APPEAL: BLACK AMERICANS AGAINST UNITED STATES SUPPORT OF THE ZIONIST GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL, Committee of Black Americans for Truth about the Middle-East, 1970

Editors, The Black Agenda Review

24 Apr 2024

After 200 days of genocide, Black solidarity with Palestine is needed more than ever. A 1970 appeal provides a blueprint.

We have passed 200 days of the zionist entity’s unrelentingly brutal and unashamedly public genocide of Palestinian people and the annihilation of the physical infrastructure of their nation. But these two hundred days of carnage and white supremacist depravity could not have happened without the enduring support – military and diplomatic – of the white west. Nothing is clearer than the overwhelming vote by the US Congress, just days ago, to continue to fund this genocide to the tune of $26.3 billion more.

The white west needs the zionist entity because it is the “outpost of American imperialism in the Middle East.” Understanding this reality – that zionism cannot exist without US and western imperialism – is key to fighting the global struggle against the current carnage. It is also important for recognizing that the destruction of the zionist project is an important step in the fight against imperialism and white supremacy.

In 1970, a group of US Black activists, students, workers, and scholars saw this clearly. In a November 1, 1970 ad purchased in the New York Times titled, “An Appeal By Black Americans Against United States Support of the Zionist Government of Israel,” the group slammed US support for the zionist government. Calling itself the Committee of Black Americans for Truth about the Middle-East (C.O.B.A.T.M.E.), the group demonstrated how concretely zionism was an extension of white supremacist imperialism. The zionist entity worked in concert with the white west in all their imperial aggressions across the world, supporting the U.S. during the Korean War, France, during the Algerian Revolution, Portugal in their wars against Angola and Mozambique. In effect, according to C.O.B.A.T.M.E, “Israel, Rhodesia, and South Africa are three privileged white settler-states that came into existence by displacing indigenous peoples from their lands.” There was no clearer proof of zionism’s link to imperialism and white supremacy.

This appeal by C.O.B.A.T.M.E was remarkable because, in 1970, the African American support for Palestine was still nascent. The first decades of the west’s forced establishment of Israel saw the African American intellectual and political classes support the zionist project. Indeed, even W. E. B. Du Bois supported the zionists. And, Civil Rights leader, Bayard Rustin, would remain a staunch advocate until his death. But the shift in Black politics in the late 1960s when young people, influenced by the likes of Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael (later, Kwame Ture), saw a move away from accepting zionism (however latent) to support for Palestinian resistance and self-determination. Arguably, the opening salvo of that shift was the fact sheet published in 1967 by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) detailing the truth about the history of Zionist, British, and U.S. aggression against the Palestinian people. While this fact sheet set off a storm of controversy among the older Civil Rights generation, it laid the basis for a future of radical Black-Palestine solidarity.

Today we are at a precipice where the global response to the zionist entity’s genocide and the white west’s steadfast complicity has the potential to topple both zionism and destabilize US imperialism. It is also an odd time as the US Black political elite (the “Black misleaders”) are walking in lockstep with US imperialism (and, by definition, zionism). But, as US campuses are convulsing against zionism and in support of Palestinian liberation, we see the potential for another generation of Black American activists, workers, students, to come together, once again, to link their lot with the global majority it the crosshairs of US imperialism and western white supremacy.

We reprint the appeal by C.O.B.A.T.M.E. below as a model as we “call for Afro-American solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation.”

AN APPEAL BY BLACK AMERICANS AGAINST UNITED STATES SUPPORT OF THE ZIONIST GOVERNMENT OF ISRAEL

Committee of Black Americans for Truth about the Middle-East

November 1, 1970

We, the Black American signatories of this advertisement are in complete solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who like us, are struggling for self-determination and an end to racist oppression.

The recent bloodbath in Jordan, resulting in tens of thousands of dead and wounded Palestinians, would not have been possible without the encouragement, armaments and financial aid of the United States Government.

America’s support for King Hussein’s slaughter of Palestinian refugees and freedom-fighters is consistent with its support of reactionary dictatorship throughout the world – from Cambodia and Vietnam to South Africa, Greece and Iran.

We stand with the Palestinian people in their efforts to preserve their revolution, and oppose its attempted destruction by American Imperialism aided by Zionists and Arab reactionaries.

WE STATE that we are not anti-Jewish. We are anti-Zionist and against the Zionist State of Israel, the outpost of American imperialism in the Middle East. Zionism is a reactionary racist ideology that justifies the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and lands, and attempts to enlist the Jewish masses of Israel and elsewhere in the service of imperialism to hold back the Middle East revolution.

The Zionist Organization of American in an ad in the New York Times of Sept. 17, 1970 stated: “It is appropriate for the United States to begin to treat Isratel, the only democracy in the Middle East, as a de facto ally for the safeguarding of American interests.”

According to the National Observer of May 18, 1970, the world Zionist movement is big business. “When the blood flows, the money flows,” observes Gottlieb Hammer, chief Zionist fund collector in this country.

