Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) of the A-APRP speaking on long time Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yassir Arafat and Egyption President Gamel Abdel Nasser
I recently received with great joy the video depicting Palestinian and African activists demonstrating our solidarity with each glorious struggle against injustice. The examples are common knowledge now. Palestinian youth tweeting to African anti-police terrorism activists tactics designed to effectively neutralize tear gas. African activists taking trips to occupied Palestine (Israel) to observe first hand the terror being inflicted on the Palestinian people. For those of us who have been doing this a while this is all wonderful, but we have an obligation to make sure you know its not new. The relationship between the African liberation movement and the struggle by zionists to seize control of Palestinian homelands has a long, positive, and negative history. Around the turn of the century number twenty, the zionists started going into high gear. zionist leaders like Chaim Weizman aggressively sought to seek out the support of militant African leaders like the Honorable Marcus Garvey. Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had millions of members on three continents and the Caribbean by 1924. They had the Negro World publication which was published in English, Spanish, and French, in 33 countries. Somehow, the zionist movement was able to convince Garvey that our justifiable struggle to liberate Africa was similar to the zionist effort to merge Judaism and the legitimate suffering of Jewish people throughout Europe with the zionist movements objective of stealing land in the name of Judaism. So Garvey intertwined the zionist movement with the African liberation movement and often spoke of the zion movement, or the movement to go home. One hundred years ago this must have made sense. Especially to a struggling African people who were fighting for dignity, but the problem is Palestine was never home for the European descendants who now dominate occupied Palestine today. This fact didn't stop the zionist movement from hoodwinking the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) later in the 20s. Weizman even convinced NAACP leaders to sponsor him on a tour of African churches in the U.S. as a fundraising effort for the zionist movement. After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, this miss information continued to serve as the dominant narrative as evidenced by the creation in the early 1960s of the group Black Americans in Support of Israel (BASIC). The objective of this organization was to insure that Africans participated in organized efforts to lobby for legislation in support of the state of Israel. BASIC even fooled some honest people like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was a BASIC member. In fact, King unfortunately said in 1967 that "any attack against Israel is anti-Semitism, whatever way it comes out."
Of course, the truth is zionism and Judaism have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Judaism is a religion that has its roots in Africa. This is evidenced none other than in the Bible where anyone can find Genesis, Chapter two, verse 13, which speaks of the role of Africa in the development of Judaism and Christianity. Judaism, like Islam, Christianity, Rastafarianism, Buddhism, Santeria, and all forms of spiritual worship, seeks to make us live better as human beings. To reach our highest potential as people. Consequently, Judaism can never have anything in common with zionism which is a political movement with no religious basis that was founded specifically to create an imperialist state that would serve capitalist interests. This has happened since 1948 as Israel serves as capitalism and imperialism's stronghold to the Middle East and gateway to the all important waterway passage from the East to the West and vice versa.
Fortunately, African people. like all of humanity, do not stand still. We struggle. We move. We fight to advance as a people and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) did just that when they (in 1967) courageously became the first national organization within the U.S. to come out in support of the Palestinian people in general and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in particular, which was considered the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people at that time. Before them, the Nation of Islam had been speaking out against zionism since the 1940s. And, after SNCC, other organizations like the All African People's Revolutionary Party, most prominently through the words of Kwame Ture (the chairman of SNCC in 1967 - when he was known as Stokely Carmichael - when that organization took it's bold stance), became - according to the so-called Anti-Defamation League - "the most anti-zionist organization/voice in the U.S." from the early 1970s forward. We accomplished this by making anti-zionism a regular part of our work. When I came up in the A-APRP, every program we organized had a representative from the PLO. Al-Fatah, at the time, but sometimes the Democratic Front the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front, etc. African people came to expect it when attending our programs. Whenever and wherever Kwame spoke, African Liberation Days all over the world, weekly local programs, the Palestinian question was a regular part of our program.
Before that, where did this anti-zionist consciousness come from and why did it emerge? The where is connected to the Nation of Islam, most notably through the words of Malcolm X. His consciousness against zionism was spiked by Elijah Muhammad in the late 50s, but he really began to understand the devastating nature of zionism when he took his first of two trips to the Middle East and Africa in 1964. It was then that he met guerrilla fighters for the PLO who schooled him on the history of zionism. It is also very much worth mentioning that there was a sister in the Nation of Islam named Ethel Minor who left the Nation with Malcolm. She joined Malcolm's newly formed Organization of Afro American Unity. Once Malcolm was assassinated, Ms. Minor joined SNCC and Kwame Ture credited her with bringing the anti-zionist consciousness to SNCC. This consciousness was fueled by an understanding of zionism's rule in exploiting and pimping African people to build it's empire in occupied Palestine. Besides the manipulation already mentioned with the NAACP and the UNIA, zionist Israel established close ties with the apartheid regime in Azania, South Africa. Weizman and Jan Smuts, the South African Prime Minister in the early 1900s, established those ties with led to refined diamonds, mined in Southern Africa, becoming the primary export of the zionist state. This remains the situation today. This is reason why you can research any liberation movement on the African continent or off and you will find the zionist state engaged in working overtime to sabotage that movement. This is true from the anti-apartheid forces to the Libyan Jamihiriya to African liberation organizations in the U.S.
