BLACK POWER AND PALESTINE Stanford Studies in COMPARATIVE RACE AND ETHNICITY BL AC K P OW E R AND PALESTINE Transnational Countries of Color Michael R. Fischbach Stanford University Press Stanford, California stanford university press Stanford, California © 2019 by Michael R. Fischbach. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Fischbach, Michael R., author. Title: Black power and Palestine : transnational countries of color / Michael R. Fischbach. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2018. | Series: Stanford studies in comparative race and ethnicity | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018013070 (print) | LCCN 2018022580 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503607392 (e-book) | ISBN 9781503605459 | ISBN 9781503605459(cloth:alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503607385(pbk. :alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Civil rights movements—United States—History—20th century. | Arab-Israeli conflict—1967-1973—Influence. | Black power—United States—History—20th century. | African American civil rights workers— Attitudes. | Arab-Israeli conflict—Foreign public opinion, American. | Public opinion—United States—History—20th century. Classification: LCC E185.615 (ebook) | LCC E185.615 .F527 2018 (print) | DDC 323.1196/073—dc 3 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018013070 Cover design: Christian Fünfhausen Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/15 Adobe Garamond To Lisa, Tara and Adnan, Grace, and Sophia This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Acronyms ix Prologue 1 1. Black Internationalism: Malcolm X and the Rise of Global Solidarity 1 2. The Fire This Time: SNCC, Jews, and the Demise of the Beloved Community 31 3. Reformers, Not Revolutionaries: The NAACP, Bayard Rustin, and Israel 51 4. Balanced and Guarded: Martin Luther King Jr. on the Arab-Israeli Tightrope 71 5. The Power of Words: The Black Arts Movement and a New Narrative 91 6. Struggle and Revolution: The Black Panthers and the Guerrilla Image 111 7. Middle East Symbiosis: Israelis, Arabs, and African Americans 131 8. Red, White, and Black: Communists, Guerrillas, and the Black Mainstream 149 9. A Seat at the Table: Bayard Rustin, Andrew Young, and Black Foreign Policy 169 10. Looking over Jordan: Joseph Lowery, Jesse Jackson, and Yasir Arafat 193 viii contents Epilogue 213 Acknowledgments 219 List of Abbreviations 221 Notes 223 Bibliography 251 Index 265 ACRONYMS ACOA American Committee on Africa ADL Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith AIPAC American Israel Public Affairs Committee AJC American Jewish Committee BASIC Black Americans to Support Israel Committee BLA Black Liberation Army BPP Black Panther Party CBC Congressional Black Caucus COBATAME Committee of Black Americans for Truth About the Middle East COINTELPRO Counter Intelligence Program CORE Congress of Racial Equality CPUSA Communist Party USA LRBW League of Revolutionary Black Workers NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People NAARPR National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression NBPC National Black Political Convention NCNP National Conference for New Politics NNPA National Newspaper Publishers Association OAS Organization of Arab Students PFLP Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine x acronyms PLO Palestine Liberation Organization PUSH People United to Save Humanity SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference SDS Students for a Democratic Society SLA Symbionese Liberation Army SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SWP Socialist Workers Party UNRWA United Nations Relief and Works Agency YOBU Youth Organization for Black Unity BLACK POWER AND PALESTINE This page intentionally left blank PROLOGUE several months after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, left-wing writer Paul Jacobs invited his friend Israeli diplomat Ephraim Evron to meet with some Black Power militants in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Evron was a minister at the Israeli embassy in Washington and earlier had asked Jacobs why black nationalists had supported the Arabs instead of Israel during the war. Jacobs used his connections to find a group of about twenty blacks willing to talk to Evron. He and Jacobs then met with the men at a pri- vate vocational training school called Operation Bootstrap on Central Avenue in Watts in early 1968. The Israeli received an earful. The men criticized Israel’s invasion of Egypt in collusion with Britain and France in the 1956 Suez war, and they told Evron approvingly that the Arabs supported peoples of color around the world. Yet most of their comments were complaints directed at the Jewish community of Los Angeles. They first complained that the money raised by Los Angeles Jews to plant trees in Israel came from profits skimmed from the city’s blackconsumers. It therefore should be their names inscribed on the trees, they groused. One man lashed out at the diplomat by noting that when the Jewish community staged the Rally