WE STATE that the Palestinian Revolution is the vanguard of the Arab Revolution and is part of the anti-colonial revolution which is going on in places such as Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola, Brazil, Laos, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Because of its alliance with imperialism, Zionism opposes that anti-colonial revolution and especially revolutionary change in the Middle East.

WE STATE that Israel, Rhodesia, and South Africa are three privileged white settler-states that came into existence by displacing indigenous peoples from their lands. Israel and South Africa each have about 4,500 political prisoners – most of whom have not been brought to trial.

J. Weitz, director of the Department of Colonization of the Jewish Agency for Israel, stated…”The only possible solution lies in creating a Palestine…without Arabs…and there is no other way to do this than to transfer all the Arabs to neighboring countries, to move all of them out of here.” –Davar (Pub. in Israel), Sept. 29, 1967.

The South African Government supported Israel during the June, 1967, war. Dr. Voster’s government not only permitted South African volunteers to work in civilian and paramilitary capacities in Israel, but more than $28 million was raised by pro-apartheid South African Zionists and sent to Israel. “After the June 1967 Middle-East war, there was considerable speculation about an Israel-type action against Zambia and Tanzania, countries which share a firm anti-apartheid policy and support the African Liberation Movement… In September 1967, South Africa’s top Army and Air Force officers learned at first hand about Israel’s tactics in the Middle East war from General Mordechai Hod, Commander of the Israeli Air Force. He addressed between 50 and 100 officers at the Air Force College, Voortrekkerhoogte.” – Johannesburg Sunday Express, Sept. 10, 1967.

WE STATE that Israel continues to support United States politics of aggression in Southeast Asia, politics that are responsible for the death and wounding of thousands of black youths.

The N. Y. Times of Nov. 9, 1969 stated that Jacques Torczyner heard of The Zionist Organization of America. “Appealed to American Jews to support Nixon’s Vietnam policies. Mr. Torczyner, who recently returned last week from Israel said that, ‘People there are in general accord with President Nixon’s Vietnam policies.’”

The Nov. 17, 1969 N. Y. Times stated that “Administration sources Nov. 16 released a message from Israeli Premier Golda Meir calling President Nixon’s Nov. 3 Vietnam speech “meaningful.” It contained, she said in a personal message to Mr. Nixon congratulating him on the speech, “must that encourages and strengthens freedom-loving small nations.”

WE STATE that the exploitation experienced by Afro-Americans, Native Americans (Indians), Puerto Ricans, and Chicanos (Mexican-Americans) is similar to the exploitation of Palestinian Arabs and Oriental Jews by the Zionist State of Israel. Mier Ya’ari, General-Secretary of the Left-Zionist Mapan (United Workers Party) at the Party’s 4th Congress in 1963 said, “This social exploitation helps hold the Oriental communities, one-half of the population, in their state of economic, social and cultural discrimination. The common denominator of the two problems is that the Arab workers must live in a hut or hovel on the outskirts of the Jewish towns, and the worker of the Sephardic community is packed into a crowded slum.”

WE STATE that despite the ultra-nationalist, racist policies of the State of Israel progressive programs of the Palestinian liberation movements are popularly supported by most of the Arab masses.

In January 1969, Fateh spokesman, Yassir Arafat stated, “Our political vision for a free Palestine is a democratic, secular, non-racial state where all Palestinians – Christians, Jews, and Muslims – will have equal rights.”

The Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine presented the following in a resolution introduced to the Palestine National Congress in 1969: “The Palestine National Congress will struggle for a popular democratic Palestinian state where Arabs and Jews enjoy equal rights without discrimination, where all forms of national and class oppression shall be abolished.”

WE STATE that opposition to the policies of Zionism also exists within Israel and among world Jewry. The following are excerpts from a thesis submitted for discussion to the Israeli Socialist Organization in 1966. “Israel will be de-Zionized, i.e. all present laws and practices discriminating between Jews and non-Jews implementing Jewish supremacy will be abolished…Israel will adopt on [sic] anti-imperialist foreign policy, actively supporting the forces struggling for socialism and unification in the Arab world…”

WE STATE that Israel supported the United States in the Korean War; aided France and the Terrorist Secret Army Organization in Algeria against the Algerian Revolution; opposed the anti-colonial independence movements in Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia and elsewhere; trained the counter-revolutionary para-commandos of General Mobutu who was one of the persons responsible for the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, and presently provides arms and other equipment to the Portuguese troops fighting against Angolan and Mozambican freedom fighters.

WE DEMAND THAT ALL MILITARY AID OR ASSISTANCE OF ANY KIND TO ISRAEL MUST STOP. IMPERIALISM AND ZIONISM MUST AND WILL GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST. WE CALL FOR AFRO-AMERICAN SOLIDARITY WITH THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE’S STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION AND TO REGAIN ALL OF THEIR STOLEN LAND.

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