OK? Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t see or predict Israel operating an open air prison in the Gaza Strip, or an apartheid-like system in the West Bank. There wasn’t that much to criticize about Israel during his lifetime.
You think that just started? Israel was easily around 50k+ dead Palestinians and at least 50% of the way to stealing the land they have now when MLK was in his 20’s. So yeah… That 50k is a generously low number. This shit started in the 1800’s and the murders and land theft began in the early 1900’s. ALL before the Holocaust. The Holocaust and antisemitism as the reasons for starting Israel are a lie when you carbon date the operations.
Israel didn’t control the West Bank or Gaza Strip until 1967, less than a year before MLK’s death.
I’m opposed to what Israel has been doing with those two territories. I’m not opposed to Israel’s existence, I don’t consider it any less legitimate than any other country; many countries were founded on violence or other horrible things that I don’t condone.
Even if he didn’t predict it, from the getgo Israel had been a settler colonialist project that’s similar to the one that he was born in and which led to the oppressive predicament of African Americans. To not recognize this fact shows hypocrisy.
I think that MLK was a lot closer to a different era of politics around Israel (and colonialism in general) than what we have today, and there needs to be some analysis of that. Israel was and is a settler colonial project, but the dynamics of that were completely different at the time. I doubt he saw Israel as the western MIC blacksite it became, and more saw it akin to something like Liberia, which he also supported. Which, yes, Liberia is also a colonial project. Like he was still a deeply religious man; I guarantee you he saw Jews as a racial diaspora as opposed to just a religious minority. Dude would have said with his full chest that Palestine was their “ancestral home.” Does that make him a hypocrite? Idk maybe. It does show himself as a bigot, ignorant of race and racism outside of the US yet willing to comment on it. But, idk. I think this deserves discussion at least, that the Israel of yesterday, while wrong on almost every level, was still completely different than the Israel of today, and that the ways supporters were wrong then don’t necessarily map onto the ways supporters are wrong now.
Perceptions of Zionism in the 20th century weren’t as different as you might believe. Anti-colonial literature has been around since before the middle of the 20th century, and had accurately delineated what colonialism is and what it’s not; see in this regard the works of Aimé Césaire and Franz Fanon, both prominent black authors. Malcolm X also correctly linked Zionism to European colonialism. Hell, even the Zionists saw themselves as colonialists.
I doubt he saw Israel as the western MIC blacksite it became, and more saw it akin to something like Liberia, which he also supported. Which, yes, Liberia is also a colonial project.
Hence, proving further my point.
Does that make him a hypocrite?
More so incoherent, ignorant. I am not dismissing MLK as a prominent figure of the civil rights movement in the US, but to defend his views on Israel is deeply unserious given that other black figures and intellectuals, his contemporaries, were aware of what zionism stood for.
Fr though: No one is totally immune to their own biases and limited worldviews. I could be he thought of Jewish peoples as fellow victims of oppression (which is true) and failed to see the forest for the trees. He was also very outspoken about his Faith driving him to fight inequality, it could be that his views, like a lot of other people, were influenced by it.
Malcolm X by his lived experience was much closer to the issue and much more educated in the horrors we were inflicting on the region. Like I don’t even want to call it anti-arab racism as I feel that that tacitly supports the lumping of all the diverse peoples of the region into one racial category. This isn’t to critique Malcolm or defend MLK, just it’s worth keeping in mind that being right or wrong can be an outcome of our lived experiences and biases regardless of education.
There wasn’t that much to criticize about Israel during his lifetime.
That shows an almost childlike ignorance about Israel and that it was known even before its existence that it was an apartheid settler colonial project.
Unfortunately, you have to come to terms with the fact that %99 of people in the west had a “childlike ignorance” before October 7th.
This is probably one of the most ignorant things MLK has ever said, but his fight was against racial oppression inside America, and he got killed for it, by America.