So, today, the foundation is a strong one. Many of the activists on the ground don't know this history so hopefully this little bit can help them. We have been working to support the Palestinian people for 50 years because doing so is just, but also because it's practical for our interests. A weakened zionist state, which we've already documented is strengthened by exploiting Africa, only helps our African liberation fight. Therefore, supporting Palestinian self-determination is only logical for us.
The Palestinians will be victorious. And, the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism is simply a matter of time. We also give shout outs to our comrades in the Irish Republican socialist struggle because their efforts to win will weaken British imperialism, a major oppressor of African people everywhere. And, last, but certainly not least, we provide our full support for the Indigenous people's of the Western Hemisphere. Their victory is ours and ours is theirs. Forward Ever!
Of course, the truth is zionism and Judaism have absolutely nothing to do with one another. Judaism is a religion that has its roots in Africa. This is evidenced none other than in the Bible where anyone can find Genesis, Chapter two, verse 13, which speaks of the role of Africa in the development of Judaism and Christianity. Judaism, like Islam, Christianity, Rastafarianism, Buddhism, Santeria, and all forms of spiritual worship, seeks to make us live better as human beings. To reach our highest potential as people. Consequently, Judaism can never have anything in common with zionism which is a political movement with no religious basis that was founded specifically to create an imperialist state that would serve capitalist interests. This has happened since 1948 as Israel serves as capitalism and imperialism's stronghold to the Middle East and gateway to the all important waterway passage from the East to the West and vice versa.
Fortunately, African people. like all of humanity, do not stand still. We struggle. We move. We fight to advance as a people and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) did just that when they (in 1967) courageously became the first national organization within the U.S. to come out in support of the Palestinian people in general and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in particular, which was considered the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people at that time. Before them, the Nation of Islam had been speaking out against zionism since the 1940s. And, after SNCC, other organizations like the All African People's Revolutionary Party, most prominently through the words of Kwame Ture (the chairman of SNCC in 1967 - when he was known as Stokely Carmichael - when that organization took it's bold stance), became - according to the so-called Anti-Defamation League - "the most anti-zionist organization/voice in the U.S." from the early 1970s forward. We accomplished this by making anti-zionism a regular part of our work. When I came up in the A-APRP, every program we organized had a representative from the PLO. Al-Fatah, at the time, but sometimes the Democratic Front the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front, etc. African people came to expect it when attending our programs. Whenever and wherever Kwame spoke, African Liberation Days all over the world, weekly local programs, the Palestinian question was a regular part of our program.
Before that, where did this anti-zionist consciousness come from and why did it emerge? The where is connected to the Nation of Islam, most notably through the words of Malcolm X. His consciousness against zionism was spiked by Elijah Muhammad in the late 50s, but he really began to understand the devastating nature of zionism when he took his first of two trips to the Middle East and Africa in 1964. It was then that he met guerrilla fighters for the PLO who schooled him on the history of zionism. It is also very much worth mentioning that there was a sister in the Nation of Islam named Ethel Minor who left the Nation with Malcolm. She joined Malcolm's newly formed Organization of Afro American Unity. Once Malcolm was assassinated, Ms. Minor joined SNCC and Kwame Ture credited her with bringing the anti-zionist consciousness to SNCC. This consciousness was fueled by an understanding of zionism's rule in exploiting and pimping African people to build it's empire in occupied Palestine. Besides the manipulation already mentioned with the NAACP and the UNIA, zionist Israel established close ties with the apartheid regime in Azania, South Africa. Weizman and Jan Smuts, the South African Prime Minister in the early 1900s, established those ties with led to refined diamonds, mined in Southern Africa, becoming the primary export of the zionist state. This remains the situation today. This is reason why you can research any liberation movement on the African continent or off and you will find the zionist state engaged in working overtime to sabotage that movement. This is true from the anti-apartheid forces to the Libyan Jamihiriya to African liberation organizations in the U.S.
So, today, the foundation is a strong one. Many of the activists on the ground don't know this history so hopefully this little bit can help them. We have been working to support the Palestinian people for 50 years because doing so is just, but also because it's practical for our interests. A weakened zionist state, which we've already documented is strengthened by exploiting Africa, only helps our African liberation fight. Therefore, supporting Palestinian self-determination is only logical for us.
The Palestinians will be victorious. And, the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism is simply a matter of time. We also give shout outs to our comrades in the Irish Republican socialist struggle because their efforts to win will weaken British imperialism, a major oppressor of African people everywhere. And, last, but certainly not least, we provide our full support for the Indigenous people's of the Western Hemisphere. Their victory is ours and ours is theirs. Forward Ever!
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