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NOTE: Bold text in directly quoted material indicates my emphasis
and not by the originators of the quotations.
BLACK LIVES MATTER ENGAGES IN ANTI-SEMITISM
There was a time when the most prominent group supporting
African-Americans demands for racial equality in America was American Jewry. American
Jews even gave their lives in the civil right struggle of America’s Blacks. But now,
some six decades later, America’s Jews are appalled to find they are being subjected
to a growing and often violent wave of anti-Semitism by leaders and supporter of the
Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
Much of America is beginning to feel duped by the Black Lives
Matter movement. “As BLM’s violence spreads, attacking innocent people in the streets,
extorting business, and killing cops, they become more popular with celebrities and
leftists who are fighting hard to start a race war in the US.
“Each week, as BLM thugs have pillaged cities, corporations
{were} kowtowing to the mob to show their support for the movement. But now that the
BLM is clarifying their racist position toward Israel and the Jewish people, corporations
that once praised the mob are now trying to dissociate from it.
- - -
“It didn’t take long for the most recent Black Lives Matter
march in Washington DC to become anti-Semitic as protestors began accusing the Jews and
shouting them out. The march . . . reveals that there is more to the BLM than meets the
eye. They are a destabilizing force operating outside the rule of law, manipulated by
bad actors . . . to be used as a paramilitary operation against the American republic
and the rule of law.
“. . . Approximately two hundred demonstrators gathered in DC,
marching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol building as they shouted anti-Semitic
remarks against the Jewish people. . .” (Ref. 1)
JEWS JOINED WITH BLACKS IN FIGHT FOR RACIAL EQUALITY
What many of today’s Americans, including Blacks, don’t
know, or have forgotten, is the significant role played by Jews in working for many years
to help African Americans gain equal rights in American society. Some even gave their lives
in the long and bitter struggle for racial justice and equality. Today’s erupting
anti-Semitism in the current Black Lives Matter movement is thus a bitter repayment for the
efforts and sacrifices of numerous American Jews who manned the trenches along with Blacks
in the early civil rights movement.
“Judaism teaches respect for the fundamental rights of others as
each person's duty to God. ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor’ (Babylonian
Talmud, Shabbat 31a). Equality in the Jewish tradition is based on the concept that all of
God's children are ‘created in the image of God’ (Genesis 1:27). From that flows the
biblical injunction, ‘You shall have one law for the stranger and the citizen alike:
for I, Adonai, am your God’ (Leviticus 24:22).
“American Jews played a significant role in the founding and funding
of some of the most important civil rights organizations, including the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Leadership Conference on Civil and
Human Rights, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1909, Henry Moscowitz joined W.E.B. DuBois and other
civil rights leaders to found the NAACP. Kivie Kaplan, a vice-chairman of the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations (now the Union for Reform Judaism), served as the national
president of the NAACP from 1966 to 1975. Arnie Aronson worked with A. Philip Randolph and
Roy Wilkins to found the Leadership Conference.
“From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary
schools and twenty 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 forty percent of
southern blacks were educated at one of these institutions.
“During the Civil Rights Movement, Jewish activists
represented a disproportionate number of whites 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.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of
1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism,
under the aegis of the Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's
building. The Jewish community has continued its support of civil rights laws addressing
persistent discrimination in voting, housing and employment . . .”
(Ref. 2)
One prominent advocate of Black civil rights was Kivie Kaplan,
a Jewish American businessman and philanthropist, who served as president of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1966 until his death in 1975.
I remember Kivie Kaplan from my early twenties, when it first seemed strange to me for a Jew to
be president of an organization devoted to working for "colored people". I soon realized the
problems facing America's Blacks and the work being performed by Kaplan. As a result, I became
a member of the NAACP.
Kaplan joined the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) in
1932 and was elected to the National Board in 1954. In 1966, he was elected its President
and held that post until his death. As president, Kaplan spoke throughout the United States
on the organization's behalf and sought financial contributions. Kaplan was a trustee of
two black colleges, Lincoln University and Tougaloo College, and treasurer of The Crisis
magazine. He and his wife Emily fought in support of civil rights for all. He was one in
a long line of American Jews who held a leadership role in African American civil rights
groups.[3]
Kaplan was a civil rights leader and he was a fierce activist
and advocate. He spent nine years as the president of the NAACP, and in 1965, marched with
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. They were jailed together several times, and during
the Freedom Summer, he went to Mississippi to register black voters. He was an organizer
who traveled the country selling lifetime NAACP memberships. By the time of his death in 1975,
membership had gone from 221 to 53,000. Kivie kaplan believed firmly in the Jewish idea
that we were all created in God’s image, and so, at the age of 28, he joined the NAACP
to help promote equality for all. [4]
Jews and Blacks worked together, arm-in-arm to gain equality
for Blacks. Two Jews - Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman – along with African-American
James Chaney were killed by a Ku Klux Klan mob near Meridian, Mississippi. On 21 June 1964.
The three young civil rights workers were working to register black voters in Mississippi,
thus inspiring the ire of the local Klan.
When the desegregation movement encountered resistance in the
early 1960s, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) set up an interracial team to ride
buses into the Deep South to help protest. These so-called Freedom Riders were viciously
attacked.
