Leading up to the establishment of Israel, many Black civil rights organizations saw Zionism—a Jewish movement with the aim of establishing a Jewish state for the protection of the Jewish people—as a liberatory movement for Jews from their oppressors in Europe. Moses and the story of Exile loomed large for many Black activist organizations, and Jewish Americans, also excluded under segregation, would play an important role in the civil rights movement. As a result, many Black organizations were ardently pro-Israel, and many continue to support Israel today. With the onset of the 1967 and later 1973 wars in Israel, the tide began to shift towards understanding Palestinian liberation as an anti-colonial struggle, and as Black activists drew connections between oppressed Black and brown people across the world, Palestinian liberation found new supporters in many Black radical groups such as the Black Panthers and the SNCC. Decades later, Nelson Mandela’s voice would echo those sentiments as he aligned the post apartheid government with Palestinian organizations such as the PLO. Today, a sizable and growing minority of Black Americans support Palestine, in large part due to the solidarity between the Black Lives Matter movement and Palestinians organizations in America and abroad.
Early Black activists such as Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois ardently supported the creation of Israel, as they saw Zionism as a possible model for their own liberation. More integrationist organizations such as the NAACP and the National Urban league were focused on the nascent coalition forming between white liberals, notably including Jewish people, and Black civil rights groups. In the wake of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence and the Nakba, the first notable Black figure to critique Israel was Ralph Bunche, a Black diplomat who helped negotiate the Egypt-Israel treaty after the war and who expressed reservations about the dispossession of Palestinians in the Nakba, an ongoing effort by Israel to exile and dispossess Palestinians from Israel proper and the occupied territories..
Malcolm X was another Black activist to align himself with Palestinians in the late 1950s as a spokesperson for the Nation of Islam. By 1964, he was articulating a question many Palestinians and human rights activists are still asking today: “Did the Zionists have the legal or moral right to invade Arab Palestine, uproot its Arab citizens from their homes and seize all Arab property for themselves just based on the “religious” claim that their forefathers lived there thousands of years ago?”
In the aftermath of the 1956 Suez Canal crisis, where Egypt nationalized and took control of its important waterway from Britain, Abdel Nassar emerged as a prominent anti-colonialist figure, and W.E.B. DuBois wrote a poem “glorifying” the Egyptian leader and denigrating Israel, a sign of his changing politics. However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many civil rights groups in America came to see their struggle for liberation reflected all over the world in various imperialist structures oppressing people of color.
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War was a catalyst that brought Palestinian support into mainstream Black politics. The SNCC and Black Panthers felt there was a natural connection between anti-imperialist struggles around the world, and particularly supported radical leftist groups fighting for Palestinian liberation such as the PFLP. Support for Palestinians became a fault line among civil rights groups, separating liberal and radical groups, although Black support for Palestine had always been a minority opinion in the community.
In the late 60s, as the Black Power movement was sweeping America, thousands of Arabs were migrating to Metro Detroit. When Black auto-workers across Detroit led a series of strikes against racial discrimination and mistreatment, auto companies turned to Arab laborers, assuming they would be more docile. At the outbreak of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Arab workers found out that the UAW chapter representing them had bought $300,000 of Israeli bonds with union dues money. Following the example of their Black coworkers, they struck and demanded the UAW divest from Israel. Other socialist organizations and some Black laborers also participated in the strike.
In the 1980s, the issue was brought into the limelight with Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign. Jackson was a Black civil rights leader and a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference who amassed almost 7 million votes in the 1988 Democratic primary. He had met with Palestinian Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat in 1979 and during his presidential campaign, he publicly compared Israel to the apartheid in South Africa at the time.
