It’s not Black Lives Matter’s job to make you feel comfortable about Israel
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Four years ago, the Movement for Black Lives, the umbrella group that Black Lives Matter is a part of, endorsed a boycott of Israel on the ground that it was committing “genocide” against the Palestinians. It led to a crisis for many Jews anxious to be part of the movement yet distraught by the anti-Israel messaging. The movement in its current iteration has no messaging about Israel. But this has not stopped some from hand-wringing about a tension between supporting Israel and supporting Black Lives Matter.
Here’s the thing: You can support Black Lives Matter and be pro-Israel, or pro a lot of other things. No known litmus test exists in order to participate in a protest for racial justice or make calls to elected officials demanding police reform and even abolition.
But while one can be supportive of both, there is no right to be comfortable in supporting both. Black Lives Matter doesn’t owe you its support of Israel, especially at this moment of encroaching annexation.
Yet this is what some of the loudest voices demanding “inclusion” for Zionism and pro-Israel activists in racial justice movements have been demanding. Never mind how inappropriate it is to center our concerns in these times; they seem to demand of people fighting for racial inequality that they not make anyone who considers themselves pro-Israel feel in any way uncomfortable when supporting Black Lives Matter.
A recent guide released by Zioness is a disappointing illustration of this misplaced desire for comfort. The guide, called “Zionesses for Racial Justice: An Activist’s Guide,” has four sections: “Understanding and Confronting Implicit Bias and Privilege;” “Showing Up as Allies and Accomplices;” “We May Experience Antisemitism. We Will Address it. We Must Not Walk Away;” and “Addressing Antisemitic Tropes in Your Activism.” In other words, a large share of the guide — indeed, most of it — is devoted to defending Israel and Zionism, with sections debunking claims like “Zionism is racism” and “Israel is an apartheid state” and “Israel treats Palestinians the same way America treats Blacks.”
It’s an inappropriate centering of Jewish concerns at a time that is just not about us. More importantly, it’s an attempt to comfort Jews by pointing out the differences between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the U.S.’s treatment of Black Americans at a time when we would do better to sit with the discomfort of the similarity between those two things.
For the Zioness guide and the kind of Jews it speaks for, any connection between Black Lives Matter and the ordeal of Palestinians in the occupied territories is not the beginning of a difficult but necessary conversation, but a “trope” that must be refuted. Similarly, the suggestion that the status quo in the West Bank resembles apartheid is not treated as the serious possibility two former Israeli prime ministers have warned of, but a rhetorical bomb that must be defused forthwith.
What this practice of being “pro-Israel” amounts to is a refusal to reckon with the price of Zionism: the displacement and, yes, victimization of the Palestinian people. The Zioness guide, for instance, says of claims Zionism is akin to racism, “Zionism has nothing to do with any other people other than the Jews”. This is false. Zionism may not be racism, but its triumph was a historic trauma for Palestinians.
Cognitive dissonance is a comfort; we should resist efforts to abolish it. Just like the structural racism faced by Black Americans is more than a simple matter of contemporary prejudice, so too is the subjugation of Palestinians. Zionism saved many lives, but it also upended the lives of many others; the excesses of its zealots following the 1967 war added additional humiliation.
It’s not just that Black Lives Matter doesn’t owe us comfort as Zionists. It’s that it should not feel comfortable to accept historical responsibility for America’s sins as Americans and at the same time evade discussion of Zionism’s legacy by dismissing sins against the Palestinians as mere peccadilloes. It makes little sense to combine the “1619 Project” with the discredited “a land without a people for a people without a land” narrative. Only a Zionism that accepts responsibility for the wrong done to the Palestinians and makes a genuine effort at rectifying it is consonant with the spirit of the young Americans taking to the streets today.
No analogy is perfect. There are important differences between the African American experience in the U.S. and the Palestinians in the West Bank, not all of which are favorable to Israel. But to belabor this point in response to Palestinians and their supporters pointing out parallels between the two — even if it’s just the fact that both groups are victims of injustice — is to dismiss an opportunity for political maturation and instead opt for defensive flacking.
And there could not be a worse time for such a tact. On July 1, Israel will begin to seriously contemplate annexing portions of the West Bank. If it proceeds, and the Trump-led U.S. recognizes the move, then the parallels to apartheid-era South Africa will only become more resonant. Benjamin Pogrund, the oft-cited South African journalist and activist who has previously denounced such comparisons, said in a recent interview that, “Come July 1, if we annex the Jordan Valley and the settlement areas, we are apartheid. Full stop. There’s no question about it.”
Black Lives Matter — the phenomenon, not the statement itself — is not beyond critical assessment. There have been alarming instances of anti-Semitism which, while limited in number, have been distressing to witness alongside a historic movement for racial and social justice.
But the disparate attempts to invoke the cause of the Palestinians should not be dismissed as such an instance. In fact, now is the time for progressive Zionists to start making these connections on our own. In a matter of weeks, it could be too late.
Abe Silberstein is a freelance commentator on Israeli politics and U.S.-Israel relations. His work has previously been published in the New York Times, Haaretz, +972 Magazine and the Forward.
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