“South Carolina just passed a law deeming any criticism
of Israel in public schools or universities to be anti-Semitic.”
-- The Washington Post, May 18, 2018.
The Black Lives Matter Movement began really taking hold in 2014 and gathered momentum through 2016 as African Americans and their supporters protested and rallied against police violence and harassment. Yet, an enormous announcement made by the BLM Movement in August of 2016 was utterly ignored by the North American media and may have ushered in what turned out to be a lengthy pause in the power of their efforts. CNN, CBS, USA Today, and other news outlets ignored what you might think would be an earth-shattering proclamation that would make headline news:“Black Lives Matter Endorses BDS: Israel Is an Apartheid State.”
This is how it was reported that day on the International Middle East Media Center website:
Black Lives Matter and The Movement of Black Lives, a coalition of more than 50 organizations representing African Americans, published a comprehensive platform Friday of last week, which addresses the systematic racism, violence, oppression, and discrimination faced by black communities in the United States. Along with calling for “an end to the war against black people,” the policy platform has unambiguously declared its solidarity with the Palestinian people, as it calls Israel an “apartheid state” and endorses Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of the Israeli state.
Not a whiff of the BLM’s position on Israel in the US media. So, what is worse? Not being able to speak your mind without fear of being blacklisted, or being able to speak your mind while others are essentially not allowed to hear it? Both are equally tragic. In the US of I, this is the state of affairs. Freedom of speech, unless pro-Israel, is a myth.
An original declaration of support for the Palestinians was actually made by BLM leaders in the late summer of 2015 and quickly gained momentum among activists. You wouldn’t have heard about that either, at least not on NBC or ABC News. It did make it onto the inthesetimes.com website on October 15, 2015.
“The same urban police departments that harass, brutalize and murder black folks here train with Israeli law enforcement—who oppress Palestinians,” said Boston-based activist Khury Petersen-Smith. This was after it was discovered in 2014 that the tear gas canisters used to break up the riots in Ferguson, Missouri after the killing of a black man by police were the exact same ones used by the Israelis against Palestinians.
We didn’t hear anything about this as it would have been very bad public relations for Israel. Here is the 2015 activist letter, endorsed by more than a thousand artists and activists:
Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine
The past year has been one of high-profile growth for Black-Palestinian solidarity. Out of the terror directed against us—from numerous attacks on Black life to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza and chokehold on the West Bank—strengthened resilience and joint-struggle have emerged between our movements. Palestinians on Twitter were among the first to provide international support for protesters in Ferguson, where St. Louis-based Palestinians gave support on the ground. Last November, a delegation of Palestinian students visited Black organizers in St. Louis, Atlanta, Detroit and more, just months before the Dream Defenders took representatives of Black Lives Matter, Ferguson, and other racial justice groups to Palestine. Throughout the year, Palestinians sent multiple letters of solidarity to us throughout protests in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore. We offer this statement to continue the conversation between our movements:
On the anniversary of last summer’s Gaza massacre, in the 48th year of Israeli occupation, the 67th year of Palestinians’ongoing Nakba (the Arabic word for Israel's ethnic cleansing)—and in the fourth century of Black oppression in the present-day United States—we, the undersigned Black activists, artists, scholars, writers, and political prisoners offer this letter of reaffirmed solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people.
We can neither forgive nor forget last summer’s violence. We remain outraged at the brutality Israel unleashed on Gaza through its siege by land, sea and air, and three military offensives in six years. We remain sickened by Israel’s targeting of homes, schools, UN shelters, mosques, ambulances, and hospitals. We remain heartbroken and repulsed by the number of children Israel killed in an operation it called “defensive.” We reject Israel’s framing of itself as a victim. Anyone who takes an honest look at the destruction to life and property in Gaza can see Israel committed a one-sided slaughter. With 100,000 people still homeless in Gaza, the massacre's effects continue to devastate Gaza today and will for years to come.
