Letter to Black America on Palestinian Rights
“It is time
for our people to once again demand that the silence be broken.”
On 15 May 2007, 22 Black American professors, writers,
religious figures, and other leaders issued a call to Black America to join in
the June 10 March and rally, and break the silence on the injustices faced by
the Palestinian people.
This document originally appeared in Zmag.org.
To Black
America:
It is time for our
people to once again demand that the silence be broken on the
injustices faced
by the Palestinian people resulting from the Israeli occupation.
On June 10th,
the national coalition known as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
(endtheoccupation.org) will be spearheading a march and rally to commemorate
the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the illegal Israeli
occupation of Palestinian territories.
We, the
signatories of this appeal, ask that Black America again take a leading role in
this effort as well as the broader work to bring attention to this 40 year
travesty of justice.
United
Nations resolutions have called for the Israeli withdrawal, yet the Israeli
government, with the backing of the USA, has ignored them. The Israeli government
has appropriated Palestinian land in open defiance of international law and
overwhelming international condemnation.
“People
are scared in the US, to say ‘wrong is wrong,’ because the pro-Israeli lobby is
powerful – very powerful.”
Within the
USA anyone who speaks in favor of Palestinian rights and justice is immediately
condemned as being allegedly anti-Israel (and frequently allegedly
anti-Semitic), shutting down legitimate discussion. A case in point can be seen
in the current furor surrounding former President Jimmy Carter who was
criticized for his assertion in his best-selling book, Palestine: Peace Not
Apartheid, that Israeli obstructionism lies at the root of the failure to
achieve a just Palestinian/ Israeli settlement.
As Nobel
prizewinner Archbishop Desmond Tutu has written, “People are scared in the
US, to say ‘wrong is wrong,’ because the pro-Israeli lobby is powerful–very
powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a
moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no
longer exists.”
Many of
those who most outspokenly agree with President Carter and Archbishop Tutu are
American Jews. And many American Jews, including the national organization
Jewish Voice for Peace, will be among those rallying for Palestinian rights on
June 10th – as will many other Americans, including member groups of
the leading anti-war coalition United for Peace and Justice.
Leaders
from Black America have repeatedly and historically been among the most outspoken
proponents of justice for the Palestinian people. Our leaders have defended the
Palestinian people’s right to full self-determination and an end to the
Occupation as central to peace in the region. Our leaders have not criticized
the Jewish people but they have expressed outrage at the Israeli government
that collaborated with the apartheid South African government (including in the
development of weapons of mass destruction) and emulated South Africa’s
treatment of its Black majority in its own treatment of the Palestinian people.
“Our own
integrity as a people demands that we step forward, speak out.”
As we
struggle to build our country’s support for Palestinian human rights, we widen
the door for both Arab and Black Americans to deal with the issues that join
them together, as well as those that separate them. We will help to energize –
and to heal – both communities.
June tenth
and Juneteenth: will our struggles lead the way to a new emancipation of
others? Our own integrity as a people, let alone our own experience with
massive injustice and oppression, demand that we step forward, speak out, and
insist on a change in US policy towards the Palestinian people. Since when have
an illegally occupied people been wrong in demanding and fighting for their
human rights and land? Since when have such people and their cause not been
worthy of our support?
Please join
us on June 10th!
Signed by
(affiliation for identification purposes only)
Salih
Booker, former Executive Director of Africa Action
Khephra
Burns, author, editor, playwright
Horace G.
Campbell, Professor of African American Studies and Political Science
Dr. Ron
Daniels, President, Institute of the Black World 21st Century
Bill
Fletcher, labor and international activist, and writer
George
Friday, United for Peace and Justice Co-Chair, National Coordinator,
Independent Progressive Politics Network
Rev.
Graylan Scott Hagler, Senior Minister, Plymouth Congregational United Church of
Christ; National President, Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice
of the United Church of Christ
Mahmood
Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in
the Departments of Anthropology, Political Science and Public and International
Affairs
Manning
Marable, Professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and
African-American Studies
George Paz
Martin, National Co-Chair of United for Peace and Justice and Green Party U.S.
Activist
E.
Ethelbert Miller, literary activist; board chair, Institute for Policy Studies
Prexy
Nesbitt, speaker and educator on Africa, foreign policy, and racism
Barbara
Ransby, Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies
Cedric
Robinson, Professor, Department of Black Studies
The
Rev. Canon Edward W. Rodman MDiv.LCH,DD. Professor of Pastoral Theology and
Urban Ministry at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Ma.
Jamala
Rogers, Black Radical Congress
Don Rojas, former director of communications for the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Zoharah Simmons,
human rights activist
Chuck
Turner, Boston City Councilor
Hollis
Watkins, Former Freedom Singer and staff member of
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; human rights activist (1961 –
present)
Dr. Cornel
West
Emira
Woods, co-director, Foreign Policy In Focus, Institute for Policy Studies
