[Peace-discuss] MLK and Zionism
rohloff
rohloff at students.uiuc.edu
Sat Jan 25 13:38:40 CST 2003
Fraud fit for a King: Israel, Zionism, and the misuse of MLK
Tim Wise, Zmag.org, 25 January 2003
Rarely am I considered insufficiently cynical. As someone who does anti-
racism work for a living, and thus hears all manner of excuse-making by
those who wish desperately to avoid being considered racist, not much
surprises me. I expect people to lie about race; to tell me how many black
friends they have; to swear they haven't a racist bone in their bodies. And
every January, with the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday just around the
corner, I have come to expect someone to misuse the good doctor's
words so as to push an agenda he would not likely have supported. As
such, I long ago resigned myself to the annual gaggle of fools who deign
to use King's "content of their character" line from the 1963 March on
Washington so as to attack affirmative action, ostensibly because King
preferred simple "color-blindness."
That King actually supported the efforts that we now call affirmative action-
-and even billions in reparations for slavery and segregation--as I've
documented in a previous column, matters not to these folks. They've
never read King's work, and they've only paid attention to one news clip
from one speech, so what more can we expect from such precious
simpletons as these? And yet, even with my cynic's credentials
established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just
make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim
that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a
collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception
is something special. The hoax of which I speak is one currently making
the rounds on the Internet, which claims to prove King's steadfast support
for Zionism. Indeed, it does more than that.
In the item, entitled "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," King proclaims that
criticism of Zionism is tantamount to anti-Semitism, and likens those who
criticize Jewish nationalism as manifested in Israel, to those who would
seek to trample the rights of blacks. Heady stuff indeed, and 100%
bullshit, as any amateur fact checker could ascertain were they so
inclined. But of course, the kinds of folks who push an ideology that
required the expulsion of three-quarters-of-a-million Palestinians from
their lands, and then lied about it, claiming there had been no such
persons to begin with (as with Golda Meir's infamous quip), can't be
expected to place a very high premium on truth. I learned this the hard way
recently, when the Des Moines Jewish Federation succeeded in getting
me yanked from the city's MLK day events: two speeches I had been
scheduled to give on behalf of the National Conference of Community and
Justice (NCCJ).
Because of my criticisms of Israel--and because I as a Jew am on record
opposing Zionism philosophically--the Des Moines shtetl decided I was
unfit to speak at an MLK event. After sending the supposed King quote
around, and threatening to pull out all monies from the Jewish community
for future NCCJ events, I was dropped. The attack of course was based
on a distortion of my own beliefs as well. Federation principal Mark
Finkelstein claimed I had shown a disregard for the well-being of Jews,
despite the fact that my argument has long been that Zionism in practice
has made world Jewry less safe than ever. But it was his duplicity on
King's views that was most disturbing. Though Finkelstein only recited
one line from King's supposed "letter" on Zionism, he lifted it from the
larger letter, which appears to have originated with Rabbi Marc Schneier,
who quotes from it in his 1999 book, "Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King
Jr. and the Jewish Community." Therein, one finds such over-the-top
rhetoric as this:
"I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo
through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism,
they mean Jews--this is God's own truth." The letter also was filled with
grammatical errors that any halfway literate reader of King's work should
have known disqualified him from being its author, to wit: "Anti-Zionist is
inherently anti Semitic, and ever will be so."
The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967
edition of Saturday Review, and supposedly can also be read in the
collection of King's work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the
Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That the claimants never mention the
publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might
not be genuine, and indeed it isn't. The book doesn't exist. As for Saturday
Review, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions
contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and
the other contained a review of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's album. No King
letter anywhere.
Yet its lack of authenticity hasn't prevented it from having a long
shelf-life.
Not only does it pop up in the Schneier book, but sections of it were read
by the Anti-Defamation League's Michael Salberg in testimony before a
House Subcommittee in July of 2001, and all manner of pro-Israel groups
(from traditional Zionists to right-wing Likudites, to Christians who
support ingathering Jews to Israel so as to prompt Jesus' return), have
used the piece on their websites.
In truth, King appears never to have made any public comment about
Zionism per se; and the only known statement he ever made on the topic,
made privately to a handful of people, is a far cry from what he is
purported to have said in the so-called "Letter to an Anti-Zionist friend." In
1968, according to Seymour Martin Lipset, King was in Boston and
attended a dinner in Cambridge along with Lipset himself and a number
of black students. After the dinner, a young man apparently made a fairly
harsh remark attacking Zionists as people, to which King responded:
"Don't talk like that. When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews.
You're talking Anti-Semitism." Assuming this quote to be genuine, it is still
far from the ideological endorsement of Zionism as theory or practice that
was evidenced in the phony letter.
