Cydney Wallace, a Black Jewish neighborhood activist, by no means felt compelled to journey to Israel, although “Subsequent yr in Jerusalem” was a relentless chorus at her Chicago synagogue.
The 39-year-old mentioned she had a lot to deal with at house, the place she steadily offers talks on addressing anti-Black sentiment within the American Jewish neighborhood and dismantling white supremacy within the U.S.
“I do know what I’m combating for right here,” she mentioned.
That each one modified when she visited Israel and the West Financial institution on the invitation of a Palestinian American neighborhood organizer from Chicago’s south facet, together with two dozen different Black People and Muslim, Jewish and Christian religion leaders.
The journey, which started Sept. 26, enhanced Wallace’s understanding of the struggles of Palestinians dwelling within the West Financial institution below Israeli navy occupation. However, horrifyingly, it was reduce brief by the unprecedented Oct. 7 assaults on Israel by Hamas militants. In Israel’s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, surprising photographs of destruction and dying seen world wide have mobilized activists within the U.S. and elsewhere.
Wallace, and a rising variety of Black People, see the Palestinian wrestle within the West Financial institution and Gaza mirrored in their very own struggle for racial equality and civil rights. The current rise of protest actions towards police brutality within the U.S., the place structural racism plagues practically each aspect of life, has related Black and Palestinian activists below a standard trigger.
However that kinship generally strains the greater than century-long alliance between Black and Jewish activists. From Black American teams that denounced the U.S. backing of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory to Black protesters demonstrating for the Palestinians’ proper to self-determination, some Jewish People are involved that assist may escalate the specter of antisemitism and weaken Jewish-Black ties fortified in the course of the Civil Rights Motion.
“We’re involved, as a neighborhood, about what we really feel is a lack of knowledge of what Israel is about and the way deeply Oct. 7 has affected us,” mentioned Bob Kaplan, govt director of The Middle for Shared Society on the Jewish Group Relations Council of New York.
“Antisemitism needs to be seen as a reprehensible type of hate … as any type of hate is,” he mentioned. “Antisemitism is as actual to the American Jewish neighborhood, and causes as a lot trauma and concern and upset to the American Jewish neighborhood, as racism causes to the Black neighborhood, or anti-Asian feeling causes to the Asian neighborhood, or anti-Muslim feeling causes within the Muslim neighborhood.”
However, he added, many Jews within the U.S. perceive that Black People can have an affinity for the Palestinian trigger that doesn’t battle with their regard for Israel.
In keeping with a ballot earlier this month from The Related Press-NORC Middle for Public Affairs Analysis, Black adults have been extra probably than white and Hispanic adults to say the U.S. is just too supportive of Israel — 44% in comparison with 30% and 28%, respectively. Nonetheless, Black People weren’t any extra probably than others to say the U.S. just isn’t supportive sufficient of the Palestinians.
Generational divides additionally emerged, with youthful People extra more likely to say the U.S. is just too supportive of Israel, in accordance with the ballot. Even inside the Jewish American neighborhood, some youthful and different progressive Jews are typically extra essential of a few of Israel’s insurance policies.
Black American assist for the Palestinian trigger dates again to the Civil Rights Motion, by way of outstanding left-wing voices, together with Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, amongst others. Newer rounds of violence, together with the 2021 Israel-Hamas conflict and now Israel’s unprecedented bombing marketing campaign towards Gaza proven stay on social media have deepened ties between the 2 actions.
“That is simply the most recent technology to choose up the mantle, the most recent Black people to arrange, construct and discuss freedom and justice,” mentioned Ahmad Abuznaid, the director of the U.S. Marketing campaign for Palestinian Rights.
Throughout a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas as a part of the current deal to free dozens of hostages seized by Hamas militants, Israel launched a whole lot of Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Many have been youngsters who had just lately been picked up within the West Financial institution for minor offenses like stone-throwing and had not been charged.
Some Black People who watched the Palestinian prisoner launch and discovered about Israel’s administrative detention coverage, the place detainees are held with out trial, drew comparisons to the U.S. jail system. Whereas greater than two-thirds of jail detainees within the U.S. haven’t been convicted of a criminal offense, Black persons are jailed at greater than 4 occasions the speed of white individuals, usually for low-level offenses, in accordance with research of the American judicial system.
“People like to speak about being harmless till confirmed responsible. However Black people are predominantly and disproportionately detained in the US no matter whether or not something has been confirmed. And that’s similar to Israel’s administrative detention,” mentioned Julian Rose, an organizer with a Black-run bail fund in Atlanta.
Rami Nashashibi, govt director of the Interior-Metropolis Muslim Motion Community, invited Wallace and the others to participate within the journey known as “Black Jerusalem” — an exploration of the sacred metropolis by way of an African and Black American lens.
