When Moshe Met Moses
Fascinating history of the ties between the Zionist movement and the black civil rights movement, starting in the late 19th century and carrying on, through illustrious leaders in both communities, until the 50s and 60s. What happened then to break the bonds forged by oppression and aspiration?
Leftism:
THE SUBSEQUENT anti-Israel shift in African-American and African opinion - far from being a natural evolution of historical attitudes - was very much driven by the white leftist party line. It began as early as the 1956 Suez Campaign with Du Bois. During the Popular Front era when the Kremlin’s line had been pro-Israel, Du Bois denounced Saudi Arabia’s unrepentant continuation of the slave trade and criticized the Arabs for “widespread ignorance and poverty and disease and a fanatic belief in the Mohammedan religion.” U-turning after the new anti-Israel party line, Du Bois in a 1956 poem, “Suez,” portrayed Israelis as “the shock troops” of Anglo-American imperialists.
It’s not like we don’t already know this, but there’s a great history to be written (or read, if already written) about the Soviet poisoning of the Middle East with its support of Arafat and other quasi-fascistic figures there. Southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa—commie fingerprints are all over the place. But the Arab states have yet to be fully investigated—or at least reported.