Israel’s injustice and cruelty toward Palestinians is not limited to Gaza and its problem is not with any particular Palestinian party. The oppression of Palestinians extends throughout the occupied territories, within Israel’s 1948 borders, and into neighboring countries. The Israeli Occupation forces continue to kill protesters—including children—conduct night raids on civilians, hold hundreds of people under indefinite detention, and demolish homes while expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements. Israeli politicians, including Benjamin Netanyahu , incite against Palestinian citizens within Israel’s recognized borders, where over 50 laws discriminate against non-Jewish people. Our support extends to those living under occupation and siege, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the 7-million Palestinian refugees exiled in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine. The refugees’ right to return to their homeland in present-day Israel is the most important aspect of justice for Palestinians.
Palestinian liberation represents an inherent threat to Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid, an apparatus built and sustained on ethnic cleansing, land theft, and the denial of Palestinian humanity and sovereignty. While we acknowledge that the apartheid configuration in Israel/Palestine is unique from the United States (and South Africa), we continue to see connections between the situation of Palestinians and Black people. Israel’s widespread use of detention and imprisonment against Palestinians evokes the mass incarceration of Black people in the US, including the political imprisonment of our own revolutionaries. Soldiers, police, and courts justify lethal force against us and our children who pose no imminent threat. And while the US and Israel would continue to oppress us without collaborating with each other, we have witnessed police and soldiers from the two countries train side-by-side. US and Israeli officials and media criminalize our existence, portray violence against us as “isolated incidents,” and call our resistance “illegitimate” or “terrorism.” These narratives ignore decades and centuries of anti-Palestinian and anti-Black violence that have always been at the core of Israel and the U.S. We recognize the racism that characterizes Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is also directed against others in the region, including intolerance, police brutality, and violence against Israel’s African population. Israeli officials call asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea “infiltrators” and detain them in the desert, while the state has sterilized Ethiopian Israelis without their knowledge or consent. These issues call for unified action against anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and Zionism.
We know Israel’s violence toward Palestinians would be impossible without the US defending Israel on the world stage and funding its violence with more than $3-billion annually. We call on the US government to end economic and diplomatic aid to Israel. We wholeheartedly endorse Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel and call on Black and U.S. institutions and organizations to do the same. We urge people of conscience to recognize the struggle for Palestinian liberation as a key matter of our time. As the BDS movement grows, we offer G4S, the world’s largest private security company, as a target for further joint struggle. G4S harms thousands of Palestinian political prisoners illegally held in Israel and hundreds of Black and brown youth held in its privatized juvenile prisons in the US. The corporation profits from incarceration and deportation from the US and Palestine, to the UK, South Africa, and Australia. We reject notions of “security” that make any of our groups unsafe and insist no one is free until all of us are. We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience under racism and colonialism inspires us. It is to Palestinians, as well as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to working through cultural, economic, and political means to ensure Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own. We encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to finally take action on this issue. As we continue these transnational conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the various racisms embedded in and around our societies.
Towards liberation.
Arguably, that is why BLM faded for four years; BLM pointed to facts about Israel.
When the movement surged again in 2020 after the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Israeli element of the platform continued to be left off the official website, a result of heavy lobbying and pressure from Jewish groups.
If you search with the word “Palestine” or “Palestinian” on the BLM website, the words “sorry, no results were found” appear. The topic is also absent from the Movement For Black Lives (M4BL) website.
Of course, it didn’t stop the pro-Israel side, often militant Zionists, from voicing their outrage over the movement in general. Outrage as in outrageous, comments so extreme that if the equivalent came from the BLM side, they would have been forced to apologize. Take for example Morton Klein’s tweet on June 6, 2020. Klein is the president of the Zionist Organization of America:
I urge the SPLC [Southern Poverty Law Center] to immediately put BlackLivesMatter on their list of hate groups. BLM is a Jew hating, white hating, Israel hating, conservative black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros-funded extremist group of haters.
Even threw in a little conspiracy theory at the end. (George Soros is a liberal Jewish billionaire who people like Klein suggest is ruling the world).
At the time of his tweet, Klein had fewer than five thousand Twitter followers. But many who think and behave like him have many more. Mark R. Levin, a Philadelphia-born Jew, has 2-plus million followers and a radio show syndicated across the US (see chapter 1). A tweet of his on the very same day included this sentence:
Despite the overwhelming evidence, the anti-Semitic nature of this movement is being utterly ignored by major newsrooms throughout the country—including the Holocaust- denying NY Times and Washington Post.
