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Does Anti-Semitism Matter?
Will “Black Lives Matters” drive a wedge between Jews and African Americans?
Shalle’ McDonald and Sean Savage | JNS.org
A
s a minority group that has faced
down centuries of anti-Semitism,
the Jewish people have long
stood shoulder-to-shoulder with other
long-suffering and persecuted minority
groups such as African Americans.
This was evident during the Civil Rights
Movement when Jewish leaders stood
against segregation in the South. That alle-
giance continues today with Jewish figures
speaking out against inequality that many
African Americans face.
Despite this solidarity, Jewish and
African American relations today face
one of their biggest challenges yet. Some
affiliated with the Black Lives Matter
(BLM) movement are seeking to blend
their struggles in America with the pro-
Palestinian, anti-Israel movement, which
threatens to drive a wedge between the
two groups.
An offshoot of BLM, the Movement for
Black Lives described Israel as “an apart-
heid state with over 50 laws on the books
that sanction discrimination against the
Palestinian people” in an Aug. 1 platform
called “A Vision for Black Lives.”
The platform stated there was a “geno-
cide taking place against the Palestinian
people” instigated by Israel and called on
the U.S. to stop all aid to the Jewish state.
The ideological connection between
perceived racial injustices in Israel and
America is not as strange as some may
think, according to Dr. Asaf Romirowsky,
executive director for Scholars for Peace in
the Middle East (SPME), a nonprofit that
addresses anti-Semitism and anti-Israel
rhetoric through academia.
“None of this is new in the sense that
they’ve been able to make that connection,
loosely as it may be, from a kind of sympa-
thy,” he told JNS.org.
“Anybody looking for an underdog cause
in some way has found a solution and an
outlet through the Palestinian cause. BLM
is no different in that regard,” he added.
That connection is evident given the
background of the co-author of the Israel
section of “A Vision for Black Lives,”
Rachel Gilmer.
Gilmer, a 28-year-old African American
raised Jewish, is associated with the BLM-
affiliated group Dream Defenders, which
brought African American activists to
Israel and the West Bank.
“While our struggles are not identical, it
became so clear that we are up against the
same system of state violence and repres-
44 September 8 • 2016
A BLM advocate
sion,” Gilmer said in an interview with
Haaretz during a visit to the region last
spring. “We must call for the divestment
of the military industrial complex, just like
we are calling for a divestment from the
policing of our neighborhoods.”
The mainstream Jewish community had
been largely supportive of the Black Lives
Matter movement, despite reservations
concerning its fringe elements.
The Jewish Community Relations
Council (JCRC) of Boston’s Executive
Director Jeremy Burton released a July 15
statement stating that although there were
clearly some in BLM that held “a biased
and unjust agenda demonizing Israel,”
the Jewish community should ignore that
“discomfort” keeping them from being an
ally with “this grassroots effort to address
the systemic, institutionalized racism that
fuels a horrifying nightmare of extrajudi-
cial killings.”
MOVING AWAY FROM BLM
Once BLM released its anti-Israel platform
on Aug. 1, the JCRC of Boston and main-
stream Jewish groups distanced them-
selves from the movement.
“JCRC cannot and will not align our-
selves with organizations that falsely and
maliciously assert that Israel is commit-
ting ‘genocide’,” the group said in an Aug.
3 statement. It also condemned BLM’s
support for the Boycott, Divestment,
Sanctions (BDS) movement, saying, “We
reject participation in any coalition that
seeks to isolate and demonize Israel singu-
larly amongst the nations of the world.”
Similarly, the national American Jewish
Committee (AJC), which has a long his-
tory of championing civil rights, “strongly
condemned the anti-Semitic and anti-
Israel views expressed in the platform,” in
an Aug. 6 statement.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-
Defamation League (ADL), in a blog post
agreed with BLM in needing to address
“the wide range of racial inequities and
socio-economic issues facing African
Americans today,” but took strong objec-
tion to the platform’s use of the term
genocide.
Even more progressive Jewish groups,
including ones supportive of the BLM plat-
form, admitted they would have not used
the term “genocide.”
“We know why our community was
upset by the use of the word ‘genocide,’”
IfNotNow activist Yonah Liberman recent-
ly told the Forward. “I don’t think we
would have used that language. Using that
word is loaded for the Jewish people. That
is not the way we understand the situation.
We use the word ‘occupation.’”
Susannah Heschel, Ph.D., a Jewish
scholar and daughter of the late Rabbi
Abraham Heschel, a celebrated Jewish
theologian, scholar and civil rights activ-
ist who marched with
Martin Luther King Jr.
during the Civil Rights
Movement, told JNS.
org she’s disappointed
over BLM’s position on
Israel.
“They’re slamming
the door in our face,
Susannah
and they’re cutting off
Heschel, Ph.D.
their own legs,” said
Heschel, who currently
serves as the Eli Black
professor of Jewish Studies and chair of
the Jewish Studies program at Dartmouth
College.
Heschel said she was shocked and horri-
fied by BLM’s anti-Israel activities because
their accusations are simply not true and
outrageous. She considers the BLM plat-
form to be self-destructive.
“We Jews are the best allies the African
American community has had … What
does this accomplish for black lives? You’re
losing people who can help in every way.
BLM is now basically telling the Jewish
world, ‘Go away.’ I find that tragic. I care
about black lives, tremendously.”
Similarly, many African American lead-
ers, who’ve worked closely on building
relations between the black and Jewish
communities, consider
the platform’s position
not representative of the
larger African American
community.
Rev. Carroll Baltimore,
Ph.D., of Alexandria,
Va., the immediate
Rev. Carroll
president emeritus of
Baltimore,
the Progressive National
Ph.D.
Baptist Convention,
told JNS.org he’s been
working for several years through the
International Fellowship of Christians
and Jews (the Fellowship) to build bridges
between the African American and
Jewish communities and Israel in order
to “preserve, protect and strengthen
the longstanding, historic black-Jewish
alliance embodied in the close relation-
ship between Rev. King and Rabbi A.J.
Heschel.”
Baltimore, along with several other
African American Christian leaders,
including Rev. Dr. Kenneth C. Ulmer
and Metro Detroiters Rev. Dr. Edward L.
Branch, Rev. Dr. Deedee Coleman and Rev.
Dr. Glenn Plummer, working with Kristina
King, the Fellowship’s director of African
American outreach, issued a joint state-
ment on Aug. 22 rejecting the anti-Israel
stance of the Movement for Black Lives.
“It was a vitriolic attack against Israel
laced with misinformation and anti-Sem-
itism and an agenda that is not embraced
by the broader African American com-
munity,” the joint statement from the
Fellowship read. “The anti-Semitism and
misinformation found in this small seg-
ment is so misleading that it makes an
experienced leader question the entire
document and thus the intentions of the
organization.”
Baltimore told JNS.org that, “While we
support many aspects of the Movement
for Black Lives platform, we felt it was
critical to correct falsehoods about Israel
and not risk endangering the black-Jewish
relationship.”
Nevertheless, BLM-affiliated groups,
such as Dream Defenders, dismissed any
concern about losing support from main-
stream Jewish organizations.
The real issue is that BLM leaders are
“simply trying to present a highly dis-
torted defamatory depiction of Israeli
politics, and most of the time, these people
don’t know what they are talking about,”
Heschel said.
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