for Israel’s Survival at the Hollywood Bowl on June 11, 1967, 2 prologue they invited none other than arch conservative California governor Ronald Reagan—no friend to the black community of Los Angeles—to speak. The Israeli diplomat endured another nationalist’s rant that the funds raised by the local Jewish community to help pay for Israeli arms were funds once again taken from the local black community. Continuing on the theme of guns, an- other man complained that while liberal Jews helped the Israelis obtain guns, they refused to help local blacks themselves acquire guns, telling Evron that this was hypocritical and would only encourage violence. When the flustered Evron finally asked why he, and therefore Israel, should be blamed for the actions of Southern California Jews, one black replied with a classic Zionist argument: “You’re one people, aren’t you?”1 The story of the Israeli diplomat’s encounter with the Black Power activists in Watts is instructive inasmuch as it sheds light on the fact that African Ameri- cans were keen observers of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 1960s and 1970s and interpreted it in ways that related to their own lives and priorities at home. Much has been written about the black freedom struggle, yet black Americans’ connec- tion to the Middle East conflict, and the ways it affected them and their con- ceptualization of identity and agency, have been largely overlooked. Who today remembers that famous black activists like Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Jesse Jackson visited parts of Arab Palestine and issued public pronounce- ments on the Arab-Israeli conflict? Militants from the Black Panther Party (BPP), ministers from various Christian denominations, black congressional represen- tatives, and even the boxer Muhammad Ali all visited the Middle East during that tumultuous period, where they met with Palestinians from all walks of life, including Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chair Yasir Arafat. Important black political conferences issued statements on Israel and the Palestinians, and men and women of the arts and letters like those in the Black Arts Movement highlighted Israel and the Palestinians in their poetry and prose. Given the high-profile nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict after the June1967 war in the Middle East, it should come as no surprise that militant and main- stream blacks alike found themselves drawn into taking stands on that distant conflict during the turbulent years thereafter. This was not simply because this particular foreign policy issue was in the headlines so much but also because it had such tremendous resonance with regard to their respective agendas and understandings of how black identity and black political activity should be ex- prologue 3 pressed in America. The truth is that black arguments over whether to support Israel or the Palestinians mirrored much deeper intrablack debates about race, identity, and political action in the 1960s and 1970s and ended up symbiotically affecting both them and people in the faraway Middle East. How to approach the Arab-Israeli conflict became much more than just a tertiary sideshow to more important matters facing black Americans, with the result that black ad- vocacy for one side or the other in the conflict ended up deeply affecting not just them but wider American politics and society. For example, it was the Black Power movement in the 1960s that issued the first significant pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel viewpoints ever to reach a large American audience outside the hard Left. Stemming from their international- ist anti-imperialism, black militants latched on to the Palestinian cause as an- other liberation struggle waged by a people of color deserving their support. They saw themselves and the Palestinians as kindred peoples of color waging a revolution against a global system of oppression. Yet in issuing strident state- ments of solidarity with the Palestinians as a people fighting to be free just as they were doing, these activists also were intertwining their own identity and vision of place in America with the Palestinians’ struggle. Given that the Black Power movement threatened their vision of the multi- racial beloved community of Christians and Jews united for justice, it comes as no surprise that most mainstream civil rights advocates quickly countered by lining up solidly behind Israel during and after the 1967 war. That was a safer, more traditional “inside-the-system” attitude that reflected their more conserva- tive visions of black identity and their wider politics: change the system; don’t overthrow it. This is why one’s stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict rose to such importance within the two wings of the black freedom struggle. It was not merely because blacks held different perspectives on that issue but also because it became a crucial reference point by which they created and articulated their respective visions of identity, place, and struggle in America.