After all, to respond to a harsh statement about individuals who are
Zionists with the warning that such language is usually a cover for anti-
Jewish bias is understandable. More than that, the comment was no
doubt true for most, especially in 1968. It is a statement of opinion as to
what people are thinking when they say a certain thing. It is not a
statement as to the inherent validity or perfidy of a worldview or its
effects.
Likewise, consider the following analogous dualism: first, that "opposition
to welfare programs is forever racism," and secondly, that "when people
criticize welfare recipients, they mean blacks. This is racism."
Whereas the latter statement may be true--and studies would tend to
suggest that it is--the former is a matter of ideological conviction, largely
untestable, and thus more tendentious than its counterpart. In any event,
as with the King quotes--both fabricated and genuine--the truth of the
latter says nothing about the truth or falsity of the former.
So yes, King was quick to admonish one person who expressed hostility
to Zionists as people. But he did not claim that opposition to Zionism was
inherently anti-Semitic. And for those who criticize Zionism today and who
like me are Jewish, to believe that we mean to attack Jews, as Jews,
when we speak out against Israel and Zionism is absurd.
As for King's public position on Israel, it was quite limited and hardly
formed a cornerstone of his worldview. In a meeting with Jewish leaders
a few weeks before his death, King noted that peace for Israelis and
Arabs were both important concerns. According to King, "peace for Israel
means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to
exist, its territorial integrity."
But such a statement says nothing about how Israel should be
constituted, nor addresses the Palestinians at all, whose lives and
challenges were hardly on the world's radar screen in 1968.
At the time, Israel's concern was hostility from Egypt; and of course all
would agree that any nation has the right not to be attacked by a neighbor.
The U.S. had a right not to be attacked by the Soviet Union too--as King
would have no doubt agreed, thereby affirming the United States' right to
exist. But would anyone claim that such a sentiment would have implied
the right of the U.S. to exist as it did, say in 1957 or 1961, under
segregation? Of course not.
So too Israel. Its right to exist in the sense of not being violently
destroyed
by hostile forces does not mean the right to exist as a Jewish state per
se, as opposed to the state of all its citizens. It does not mean the right to
laws granting special privileges to Jews from around the world, over
indigenous Arabs.
It should also be noted that in the same paragraph where King reiterated
his support for Israel's right to exist, he also proclaimed the importance of
massive public assistance to Middle Eastern Arabs, in the form of a
Marshall Plan, so as to counter the poverty and desperation that often
leads to hostility and violence towards Israeli Jews.
This part of King's position is typically ignored by the organized Jewish
community, of course, even though it was just as important to King as
Israel's territorial integrity.
As for what King would say today about Israel, Zionism, and the
Palestinian struggle, one can only speculate.
After all, he died before the full tragedy of the occupation of the West Bank
and Gaza would be able to unfold.
He died before the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel; before the
invasion of Lebanon and the massacres at Sabra and Shatilla; before the
1980's intifada; before Israel decided to serve as a proxy for U.S. foreign
policy--funneling weapons to fascist governments in South Africa,
Argentina and Guatemala, or helping to arm terrorist thugs in
Mozambique and the contras in Nicaragua.
He died before the proliferation of illegal settlements throughout the
territories; before the rash of suicide/homicide bombings; before the polls
showing that nearly half of Israeli Jews support removing Palestinians via
"transfer" to neighboring countries.
But one thing is for sure. While King would no doubt roundly condemn
Palestinian violence against innocent civilians, he would also condemn
the state violence of Israel.
He would condemn launching missile attacks against entire
neighborhoods in order to flush out a handful of wanted terrorists.
He would oppose the handing out of machine guns to religious fanatics
from Brooklyn who move to the territories and proclaim their God-given
right to the land, and the right to run Arabs out of their neighborhoods, or
fence them off, or discriminate against them in a multitude of ways.
He would oppose the unequal rationing of water resources between
Jews and Arabs that is Israeli policy.
He would oppose the degrading checkpoints through which Palestinian
workers must pass to get to their jobs, or back to their homes after a long
day of work.
He would oppose the policy which allows IDF officers to shoot children
throwing rocks, as young as age twelve.
In other words, he would likely criticize the working out of Zionism on the
ground, as it has actually developed in the real world, as opposed to the
world of theory and speculation.
These things seem imminently clear from any honest reading of his work
or examination of his life. He would be a broker for peace. And it is a
tragedy that instead of King himself, we are burdened with charlatans like
those at the ADL, or the Des Moines Jewish Federation, or Rabbis like
Marc Schneier who think nothing of speaking for the genuine article, in a
voice not his own
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