The global intensity of the Israel-Hamas War and the saturation of media around it requires a lot of discernment and the ability to unearth and understand sources. I have been doing this, especially while lighting the candles of Hanukkah every evening earlier this month, and as a Jewish African American I have come to a conclusion about one aspect of this: the conflation of Black Americans with Palestinians is wrong.
When many of us from African American families and communities first heard the phrase Black Lives Matter, we were behind it 100%. Black lives do matter and the statement highlights a discrepancy in the value placed on Black lives in America throughout history, and even today. This was the message that sprang forth from the Black Lives Matter Global National Foundation (co-founded by a Black Jewish woman, Alicia Schwartz Garza) and I agreed with it
Black Lives Matter — the General National Foundation — I can get behind. Why? Because, shamefully, racism has gotten to the point in the United States of America, where we must march in the street and point out that Black lives matter. It has been forgotten that Black lives matter.
BLM’s mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy. I fully support this.
However, an insidious thing has happened since the foundation’s beginning. There are now independent BLM offshoots of that claim Jewish lives have no value. Many of these, like BLM Chicago and BLM Los Angeles, took a vitriolic stance against Israel in the shadow of the October Massacre on Oct. 7, the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.
BLM Chicago states on Twitter that they were “barely ever a part of” and “cut ties years ago” with the Black Lives Matter Global National foundation. The ADL clarifies, “It is important to note that Black Lives Matter chapters are run independently from the national Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, and many are completely unaffiliated. The Black Lives Matter national organization itself has not yet commented on the current Israel-Hamas war.”
A History of Jewish and Black Alliance
Reviewing history, it is clear that Jewish Americans have always been on the front lines of the African American civil rights movement. Notably, standing right next to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the March on Washington, was the esteemed Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and his congregants, as well as Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, holding a Torah. We can see the historic photographic evidence of this and many other marches, meetings and collaborations between Jewish and African Americans.
They marched together, prayed together, and went to jail together in the pursuit of racial justice. Dr. King led African Americans in standing by the Jewish community in Atlanta when The Temple, a historic synagogue in Atlanta, was bombed by the KKK.
You only need to review the formation of the NAACP to see where, in 1909, Anna Strunsky, Joel Elias Spingarn, Arthur Spingarn, Lillian Wald, Henry Moscowitz and others teamed up with W.E.B. DuBois, Bishop Alexander Walter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Mary Church Terrell to co-found the NAACP as a call to action in response to the Springfield Race Riot of 1908.
From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 Black primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges, including Howard, Fisk and Dillard, were established in whole, or in part, by Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. Over 40% of Southern Black people were educated in these schools at the height of the Rosenwald educational movement
Jewish American support for the civil rights movement also went beyond individuals and was, in fact, incredibly widespread. Despite only being 2% of the U.S. population, Jewish Americans composed more than 50% of the young people who participated in the Freedom Summer of 1964.
It is indisputable that it was an African American college student and two Jewish American college students who were horrifically hunted and murdered by the KKK in Philadelphia, MS. It so shocked the country that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington and passed into law.
Throughout most of history, the Black community has been similarly on the front lines of Jewish self-determination in their indigenous homeland of Israel. Most of the prominent civil rights leaders, including Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Bayard Rustin, Walter White, Ralph Bunche and Congressman John Lewis, were ardent, wholehearted Zionists, who played a critical role in the establishment of a Jewish State.
Among my African American family members, there is nothing but love and support for Israel. As famed Rabbi Hillel said, “If I am not for myself, who will be?” We agree that Israel must defend itself and its right to be. My African American family and friends think Hamas and anyone who supports them is going to regret attacking Israel and Jewish people in the USA.
Around San Diego, I am not encountering Black folks who are rooting for Hamas or supportive of Jewish students being harassed at SDSU, UCSD and other schools. It is clear to me: The independent BLMs are not speaking for the African American population. We are not a monolith. We all have independent ears, eyes and minds.
The Need for Education
This long legacy of supporting Israel is now being conflated with and tarnished by independent offshoots of the Black Lives Matter organization, who try to meld America’s racial history and dynamics (formal slavery and institutional racism) with the Middle East. There is an outright movement to exploit America’s history of slavery with Israel’s existence in the land in which Jews are indigenous people.
Black Lives Matter offshoots try to paint Israel as a white colonialist movement that has the goal of making a profit off Palestinian slave labor and which allegedly has a goal of wiping out the Palestinian population. This is absurd, and the situation in Israel and in the Israel-Hamas War is not, to any degree, this simplistic.
There is a need for education. The independent BLM offshoot groups do not have anything to say about how Black people are discriminated against in Gaza by Palestinians. Afro-Palestinians are Palestinians of Black African heritage and they are looked down upon. I recall that former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was the subject of some viciously racial personal attacks, alongside vociferous criticism of her policies. These included an anti-Black racist cartoon in Palestinian Authority’s controlled Press Al Quds.
Many in the world, and especially in the United States, are ignorant of the fact that Israel is one of the most ethnically diverse nations in the world, with only a 30% White/European population. Israel has a population that is 21% Arab. If you have been to Israel then you know that there are Ethiopian Jews, Sephardic, Mizrahi and more groups throughout Israel.
As someone who briefly lived in and has visited Israel for a few decades, I know it is not a perfect country. But I can say that of many countries. There is always something you can find to criticize about a culture or its politicians. Furthermore, the state of Israel is one of the only successful movements of an indigenous population reclaiming their ancestral homeland, which should serve as a model for indigenous movements around the world.
BLM Chicago has gone off the rails with its social media post showing unwavering support for the Hamas terrorists who used paragliders to fly into the Nova music festival to slaughter, behead, gang rape, genitally mutilate and kidnap more than 200 innocent Jews celebrating the holy day of Simchat Torah. BLM Los Angeles posted “we see clear parallels between Black and Palestinian people,” labeling Israel as an “apartheid state,” and claiming that what Hamas did was simply “resistance.”
There was a long-lasting ceasefire in place on Oct. 6. The next day, Hamas broke the ceasefire with its savage murder, gang rapes, kidnappings and hostage taking. So Israel is standing up for itself and its own self-determination. It is fighting back and pursuing the enemy that invaded on Oct. 7 and it will continue until Hamas is wiped out. Israel’s target is Hamas — not the general Palestinian population.
The independent BLM chapters blame Israel solely for these horrific attacks, and refuse to condemn Hamas in any way. They are manipulating the inferno of vitriol, violence and that has plagued the Middle East.
As an African American I find this reprehensible. It is conflict entrepreneurship designed to further inflame American racism, with antisemitism as the fuel accelerant.
American Jews and Blacks have a common history of marginalization, oppression and struggle and more importantly, a history of standing side-by-side for decades fighting for each other’s civil rights. Let us not allow some to obliterate this history, but instead let us revive it, break bread together, engage in dialogue and move forth together.
Barrett Holman Leak of Mission Valley is a children’s author, resilience coach, community organizer, nonprofit leader and former professional journalist. She holds degrees in theology, cultural encounters and psychology, mass communication and French. She speaks her native English, Danish and French and studied biblical Hebrew and classical Greek.