rights and the Palestinian cause has become tightly intertwined, but brings political risks, like straining the alliance between African Americans and Jews.
A decade later, the Palestinian cause in the US has become tightly intertwined with the much more powerful African American quest for civil rights, an alliance that has been both strengthened and tested in the four months of war since Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in Israel.
African-American writers, leaders, athletes, and celebrities have spoken in support of Palestinians as Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip pushes the number of dead past 26,000 people.
Histories intertwined: The background of the Black-Palestinian alliance
Many Black people who support Palestinian rights say they see the Palestinian cause in the context of the African-American experience as the displacement, oppression, and deprivation of a minority group.
The roots of the relationship between African-Americans and Palestinians stretch back decades, to the early days of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Even then, the question of Palestine was fraught for activists of that era, some of whom saw their struggle more aligned with that of a Jewish diaspora still recovering from the horrors of the Holocaust and fighting to build a new and fragile nation.
Yet the views of some African-Americans have shifted, especially as Palestinian and Black activists began to collaborate during the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and both sides began to see their respective causes as linked.
A New York Times (NYT)/Siena College poll in December showed that African-American voters were more likely than white or Hispanic voters to sympathize with Palestinians. The poll showed that 34 percent of Black voters sympathized more with Palestinians in the conflict, compared with 28 percent of Black voters polled who said they sympathized more with Israel. As with the other groups polled, younger voters said they were more sympathetic than older voters to Palestinians.
The poll showed that 17 percent of white voters and 27 percent of Hispanic voters sympathized more with Palestinians.
For the Palestinian cause, the alignment with the Black social justice movement in the US is a chance to move away from the fringes of American politics and boost its profile by tapping into a much larger, more powerful political network.
For African-Americans, the tighter bond infuses fresh energy and urgency into social justice causes. Yet the relationship also presents new challenges and pitfalls, upsetting historic alliances with some American Jews and raising difficult questions about the extent of Black support for Israel in the midst of rising anti-Semitism. And it resurfaces tensions among Black leaders over how the conflict fits into their own political goals and priorities.
Much of the national debate over Israel is over terminology itself: what counts as support for the Palestinian cause and whether that veers into anti-Semitism. Colonialism and apartheid, part of the lexicon of the Palestinian cause that resonates so powerfully with African-American activists, are terms rejected by many Jews as offensive and anti-Semitic.
The relationship between Black and Jewish people has been strained in the past over accusations of anti-Semitism against Black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan.
On October 14, 2023, Farrakhan, who has led the Nation of Islam (NOI) for more than 40 years, drew parallels between Palestinians caught in a humanitarian crisis and Black people in America in a sermon. Based on this, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) accused Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (NOI) of anti-Semitism.
Now, the NOI is suing the ADL for defamation for its characterization of the religious group as anti-Semitic.
The oppressed looking out for the oppressed
Still, for the Palestinians, having joined with a broader social justice movement buoyed by a generation of Black activists, it means the cause stands to become a permanent feature of mainstream American politics.
“Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims—we are a small number of folks,” said Ahmad Abuznaid, the executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR). “It is absolutely imperative for us to be thinking about building a wider tent for the Palestine movement here in the US, and we have accomplished that.”
Abuznaid co-founded the Dream Defenders, a social justice organization of Black, Latino, and Arab youth, which led a 40-mile march in Florida from Daytona Beach to Sanford, the city where Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager, was killed by George Zimmerman. In 2015, a year after Ferguson, Abuznaid organized a trip to Israel and the West Bank for his Black colleagues.
Abuznaid and a small group of Palestinian and Black activists nurtured the new relationship, leading campaigns together. One of those Black activists is Montague Simmons, the director of strategic partnerships for the Movement for Black Lives.
The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes during and after Israel’s creation in 1948 “resonated in a deep and abiding way,” Simmons said.
African-American activists became well-versed in the fight for Palestinian rights: the illegal expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, Israel’s practice of jail detentions without charges, and the blockade and control of Gaza. By the time Israel began bombarding Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas attack, many young Black activists in the US were convinced of their common cause with Palestinians.
Pro-Palestinian protesters calling for a cease-fire in Gaza interrupt President Joe Biden as he delivers remarks at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., Jan. 8, 2024. The relationship between the African American quest for civil rights and the Palestinian cause has become tightly intertwined, but brings political risks, like straining the alliance between African Americans and Jews.
But for decades, leaders of African-American social movements identified their struggle with the plight of the Jews. They saw their own history as enslaved people, as reflected in the book of Exodus, in which Moses delivered the Israelites from bondage in Egypt.
Harriet Tubman, who led hundreds of slaves to freedom, was known to some only as “Moses.” The evening before his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr. told his audience that, like Moses, he might not make it to the Promised Land with his people, but he had “been to the mountain top” and seen it.
In 1967, when Israel launched preemptive strikes against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, more radical elements of the Black rights movement began to identify with the Palestinians, according to Michael Fischbach, author of “Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color.”
Before then, Black leaders saw Israel, many of them Christians, as an underdog in the Holy Land fighting for survival. But after its victory against neighboring Arab states, leaders like Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown (now known as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin) openly accused Israel of being a beneficiary of America’s imperialistic aims.
“The question of the Arab-Israeli conflict divided the Black freedom struggle,” Fischbach said.
Terrance Woodbury, co-founder of HIT Strategies, a Democratic polling firm that focuses on underrepresented communities, said that African-Americans today “are rejecting the false choice that they have to either support the state of Israel or call for the humanitarian relief of brown babies.”
Black social justice activists have grappled with where they stand and made up their minds to support the Palestinian cause, according to Simmons. Now, he said, Black leaders will need to choose.
Simmons said when he speaks to African-Americans weighing their response to the conflict, he poses the same question he did during the unrest in Ferguson: “Are you on the side of the oppressed or not? There is no real choice.”
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
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