It
might seem odd for Obama to mention Israel and “ radical Islam” in a speech focused
on US race
relations, especially since Wright’s most widely reported
comments were about America’s historic and ongoing oppression of its
black citizens.
But
for months, even before most Americans had heard of Wright,
prominent pro-Israel activists were hounding Obama over Wright’s
views on Israel and ties to
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In January, Abraham
Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
demanded that Obama denounce Farrakhan as an anti-Semite.
The senator duly did so, but that was not enough. “[Obama
has] distanced himself from his pastor’s decision to honor
Farrakhan,” Foxman said, but “He has not distanced himself
from his pastor. I think that’s the next step.” Foxman labeled
Wright “a black racist,” adding in the same breath, “Certainly
he has very strong anti-Israel views” (Larry Cohler-Esses,
“ADL Chief to Obama: ‘Confront Your Pastor’ On Minister Farrakhan,”
The Jewish Week, 16 January 2008). Criticism of Israel,
one suspects, is Wright’s truly unforgivable crime and Foxman’s
vitriol has echoed through dozens of pro-Israel blogs.
Since
his early political life in Chicago, Barack
Obama was well-informed about the Middle East and had expressed
nuanced views conveying an understanding that justice and
fairness, not blinkered support for Israel,
are the keys to peace and the right way to combat extremism.
Yet for months he has been fighting the charge that he is
less rabidly pro-Israel than other candidates - which means
now adhering to the same simplistic formulas and unconditional
support for Israeli policies that have helped to escalate
conflict and worsen America’s standing in the Middle
East. Hence, Obama’s assertion at his 26 February debate with
Senator Hillary Clinton that he is “a stalwart friend of Israel.”
But
Obama stressed that his appeal to Jewish voters also stems
from his desire “to rebuild what I consider to be a historic
relationship between the African American community and the
Jewish community.”
Obama
has not addressed to a national audience why that relationship
might have frayed. He was much more candid when speaking to
Jewish leaders in Cleveland just one day before the debate. In a little-noticed
comment, reported on 25 February by the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, Obama tried to contextualize Wright’s critical
views of Israel. Wright, Obama explained, “was very active
in the South Africa divestment movement and you will recall
that there was a tension that arose between the African American
and the Jewish communities during that period when we were
dealing with apartheid in South Africa, because Israel and
South Africa had a relationship at that time. And that cause
- that was a source of tension.”
Obama
implicitly admitted that Wright’s views were rooted in opposition
to Israel’s
deep ties to apartheid South
Africa, and thus entirely reasonable
even if Obama himself did “not necessarily,” as he put it,
share them. Israel
supplied South
Africa with hundreds of millions of dollars
of weaponry despite an international embargo. Even the water
cannons that South African forces used to attack anti-apartheid
demonstrators in the townships were manufactured at Kibbutz
Beit Alfa, a “socialist” settlement in northern Israel.
Until the late 1980s, South
Africa often relied on Israel
to lobby Western governments not to impose sanctions.
And
the relationship was durable. As The Washington Post
reported in 1987, “When it comes to Israel and South Africa, breaking up is hard to do.” Israeli
officials, the newspaper said, “face conflicting imperatives:
their desire to get in line with the West, which has adopted
a policy of mild but symbolic sanctions, versus Israel’s longstanding
friendship with the Pretoria government, a relationship that
has been important for strategic, economic and, at times,
sentimental reasons” (“An Israeli Dilemma: S. African Ties;
Moves to Cut Links Are Slowed by Economic Pressures, Sentiment,”
The Washington Post, 20 September 1987).
In
1987, Jesse Jackson, then the world’s most prominent African
American politician, angered some Jewish American leaders
for insisting that “Whoever is doing business with South Africa
is wrong, but Israel is ... subsidized by America, which includes
black Americans’ tax money, and then it subsidizes South Africa”
(“Jackson Draws New Criticism From Jewish Leaders Over Interview,”
Associated Press, 16 October 1987). As a presidential
candidate, Jackson raised the same concerns
in a high profile meeting with the Israeli ambassador, as
did a delegation of black civil rights and religious leaders,
including the nephew of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on a visit
to Israel. For many African Americans, it was intolerable
hypocrisy that so many Jewish leaders who staunchly supported
Civil Rights and the anti-apartheid movement would be tolerant
of Israel’s complicity.
Thus,
Reverend Wright, who has sought a broader understanding of
the Middle East than one that blames Islam and Arabs for all
the region’s problems or endorses unconditional support for
Israel, stood in the mainstream of African American
opinion, not on some extremist fringe.
That
is not to say that Jewish concerns about anti-Semitic sentiments
among some African Americans should simply be dismissed. Racism
in any community should be confronted. But as they have done
with other communities, hard-line pro-Israel activists like
Foxman have too often tried to tar any African American critic
of Israel
with the brush of anti-Semitism. Why must every black candidate
to a major office go through the ritual of denouncing Farrakhan,
a marginal figure in national politics who likely gets most
of his notoriety from the ADL? Surely if anti-Semitism were
such an endemic problem among African Americans, there would
be someone other than Farrakhan for the ADL to have focused
its ire on all these decades.
By
contrast, neither Senator Joe Lieberman (Al Gore’s running
mate in 2000 and the first Jewish candidate on a major party
presidential ticket), nor Senator John McCain have been required
so publicly and so repeatedly to repudiate extremist and racist
comments by Israeli leaders or some well-known radical Christian
leaders supporting the Republican party. Foxman, whose organization
devotes enormous resources to burnishing Israel’s image, has
rarely spoken out about the escalating anti-Arab racism and
incitement to violence by prominent Israeli politicians and
rabbis.
That
is no surprise. African Americans, Arab Americans and Muslims
all share some things in common: individuals are held collectively
responsible for the words and actions of others in their community
whether they had anything to do with them or not. And the
price of admission to the political mainstream is to abandon
any foreign policy goals that diverge from those of the pro-Israel,
anti-Palestinian lobby.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator, Ali Abunimah, is a Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada
and is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).
Click
here to contat Mr. Abunimah and the The
Electronic Intifada.