OK? Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t see or predict Israel operating an open air prison in the Gaza Strip, or an apartheid-like system in the West Bank. There wasn’t that much to criticize about Israel during his lifetime.
You think that just started? Israel was easily around 50k+ dead Palestinians and at least 50% of the way to stealing the land they have now when MLK was in his 20’s. So yeah… That 50k is a generously low number. This shit started in the 1800’s and the murders and land theft began in the early 1900’s. ALL before the Holocaust. The Holocaust and antisemitism as the reasons for starting Israel are a lie when you carbon date the operations.
Israel didn’t control the West Bank or Gaza Strip until 1967, less than a year before MLK’s death.
I’m opposed to what Israel has been doing with those two territories. I’m not opposed to Israel’s existence, I don’t consider it any less legitimate than any other country; many countries were founded on violence or other horrible things that I don’t condone.
Even if he didn’t predict it, from the getgo Israel had been a settler colonialist project that’s similar to the one that he was born in and which led to the oppressive predicament of African Americans. To not recognize this fact shows hypocrisy.
I think that MLK was a lot closer to a different era of politics around Israel (and colonialism in general) than what we have today, and there needs to be some analysis of that. Israel was and is a settler colonial project, but the dynamics of that were completely different at the time. I doubt he saw Israel as the western MIC blacksite it became, and more saw it akin to something like Liberia, which he also supported. Which, yes, Liberia is also a colonial project. Like he was still a deeply religious man; I guarantee you he saw Jews as a racial diaspora as opposed to just a religious minority. Dude would have said with his full chest that Palestine was their “ancestral home.” Does that make him a hypocrite? Idk maybe. It does show himself as a bigot, ignorant of race and racism outside of the US yet willing to comment on it. But, idk. I think this deserves discussion at least, that the Israel of yesterday, while wrong on almost every level, was still completely different than the Israel of today, and that the ways supporters were wrong then don’t necessarily map onto the ways supporters are wrong now.
Perceptions of Zionism in the 20th century weren’t as different as you might believe. Anti-colonial literature has been around since before the middle of the 20th century, and had accurately delineated what colonialism is and what it’s not; see in this regard the works of Aimé Césaire and Franz Fanon, both prominent black authors. Malcolm X also correctly linked Zionism to European colonialism. Hell, even the Zionists saw themselves as colonialists.
Hence, proving further my point.
More so incoherent, ignorant. I am not dismissing MLK as a prominent figure of the civil rights movement in the US, but to defend his views on Israel is deeply unserious given that other black figures and intellectuals, his contemporaries, were aware of what zionism stood for.
No they weren’t.
So why was Malcolm X, a contemporary of MLK, an anti-zionist and saw Israel for what it was?
Cause Malcolm X is based as fuck.
Fr though: No one is totally immune to their own biases and limited worldviews. I could be he thought of Jewish peoples as fellow victims of oppression (which is true) and failed to see the forest for the trees. He was also very outspoken about his Faith driving him to fight inequality, it could be that his views, like a lot of other people, were influenced by it.
Malcolm X by his lived experience was much closer to the issue and much more educated in the horrors we were inflicting on the region. Like I don’t even want to call it anti-arab racism as I feel that that tacitly supports the lumping of all the diverse peoples of the region into one racial category. This isn’t to critique Malcolm or defend MLK, just it’s worth keeping in mind that being right or wrong can be an outcome of our lived experiences and biases regardless of education.
I don’t know, you tell me, you seem to know a lot more about it?!
I didn’t say or mean to imply that there was nothing to criticize about Israel at the time, just not quite as much as later including today.
That shows an almost childlike ignorance about Israel and that it was known even before its existence that it was an apartheid settler colonial project.
Unfortunately, you have to come to terms with the fact that %99 of people in the west had a “childlike ignorance” before October 7th.
This is probably one of the most ignorant things MLK has ever said, but his fight was against racial oppression inside America, and he got killed for it, by America.