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By Larry Elder
Republican candidate for president of the United States in 2024
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The Movement for Black Lives released a statement this week calling for Israel to completely withdraw from Palestine. "Our history compels us to act," the statement reads. "We will not remain silent in the face of this full military assault against Gaza." The statement came as the horrors of what Hamas meted out upon thousands of innocent Israeli civilians becomes clearer, as the authorities pry apart the bodies of mothers burnt to death holding their babies, and as more and more of Israel's dead are found and identified every day.
In the wake of this carnage, BLM joined the Left-wing radicals to demand that instead of preventing such bloodshed from ever happening again, Israel lay down arms in a ceasefire.
The statement followed BLM's incendiary praise for Hamas's murderous terror attack against Israel on October 7. "[BLM] Grassroots stands in solidarity with our Palestinian family who are currently resisting 57 years of settler colonialism and apartheid," the organization wrote in a statement on social media days after the attack. "A radical Black organization grounded in abolitionist ideals, we see clear parallels between Black and Palestinian people."
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There was also the infamous BLM Chicago Instagram post, now deleted, which stood in solidarity with the actual murderers, some of whom flew into Israel on hang-gliders. The post depicted one such hang-glider with the caption "I stand with Palestine."
But BLM's support for Hamas is in some ways not surprising. In the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, there has long been a failure on the part of many on the Left to differentiate firefighter from arsonist.
Just today, climate activist Greta Thunberg came out in support of Gaza, though she hasn't had a single word of support for the Israeli victims of Hamas's terror or the 200 hostages which include women, children, babies, and the elderly, being held by Hamas butchers in Gaza.
And historically, too many Black leaders throughout the years have not only stood unequivocally against Israel and with the Palestinians, but made blatantly antisemitic statements. Examples include former Black Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., who urged America to rethink its support of Israel. Reverend Jesse Jackson once called Jews "Hymie" and New York City "Hymie-town." Jackson's acolyte, Al Sharpton, referred to Jews as "diamond merchants." In 1991, Sharpton turned the death of a Black child in a traffic accident in Brooklyn involving a Hasidic Jew into a racial incident. Sharpton led 400 protesters through the Jewish section of Crown Heights. There were four nights of rock- and bottle-throwing, and a young Talmudic scholar was surrounded by a mob shouting "Kill the Jew" and stabbed to death. Then there's Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan, who likens the "plight" of Black Americans to that of the Palestinians, noting Blacks "were in the same position." Farrakhan has also exaggerated the Jewish role in slavery, and once called Hitler a "great man" and Judaism a "gutter religion."
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Anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment are unfortunately common across American higher education, too. Harvard student groups blamed Palestinian terror attacks on Israel while UCLA professors organized events with a pro-Hamas group. This should be no surprise given the liberal bent of college faculty. A recent FIRE study found that only one in four college professors identify as conservative.
This antisemitism that is suffusing the Left under the guise of justice needs to be called out for what it is. BLM enjoys broad support among Black Americans. A June Pew Research Center poll found that 81 percent of Black Americans either support or strongly support BLM. It is well past time to reconsider.
You can now add to BLM's crimes against the Black community an utter disregard for Jewish Americans, who have historically stood by our side in our quest for justice.
Everyone needs to call out the antisemitism in BLM's response to the Hamas attack and everywhere else it rears its ugly head.
Larry Elder is a Republican candidate for president of the United States in 2024. He is the author of "As Goes California: My Mission to Rescue the Golden State and Save the Nation."
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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