Morning, Threaders, Threadheads, and all in between. Coffee helps.
“The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”
MLK Jr., October, 1967
These words are undeniably from MLK Jr. himself. You can see him saying them in footage from an interview. And yet…
When King spoke those words only three years had passed since the notion of a Palestinian nationality was crafted by an Egyptian named Yasser Arafat. At the height of the civil rights movement, the American Jewish community supported it and joined in out of their identification with the plight of Black Americans. This connection has always been present and many have tried to sever it from the start.
Those who claim MLK Jr. “didn’t mean what he said” point to the controversial “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend”, attributed to King but disputed as verifiably his. Although in this letter the idea of anti-Zionism being nothing but antisemitism is approached, they quickly jump to the conclusion that, since there was an effort to “falsify” King’s ideas on the matter, what he demonstrably said didn’t mean what it seems to.
The Soviet Era campaign against Israel, completed with the USSR express support for Arafat’s Fatah, later not so overtly given by virtue of Black September, was in its early years back in 1967. King also tied his views on the Soviet Union with the fight of the Jewish people for survival: “We cannot sit complacently by the wayside while our Jewish brothers in the Soviet Union face the possible extinction of their cultural and spiritual life”, he stated clearly.
All this to say that anytime you see people talking about MLK Jr. as a defender of Palestinian rights against Israel’s right to exist they always do so conditionally, arguing he wouldn’t show any support for Israel had he lived longer or was alive today. “But did he support Israel in the war? Why didn’t he visit Israel?” These questions emerge even in Harvard papers who advocate for a more nuanced approach to King’s views on Israel and Palestine.
It’s almost as if, unable to sever the ties between the struggle of MLK Jr. and that of the Jewish people, they take refuge in nuance as a first step to proclaim he would say different had he the chance to see the whole picture today. Nuance isn’t the problem; it never was. The problem, to these people, is clarity. Like Arafat, they squirm in the corners they back themselves into, forced to admit Israel exists, only to break out in favor of a one Arab state where the Jewish state lives.
We still struggle with the notion of systemic racism but at least that fact has left the fringes of political discourse and finally took center stage. Not so with antisemitism. And yet, any Jew will probably tell you they feel like Mohamed Ali when he described the reality of life in America for black people. A thousand friendly snakes will not shield them from the ten thousand rushing towards the open door. Like the black man, the Jew’s best course of action is to close the door.
Which brings us to “Islamophobia”. While racism and antisemitism are openly regarded as “gross exaggerations” of systemic oppression, “Islamophobia” is more often than not described as an undeniable reality, not underlying but at the very surface of our society, not just systemic but especially endemic. “Everyone knows that”. And yet, like the snakes in Ali’s analogy, what are we, Westerners, supposed to do as we watch ten thousand Muslims rushing towards our door?
While all evidence points to most ten thousand being hateful and fundamentally engaged in a Da’wah dressed Jihad, there’s the case to be made for the one thousand who are modernists and capable of coexisting with us. But like Mohamed Ali said, they all look alike. Better close the door. The parallel with the snake analogy breaks here, when applied to fundamentalist Islam. What became systemic, in Western societies, was the belief Islam is a religion of peace.
Just as it became norm to justify the visible traits of hegemonic theocracy in Islamic societies as “respectable cultural features” at the exact same time we rebel against the same regarding Christian (and Jewish/Israeli) societies. The Achilles heel of the State of Israel is its strength: to this day, the effort to build a modern, secular, inclusive, democratic society goes on in Israel. Another imperfect democracy. “Shocking”, I know.
Because of the unique Jewish identity, the eternal mix between religion and nationality illustrated by the obstacles preventing Israel from adopting a form of Constitutional structure, our efforts to superimpose Western blueprints on Israel are doomed to fail. The more you dive into it, the more a two state solution becomes obvious. And yet, despite all this, Arab Israelis consider themselves to live better lives than most Arabs in their own countries.
That fact, which is not contradictory of the differences between the lives of Jewish and Arab Israelis, is hardly mentioned in the West. Just like the ongoing demonstrations of Palestinians against Hamas in Gaza are conveniently ignored in the news. Nuance is not the enemy: clarity is. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Israel has the right to exist. Making pro Palestinian supporters agree to such simple truths is like pulling teeth.
To Black Americans, same as to Jewish Americans, the ten thousand snakes are a clear and present danger. They can feel it in their bones. To most of the rest of us, it is finally becoming clear how that feels like, as we close the door ourselves on our very own families and friends who turned out to be among the hateful, although they look just like us. Perhaps now clarity will prevail before nuance can be invoked. Nuance asks for clarity first. We should be wise to understand this.
