How the Black Lives Matter Movement Became Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitic

The Black Lives Matter movement stands to lose potential support from influential Jewish organizations after release of a platform that slanders Israel. The activist movement associated with protests across the nation in support of blacks wrongfully killed by white and white police officers recently released a lengthy platform of principles. Among those, catalogued under "Invest-Divest," is this statement, filled with old and oft-refuted canards against the Jewish state:

"The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements. Israeli soldiers also regularly arrest and detain Palestinians as young as 4 years old without due process. Everyday, Palestinians are forced to walk through military checkpoints along the US-funded apartheid wall."

(https://policy.m4bl.org/invest-divest/)

In its decision to wage moral war against Israel, the BLM movement apparently ascribes to the notion of "intersectionality," the idea that all revolutionary struggles are related, and seeks to identify with the Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs caught in land conquered by Israel during the 1967 war in which Israel's Arab neighbors sought to utterly destroy the country. These Arabs were not repatriated into the countries from which they came but have remained on Israeli land ever since. Violent attacks against Israeli Jews have also occurred ever since.

It is not surprising that the BLM movement would sympathize with the "struggle" of the Palestinians, whose cause largely involves a demand that all Jews leave the region and surrender their homes and businesses. The BLM's official statements reflect desire to blame all problems in the black community and the world on "the state." Implied is the idea that all misfortunes can be traced to some powerful (white) oppressor. This is similar to the claims of the Palestinians, who do not accept responsibility for their own failed leadership or for their betrayal by the countries to whom they were native. Instead, they blame Jews who purchased and worked hard for the land they govern and in which they flourish. Below is an excerpt from the "herstory" of the movement on the BLM website:

"When we say Black Lives Matter, we are talking about the ways in which Black people are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity. It is an acknowledgement Black poverty and genocide is state violence. It is an acknowledgment that 1 million Black people are locked in cages in this country–one half of all people in prisons or jails–is an act of state violence. It is an acknowledgment that Black women continue to bear the burden of a relentless assault on our children and our families and that assault is an act of state violence.

"Black queer and trans folks bearing a unique burden in a hetero-patriarchal society that disposes of us like garbage and simultaneously fetishizes us and profits off of us is state violence; the fact that 500,000 Black people in the US are undocumented immigrants and relegated to the shadows is state violence;.the fact that Black girls are used as negotiating chips during times of conflict and war is state violence; Black folks living with disabilities and different abilities bear the burden of state-sponsored Darwinian experiments that attempt to squeeze us into boxes of normality defined by White supremacy is state violence. And the fact is that the lives of Black people-not ALL people-exist within these conditions is consequence of state violence."

(http://blacklivesmatter.com/herstory/)

The founding principles of the group are called a "herstory" because the group was founded by three queer women who apparently are even offended by the prefix "his" in "history."

There may be little by which this group is not offended.

In response to the BLM's stated platform slandering Israel came a complete disassociation from the group by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Boston. Their statement includes the following:

"We are deeply dismayed by elements of this platform, specifically the co-opting and manipulation of a movement addressing concerns about racial disparities in criminal justice in the United States in order to advance a biased and false narrative about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. To conflate the experiences of African-Americans and Palestinians oversimplifies complex matters and advances false equivalencies that diminish the unique nature of each.

JCRC cannot and will not align ourselves with organizations that falsely and maliciously assert that Israel is committing "genocide." We denounce an agenda to wage economic and cultural warfare against Israelis, including efforts to mobilize against state and local efforts that reject the "BDS" movement. We reject participation in any coalition that seeks to isolate and demonize Israel singularly amongst the nations of the world.

As we dissociate ourselves from the Black Lives Matter platform and those BLM organizations that embrace it, we recommit ourselves unequivocally to the pursuit of justice for all Americans, and to working together with our friends and neighbors in the African-American community, whose experience of the criminal justice system is, far too often, determined by race...."

Also tasking the group with calumny against the Jewish state was the Anti-Defamation League. Previously, the powerful ADL had embraced BLM and even provided them with lesson plans to use in schools. Without formally breaking from BLM, the ADL nevertheless released a forceful tweet in which they stated the following:

"But would-be allies in the struggle for civil and human rights along with justice and fair treatment cannot ignore the Platform's false and blatantly one-sided position on US-Israel relations and Israeli-Palestinian issues. We categorically reject the document's criticism of the United States and Israel as being 'complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.' The Jewish community knows too much about genocide. It's repellent and completely inaccurate. And the Platform completely ignores incitement and violence perpetrated against Israelis by some Palestinians, including terror inside the country and rocket attacks lobbed from Gaza."

However, given the Black Lives Matter movement's suspicion of and accusations against everyone who is not their color - according to their own website - they will probably not mind getting abandoned by US Jewish organizations, who would be, in their eyes, just more enemies.