1.6 Black Friendship and Black Anti-Semitism
There was a time when there was great friendship between Jews and Blacks. That was the time of Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King was pro-Israel and a friend of the Jews and many Jews stood with him against racism against black people. The picture below shows Jews supporting Dr. King.
The following two paragraphs are from an article called A Brief History of Jews and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges (including Howard, Dillard and Fisk universities) were established in whole or in part by contributions from Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. At the height of the so-called "Rosenwald schools," nearly 40 percent of Black people in the south were educated at one of these institutions.
During the Civil Rights Movement, Jewish activists represented a disproportionate number of white people involved in the struggle. Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. Leaders of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations. Most famously, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.
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In the photo above Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. links arms with other civil rights leaders. The man with the white beard is Rabbi Heschel. They marched from Selma Alabama to the state capitol of Montgomery Alabama. They were marching for voter registration rights for blacks. |
Rabbi Heschel had another cause as well, freedom for the Jews of the Soviet Union. Jews were oppressed in the Soviet Union and not allowed to leave. Reverend King and Rabbi Heschel supported each other's causes, as demonstrated at a conference in November 1963, when they spoke at the United Synagogue of America's Golden Jubilee Convention in New York. Dr. King said about his commitment to fighting the oppression of Jews in the Soviet Union. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We cannot ignore the plight of our brothers and sisters, who happened to be Jews in Soviet Russia.”
The video below shows Martin Luther King saying that antisemitism is evil and unjust.
Here Martin Luther King says that Israel has a right to exist and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.
In 1963 there was a massive protest in Washington, called the March on Washington for freedom and equal opportunities for black people.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz was one of the organizers of and speakers at the March. Part of the speech Rabbi Prinz gave at the March on Washington is embedded below. He spoke out against silence in the face of evil.
His speech was followed by the most famous speech Martin Luther King ever gave his "I have a dream speech". I have included a different speech below in which Reverend King also spoke out against silence in the face of evil.
Unfortunately the world of today is no longer the world of Martin Luther King. Many blacks have forgotten the Jews who were active in the civil rights movement. Although Martin Luther King day is a national holiday many people disagree with his teachings of non-violence, and of friendship toward Jews and equality. Many blacks and white leftists believe that that intimidating conservative whites with violence is the way to get what they want. Many choose to ignore Martin Luther King's dream of a time when people will judge others by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. They believe that whites should be discriminated against in order to achieve equity.
Victor Davis Hansen wrote an article called The new new anti-semitism. In it he wrote that in the current day:
It has been difficult to find any major black leader who has not trafficked in antisemitism...
There have been a lot of violent anti-semitic acts against Jews in America many by black people and by Muslims both black and white.
Many people who are against Israel and against the Zionist belief that Israel should exist, say they're not against Jews, they're just against Israel. Martin Luther King said “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism.” The cofounder of Black Lives Matter, Patrisse Cullors, calls Israel an imperialist project and says that if we don't end Israel we're doomed in the video below.
Is Patrisse Cullors an anti-semite? What will happen to the lives of the Jews living in Israel if Israel is ended? Seems to me that Jewish lives don't matter to Black Lives Matter cofounder Patrisse Cullors. Does she know that Jews fought for black civil rights? Does she know about Jewish donations to black colleges and schools? Does she know that Israel made great efforts to save the black Jews of Ethiopia or that the real imperialist project is of the Muslims who want to destroy Israel? Does she care? Does she care about black lives? I'm not sure that Patrisse cares about black lives because instead of giving money to poor black people she spent donations on lots of expensive houses. According to Ann Brown 10.6 billion dollars was given to BLM but people don't know where the money went after that. Could BLM leaders have pocketed all that money instead of helping their fellow blacks? Do BLM leaders care more about money than their fellow blacks? Could Jews who donated money care more about black people than money?
Should we generalize that all blacks are anti-Semitic? Of course not, Just as blacks should not generalize negative beliefs about all Jews we should not generalize about blacks either. In fact there are many black Jews and there are many black people who are friends with Jews and the most famous of them all, Martin Luther King was a great friend of Jews.
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Patrisse Cullors says Israel is racist. If Israel is so racist why did Israel save African Jews from persecution in Ethiopia?
Click Here For the Lesson on the Rescue of the Black Jews of Ethiopia
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