The Freedom Riders were not dissuaded and they continued to come
into Alabama and Mississippi. Michael Schwerner was a particularly dedicated activist who
lived in Mississippi while he assisted blacks to vote.
When Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney were coming back from a trip to
Philadelphia, Mississippi, a deputy sheriff, who was also a Klan member, pulled them over
for speeding. He then held them in custody while other KKK members prepared for their murder.
Eventually released, the three activists were chased down in their car and cornered in a
secluded spot in the woods where they were shot and then buried in graves that had been
prepared in advance.[5]
These three Freedom Riders – two
Jews and a Black – struggled together for Black racial equality and the
three died together.
Why then, is it today that the Black Lives Matter movement has
taken on a decidedly anti-Semitic aspect? Doesn’t anyone remember the words “United we stand,
divided we fall? Doesn’t anyone get It?
AN AMERICAN BLACK GETS IT
“One of the greatest basketball players of all time has given
an insightful and eloquent warning that the lack of attention to anti-Semitism is helping
to perpetuate racism in America.
“Los Angeles Lakers all-star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a columnist
for The Hollywood Reporter and wrote a stern warning . . . that there was an
alarming connection between hatred of Jews on social media and Black Lives Matter.
“ ‘Anti-Semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment
celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement,
but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation,’ Abdul-Jabbar wrote.
“The six-time NBA champion said he was shocked at the lack of
response from people in Hollywood and the sports world who should have been highly aware
of the hate comments and reacted as vociferously as they would other forms of racism.
“ ‘We expected more passionate public outrage. What we got was
a shrug of meh-rage,’ he wrote.
- - -
“ ‘After all, if it’s OK to discriminate against one group of
people by hauling out cultural stereotypes without much pushback, it must be OK to do the
same to others. Illogic begets illogic,’ he said.
“The icon of excellence in basketball said recent anti-Semitic
posts by rapper Ice Cube and NFL player DeSean Jackson should have been ‘laughed at by
anyone with a middle-school grasp of reason,’ but he was alarmed when former NBA player
Stephen Jackson agreed with DeSean Jackson.
“Abdul-Jabbar slammed Stephen Jackson for his support for the
‘anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan,’ leader of the Nation of Islam.
“ ‘That is the kind of dehumanizing characterization of a people
that causes the police abuses that killed . . . George Floyd.’
“The NBA legend also noted that others . . . have also fallen
into the trap of posting anti-Jewish tropes.
“ ‘These famous, outspoken people share the same scapegoat logic
as all oppressive groups from Nazis to the KKK: all our troubles are because of bad-apple
groups that worship wrong, have the wrong complexion, come from the wrong country…,’ he
said.‘It’s so disheartening to see people from groups that have been violently
marginalized do the same thing to others without realizing that perpetuating this kind
of bad logic is what perpetuates racism.’
“Abdul-Jabbar said apologizing was not enough: ‘Celebrities have
a responsibility to get the words right. It’s not enough to have good intentions, because
it’s the actual deeds — and words — which have the real impact. In this case destructive
impact.’
- - -
“ ‘The lesson never changes, so why is it so hard for some people to learn:
No one is free until everyone is free. As Martin Luther King Jr. explained:
‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.’ So, let’s act like it. If we’re going to be outraged by injustice, let’s be outraged by injustice against anyone.‘ ” (Ref. 6)
NOTICE: WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGEHER
Blacks, Jews and all other true Americans need to remember that
we are all in this together. As Benjamin Franklin famously said some 250 years ago: “We
must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately. ”
(Ref. 7)
All Americans “would do well to recall an element of shared
history that still offers inspiration, when many Jews and Blacks stood shoulder-to-shoulder —
and in some cases gave their lives together — in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s
and 1960s. When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched next to Martin Luther King Jr.
in Alabama, or Joe Rauh, Arnold Aronson and Marvin Caplan lobbied behind the scenes
to help pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 . . . <>br/>
“. . . Jews sometimes saw their own story as charting a path
that Blacks {could follow}. When 19 Conservative rabbis flew to Birmingham in 1963 during
a series of violent civil rights protests, they taught Hebrew songs in Black churches —
with one declaring, ‘Our people are your people.’ Indeed, {at that} moment, many Blacks
and Jews found their commonalities more notable than their differences.
“Today that sense of commonality must be renewed. . .”
(Ref. 8)
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References:
- Black Lives Matter goes full anti-Jew: Now racism is part of the terrorist
organization’s manifesto,
Lance D Johnson, Natural News,
2 July 2020.
- Jews and the Civil Rights Movement, ReligiousActionCenter.org,
Accessed 18 July 2020.
- Kivie Kaplan, Wikipedia, Accesses 16 July 2020.
- Why Civil Rights Are Everyone’s Problem — & What You Can Do,
Gabriel Sands, REFINERY29,
18 January 2016.
- The KKK kills three civil rights activists, History.com,
Accessed 16 July 2020.
- NBA Legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Blasts Anti-Semitism in Black Lives Matter
Movement, Yakir Benzion,
United With Israel, 16 July 2020.
- Benjamin Franklin > Quotes > Quotable Quote, Ethan B. Katz and
Deborah Lipstadt, goodreads.com,
Accessed 18 July 2020.
- Far more unites Black and Jewish Americans than divides them,
Ethan B. Katz and Deborah Lipstadt,
CNN, 18 July 2020.
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