Really?! That’s a new one. Or maybe it’s not. Not sure how many times Billy and Bella in Oklahoma have heard that claim, but chances are they probably believe it by now. Maybe as much as they believe Iran is full of “Islama-Nazis.” President Trump also loves to trash those two newspapers, as they’re the nationally respected entities most likely to hold him accountable.
Remarkable similarities of message.
They don’t seem at all concerned about the dead Black folks. Forget about supporting reform—the main concern for Zionists like Klein is protecting Israel’s actions.
The BLM Israel pronouncement being brushed under the rug reminds us again of how this works; recall that ten years earlier no debate was permitted or editorials written regarding The Israel Lobby. Mainstream public discussion regarding the 2007 publication began and ended with the book’s review in the New York Times by William Grimes on September 6, 2007. The book describes the inordinate amount of power a loose coalition of pro-Israel groups, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), has over US government policy. Grimes:
The Israel Lobby, an extended, more fully argued version of the London Review [of Books, 2006] article, has done nothing to calm the waters. The authors have been barred from making appearances by at least one university and several cultural centers to discuss their subject, and continue to reap a whirlwind of criticism and abuse. If they were looking for a fight, they have found it.
Grimes described these side effects matter-of-factly as if they were to be expected, as opposed to expressing outrage against the repression of freedom of speech guaranteed in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Why weren’t the authors allowed to discuss their work openly? They didn’t use racial slurs, they weren’t suggesting outlandish punitive measures against a country or race. Instead, they we’re revealing well thought out, scholarly arguments.
“Incredibly, they were banned by a university,” would have seemed a more appropriate response, while the tenor of Grimes’ review only bolsters their arguments.
This lobby is particularly adept at stifling debate where it begins, the authors argue. “Whether the issue is abortion, arms control, affirmative action, gay rights, the environment, trade policy, health care, immigration or welfare, there is almost always a lively debate on Capitol Hill,” they write. “But where Israel is concerned, potential critics fall silent and there is hardly any debate at all.”
In a Boston Globe article from March 29, 2006, reacting to the scholars’ article before it was expanded and became a book, writer Charles A. Radin pointed out:
The authors say that Israel long ago outlived its strategic usefulness to the United States and has become a strategic burden. In a brief telephone interview yesterday, [Stephen] Walt said: “My coauthor and I stand behind our paper, and we welcome serious scholarly discussion of its arguments and evidence. Period.”
Scholarly widespread public discussion never happened. Attacks from prominent Jews did.
In 2006, former President Jimmy Carter released the book Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid.” In a letter to the Los Angeles Times following the book’s release, published on December 8, 2006, Carter stated the following goal:
The ultimate purpose of my book is to present facts about the Middle East that are largely unknown in America, to precipitate discussion and to help restart peace talks that can lead to permanent peace for Israel and its neighbors. Another hope is that Jews and other Americans who share this same goal might be motivated to express their views, even publicly, and perhaps in concert. I would be glad to help with that effort.
A lofty goal knowing that expressing one’s views honestly about Israel in the US is next to impossible. President Carter refers to this fact earlier in the letter:
It would be almost political suicide for members of Congress to espouse a balanced position between Israel and Palestine, to suggest Israel comply with international law or to speak in defense of justice or human rights for Palestinians.
Jewish author, scholar and Israel-critic Norman Finkelstein supported Carter’s conclusions. He wrote:
After four decades of Israeli occupation, the infrastructure and superstructure of apartheid have been put in place. Outside of the never-never land of mainstream American Jewry and US media, this reality is barely disputed.
In 2009, not remarkably, Carter was forced to apologize for some of his terminology in the book, mainly because his grandson was running for a Georgia state senate seat in a district with an influential Jewish presence. Jason Carter won the seat in 2010.
***
Almost a decade later at the federal level, as part of the “blue wave” of Democratic Party victories across the country in 2018, two Muslim women were elected to Congress for the very first time. They were Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar, from Minnesota’s fifth district. They quickly learned of the myth that is “freedom of speech.”
