The organization Black Lives Matter (BLM)—formed in response to the deaths last year of several young African-Americans at the hands of police—recently released its official platform. It proclaims, among other things, the need to divest from Israel on the grounds that it is “complicit in the genocide against the Palestinian people.” Chloe Valdary comments:
An organization formed to confront systemic prejudice against black Americans—which predates the reestablishment of the state of Israel—is now intimating that such prejudice is caused by the Jewish state’s supposed genocidal tendencies (which somehow, according to census reports, have led to a population increase among Palestinians). . . .
[I]t’s worth demonstrating how far removed BLM is from honoring the legacy of its [purported intellectual] ancestors by reminding readers just how pro-Zionist prominent leaders in the black community have been throughout history—and how Zionism helped shape black politics in America.
Edward Wilmot Blyden, founder of the 19th-century American Pan-African movement, famously wrote that he had “the deepest possible interest in the current history of the Jews—especially in that marvelous movement called Zionism.”
W.E.B. Dubois, founder of the NAACP, declared in 1919, “The African movement must mean to us what the Zionist movement must mean to the Jews. . . . For any ebullition of effort and feeling that results in an amelioration of the lot of Africa tends to ameliorate the conditions of colored peoples throughout the world.” . . .
Hamas, [by contrast], has played a serious role in the human bondage of black Africans. Yet this seems to go unnoticed by BLM. . . .
Read more on Tablet: http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/209977/black-lives-matters-jewish-problem