The next paradigm shift would be in 2014 with the killing of Michael Brown in a case of police brutality. Black Lives Matter, a movement focused on systemic oppression, sparked many activists to view Israel as the perpetrator of structural violence and occupation funded by the United States. As protestors in Ferguson were choking on tear gas, so were Palestinians, and as videos of both were going viral, BLM activists and Palestinian activists (abroad and in the U.S.) began to interact on social media and draw connections between their struggles. It did not escape activists’ notice that the former St. Louis Police Department chief had visited Israel for joint security training, or that the same two companies sold tear gas to the U.S. and Israel. Palestinian and Black activist groups went on to work together to organize community responses to the ongoing police violence in Ferguson and the rest of America. George Floyd’s murder was another moment of unity as Palestinians put up murals of Floyd and were recorded saying “I can’t breathe” to Israeli police. The use of social media and grassroots organizing have helped produce widespread Black-Palestinian solidarity in recent years.
Since October 7th of last year, over 1,200 Israelis and more than 28,000 Palestinians have died. Horrific photos and videos circulate daily on social media as Palestinian journalists like Bisan and Moataz plead for the lives of their people. In the wake of the ongoing tragedy, public support for Palestinians has been rapidly shifting. Black voters are now the most likely to say they sympathize with Palestine, and BLM organizations across America have criticized President Joe Biden’s response to the violence. However, many Black activists are reluctant to break ties with Israel and are wary of being perceived as antisemitic. Despite this, support for Palestinians has become mainstream, especially among younger audiences. While 52% of Black voters think the U.S. should send Israel more economic and military aid, the public conscience has shifted towards an understanding of the conflict “through the prism of racial justice”. A majority of Democrats now think the U.S. should put more pressure on Israel to resolve the conflict than Palestine, and a plurality of Black voters want a ceasefire. These sentiments have spilled over into Congress as some progressive members such as Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Jamaal Bowman have advocated the same.
Palestinians have long used terms such as apartheid to describe their living conditions, even as Israel vehemently denies that the term is applicable, but many South Africans feel a kinship with Palestinians. South Africa has filed a case with the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide in Gaza, an unsurprising move considering that South Africa’s post-apartheid government has long compared Israel’s policies to apartheid in its own land. The apartheid government of South Africa had close ties with Israel despite many of its leaders’ antisemitism, and this extended to a military partnership dealing with nuclear weapons.
In 1990, Mandela discussed how Yasser Arafat fully supported the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, saying “We identify with the PLO, because just like ourselves, they are fighting for the right of self-determination.” Mandela did not disagree with Israel’s legal right to exist, but argued that the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights should be returned to Palestinians. In 1994, after the apartheid regime was overthrown, Nelson Mandela insisted that South Africa would never be free until Palestine was free, and he worked towards Palestinian liberation throughout the remainder of his career. South Africa today carries that torch as it works to free Palestinians from apartheid. This has had a noticeable impact on discourse surrounding Palestine as Black Americans (and other Americans) who fiercely opposed apartheid see South African leaders attempt to hold Israel accountable.
Communities across America are witnessing Black and Palestinian liberation groups join forces to fight for a brighter future, and Louisville is no exception. Groups like SURJ, a local chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice, Community Control Now, a police abolition group, Black Leadership Action Coalition of Kentucky, and various leftist student organizations have joined forces with Palestinian rights groups such as Louisville for Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, The Louisville Coalition for Gaza, and the Louisville Coalition for a Ceasefire. Grassroots organizing in Louisville for racial justice includes the Palestinian cause and Palestinians in Louisville are urging Representative Morgan McGarvey and Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul to help save Palestinian lives. There has also been a concerted effort to lobby Louisville Metro Council to pass a ceasefire resolution.
As Israel’s assault on Gaza continues, so does the growth of Black-Palestinian Solidarity across America. The similarities between Israel’s IDF and U.S. police forces cannot be ignored for many Black Americans, and Palestinians in Palestine and diaspora see a connection between their own struggles against Israel’s U.S. funded apartheid and police violence in America. The tide is turning away from blind support of Israel’s endless bloodshed against Palestinians, but the U.S. Congress and Biden administration are significantly more pro-Israel than the American people. Pressure from the Black-Palestinian coalition forming across America is an essential component to compel policy change from our leaders.
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