They met members of Jerusalem’s small Afro-Palestinian neighborhood — Palestinians of Black African heritage, a lot of whom can hint their lineage within the Outdated Metropolis again centuries.
“Our Black brothers and sisters within the U.S. suffered from slavery and now they endure from racism,” mentioned Mousa Qous, govt director of the African Group Society Jerusalem, whose father emigrated to Jerusalem from Chad in 1941 and whose mom is Palestinian.
“We endure from the Israeli occupation and racist insurance policies. The People and the Israelis are conducting the identical insurance policies towards us and the Black People. So we should always assist one another,” Qous mentioned.
Nashashibi agreed, saying: “My Palestinian id was very a lot formed and influenced by Black American historical past.”
“I at all times hoped {that a} journey like this may open up new pathways that may join the dots not simply in a political and ideological method,” he mentioned, “however between the liberation and struggles for humanity which are very acquainted to us within the U.S.”
Through the journey, Wallace was dismayed by her personal ignorance of the fact of Palestinians dwelling below Israeli occupation.
At an Israeli checkpoint exterior the Western Wall, the Jewish holy web site, Wallace mentioned her group was requested who was Jewish, Muslim or Christian. Wallace and the others confirmed IDs issued for the journey, however when an Israeli officer noticed her Star of David necklace, she was waved by way of, whereas Palestinians and Muslims within the group have been subjected to intense scrutiny and bag checks.
“Being there made me surprise if that is what it was prefer to stay within the Jim Crow-era” in America, Wallace mentioned.
Kameelah Oseguera, who grew up in an African American Muslim neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, additionally mentioned the journey opened her eyes.
On the entrance to the Aida refugee camp close to Bethlehem within the West Financial institution, Oseguera seen a large key — a Palestinian image of the houses misplaced within the 1948 creation of Israel, known as the Nakba, or “disaster.” Many stored keys to the houses they fled or have been compelled out of — a logo signifying the Palestinian proper to return, which Israel has denied.
Oseguera mentioned the important thing recalled her go to to the “door of no return” memorial in Senegal devoted to the enslaved Africans compelled onto slave ships and delivered to the Americas. As a descendant of enslaved Africans, it introduced ideas of “what the dream of my return would have meant for my ancestors.”
Returning to house, she mentioned, is a “longing that’s transmitted by way of generations.”
Israel’s Legislation of Return grants all Jews the precise to settle completely in Israel and purchase Israeli citizenship — an idea that drew assist from many Black American civil rights leaders, together with A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Dorothy Peak, Shirley Chisholm and Martin Luther King, Sr., the daddy of the slain civil rights chief.
During the last decade, nonetheless, Black People and the Palestinians have additionally discovered rising solidarity.
In 2020, the homicide of George Floyd by a white police officer resonated within the West Financial institution, the place Palestinians drew comparisons to their very own experiences of brutality below occupation, and a large mural of Floyd appeared on Israel’s hulking separation barrier.
In 2014, protests in Ferguson, Missouri, erupted after the police killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, which gave rise to the nascent Black Lives Matter motion. Whereas cops in Ferguson fired tear gasoline at protesters, Palestinians within the occupied West Financial institution tweeted recommendation about how one can handle the consequences of the irritants.
In 2016, when BLM activists shaped the coalition referred to as the Motion for Black Lives, they included assist for Palestinians in a platform known as the “Imaginative and prescient for Black Lives.” A handful of Jewish teams, which had largely been supportive of the BLM motion, denounced the Black activists’ characterization of Israel as a purportedly “apartheid state” that engages in “discrimination towards the Palestinian individuals.”
“There tends to be this doubt or astonishment that Black individuals care about different oppressed individuals world wide,” mentioned Phil Agnew, co-director of the nationwide advocacy group, Black Males Construct, who has taken 4 journeys to the West Financial institution since 2014.
It will be a mistake, Agnew mentioned, to disregard vital numbers of Black and Jewish People who’re united of their assist for the Palestinians.
Not one of the members of the “Black Jerusalem” journey anticipated it could come to a tragic finish with the Oct. 7 Hamas assaults during which some 1,200 individuals have been killed in Israel and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, greater than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s blistering air and floor marketing campaign in Gaza, now in its third month. Violence within the West Financial institution has additionally surged.
Again house in Chicago, Wallace has navigated talking about her assist for Palestinians whereas sustaining her Jewish id and standing towards antisemitism. She says she doesn’t see these issues as mutually unique.
“I’m making an attempt to not do something that alienates anybody,” she mentioned. “However I can’t simply not do the precise factor as a result of I’m scared.”
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AP author Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem contributed.
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Nasir and Morrison are members of AP’s Race and Ethnicity staff. Observe Nasir on social media. Observe Morrison on social media.