Ms. Omar has been the more outspoken of the two. A more accurate description would be that she has gotten into trouble for telling it like it is.
In the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on February 20, 2019, the headline for Amir Tibon’s story said: “Ilhan Omar Apologizes to US Jewish Leaders for ‘Benjamins’ Remark”:
WASHINGTON – Rep. Ilhan Omar apologized to Jewish groups, mostly from the left, for her tweets stating that support for Israel in DC, and specifically the work of pro-Israel lobby AIPAC, is “all about the Benjamins.”
It would have been a cute pun had she included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but she didn’t—she was referring to US$100 bills that feature the likeness of American founding father Benjamin Franklin.
How dare she suggest Jewish interests use money to buy the influence of politicians! Imagine! As noted, Jewish billionaire Sheldon Adelson reportedly gave $30 million to the Trump campaign for 2016. Within a year Trump had the US quit the United Nations Human Rights Council, a group often critical of Israel’s actions, he moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the longtime dream of Adelson and other empire builders, and he awarded Adelson’s wife Mariam the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
From the British newspaper The Guardian on November 16, 2018.
Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth and Antonin Scalia, the late conservative Supreme Court justice were among seven people Donald Trump honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Friday. Among the living, Miriam Adelson—a doctor, philanthropist and humanitarian, and the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas casino magnate considered one of the nation’s most powerful Republican donors—was also honored. She represented a controversial choice for the highest honor America can give a civilian. The Adelsons gave Trump’s presidential campaign a $30-million boost in the final months of the 2016 race. The couple followed that up this election cycle by donating $100 million to the Republican Party for last week’s midterm elections [2018].
That’s a lot of Benjamins. Miriam, how would you like a medal? The embassy move by the way, refused by all previous U.S. presidents, was marked by what seemed to be a private ceremony, as opposed to a grand diplomatic occasion. The Trumps were there, the Netanyahus, the Adelsons, and a handful of others, mostly “hawk” politicians from Netanyahu’s regime.
Trump moved the embassy in May [2018], and Sheldon Adelson, who had offered to personally fund the move, was seated in the front row for the ceremony. …
Robert Weissman, president of public interest group Public Citizen, said it was difficult to believe the decision to recognize Miriam Adelson was based on merit. …
“It’s emblematic of the corrupt and transactional presidency of Donald Trump, and it is a shame, but not a surprise, that he is corroding and corrupting a civic treasure, an honor like the Medal of Freedom,” Weissman said.
So Representative Omar had to apologize for suggesting Jewish influence was tied to money. Cue Donald Trump: “I think she should resign from Congress.”
Before Trump landed Adelson for the general election in 2016, the billionaire had leaned toward the Miami-based Florida senator Marco Rubio during the Republican primaries. Adelson wasn’t the only one courting the pliable candidate. In the New York Times on October 15, 2015, an article by Maggie Haberman and Nicholas Confessore was entitled “Paul Singer, Influential Billionaire, Throws Support to Marco Rubio for President”:
Mr. Rubio has aggressively embraced the cause of wealthy pro-Israel donors like Mr. Adelson, whom the senator is said to call frequently, and Mr. Singer, who both serve on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, an umbrella group for Republican Jewish donors and officials.
Five months earlier there was another story of support for Rubio from the Jewish billionaire Norman Braman. “Billionaire Lifts Rubio, Politically and Personally” by Michael Barbaro and Steve Eder was published on the front page of the New York Times on May 10, 2015:
A detailed review of their relationship shows that Mr. Braman, 82, has left few corners of Mr. Rubio’s world untouched. He hired Mr. Rubio, then a Senate candidate, as a lawyer; employed his wife to advise the Braman family’s philanthropic foundation; helped cover the cost of Mr. Rubio’s salary as an instructor at a Miami college; and gave Mr. Rubio access to his private plane.
In the caption under the photograph of the two men together on page 19, it partially reads, “Positions on Israel Helped Bring Them Together”:
The money has flowed both ways. Mr. Rubio has steered taxpayer funds to Mr. Braman’s favored causes, successfully pushing for an $80-million state grant to finance a genomics center at a private university and securing $5-million for cancer research at a Miami institute for which Mr. Braman is a major donor.
Mr. Rubio has been over-the-top obedient with supporting all causes pro-Israel, and quick to tweet or re-tweet the propaganda. Check his social media.
As Mr. Rubio has ascended in the ranks of Republican politics, Mr. Braman has emerged a remarkable and unusual patron; simultaneously bankrolling Mr. Rubio’s campaigns and legislative agendas, even while subsidizing his personal finances, long strained by heavy debt and big swings in income.
So why would anyone think those “Benjamins” flying around would have any influence on policy?
AIPAC technically can’t give money directly to a campaign, but the law that prevents it would be considered a joke, because like with any other powerful lobby, the money simply comes from its patrons. So much for a technicality.
The aforementioned Haaretz article adds substance.
At AIPAC’s annual policy conference, a highlight has been the roll call: Top staff and lay leaders gather on stage and shout out the names of every lawmaker who has been in attendance. AIPAC mobilizes an army of supporters who are inclined to support pro-Israel candidates with their votes, time and money. Walk out the big glass doors of the Washington Convention Center and get yourself invited to a private suite in a hotel within walking distance and, yes, AIPAC’s top donors are raising money for favored candidates. It’s not exactly a secret: Since the early 1980s, AIPAC had a least trained its activists to cultivate friendly lawmakers by donating to their campaigns and campaigning for them.
Critics of Omar also used historical angles and labels to criticize her words.
In Amir Tibon and Danielle Ziri’s Haaretz article on February 11, 2019: “Ilhan Omar Criticized by Fellow Democratic Lawmakers: ‘No Place for Anti-Semitism’”:
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi released a statement on the issue. “Anti-Semitism must be called out, confronted and condemned whenever it is encountered, without exception,” the statement said. It was co-signed by other members of the Democratic House leadership. “Legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies is protected by the values of free speech, but Congresswoman Omar’s use of anti-Semitic tropes is deeply offensive.”
What the hell is an “anti-Semitic trope”? A trope, from the Greek, is a significant or recurrent theme; a motif. It’s like a reusable insult or label. Kind of like throwing around the trope “anti-Semitic.”
Trope was the word used by the politicians because Americans would have no idea what the hell trope meant. But it sure sounds bad, it belittles her, so let’s tag her.
It then gets (more) ridiculous.
In the Washington Post on March 4, 2019 by Deanna Paul, the headline read, “Top Democrat Demands Another Apology from Rep. Ilhan Omar, accusing her of ‘a vile anti-Semitic slur.’” Congresswoman Omar’s “slur” came during comments she made in ...
a town hall in Washington while speaking about liberal issues. “I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is okay for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country.”
Congresswoman Omar is of course referring to Israel. Americans are told over and over and over again, whenever the opportunity arises for a politician or commentator on any mainstream media to voice their standard lines, that Israel is our strongest ally and needs our support and will have it forever.
Nancy Pelosi may mouth that “legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies is protected by the values of free speech,” but it doesn’t happen and doesn’t exist. There is only the pushing for the allegiance of a kind to which Congresswoman Omar refers. And for that, from the same article, the reaction from Jewish Congressman of New York, Eliot Engel:
In a statement Friday, Eliot said he welcomed debate in Congress but that it was “unacceptable and deeply offensive to call into question the loyalty of fellow American citizens because of their political views, including support for the US-Israel relationship.”
Read again what Congresswoman Omar said and then read Congressman Engel’s reaction again. Does the “punishment fit the crime”? This is where it becomes clear that the Jewish-Israel block in the government and media had cemented their anti-Omar campaign. She was making comments questioning blind devotion to Israel, and no matter what she says, to whatever degree, she’s going to get hyper-tropes in return. Engel continued:
“Her comments were outrageous and deeply hurtful, and I ask that she retract them, apologize, and commit to making her case on policy issues without resorting to attacks that have no place in the Foreign Affairs Committee or the House of Representatives.”
Engel won’t be returning to office anytime soon; he lost his primary in 2020.
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