When Black Power Turned Against Israel
Few alliances in American history seemed more unshakable than that between Jews and Blacks during the civil rights era. Yet, by the late 1960s, the same moral conviction that had once united them began driving them apart.
The 1967 Arab-Israeli War awakened a deep sense of solidarity among Black Power activists in the United States, compelling many to align themselves with the Palestinian cause. Operating under the illusion that Black activism could be harnessed as a weapon against White gentile power, American Jewry soon discovered that the blade they had forged could just as easily turn in their direction.
Even prior to 1967, the foundations of Black support for the Palestinian cause had been laid, most notably through Malcolm X’s early advocacy of Black-Palestinian solidarity. On September 5, 1964, he visited Gaza, touring the Khan Younis refugee camp and meeting Palestinian poet Harun Hashim Rashid.
His essay “Zionist Logic” pulled no punches: “The Israeli Zionists are convinced they have successfully camouflaged their new kind of colonialism. Their colonialism appears to be more ‘benevolent,’ more ‘philanthropic,’ a system with which they rule simply by getting their potential victims to accept their friendly offers of economic ‘aid,’ and other tempting gifts.” During a 1965 speech in Detroit, Malcolm X made his vision for Palestine clear: “We need a free Palestine… We don’t need a divided Palestine. We need a whole Palestine.”
The real earthquake came in June-July 1967 when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)—a pillar of the civil rights movement—published “The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge” in its newsletter. The article accused Israel of being established “through terror, force, and massacres” and claimed “Zionist terror gangs… deliberately slaughtered and mutilated women, children and men.” It asserted: “ISRAEL WAS PLANTED AT THE CROSSROADS OF ASIA AND AFRICA WITHOUT THE FREE APPROVAL OF ANY MIDDLE-EASTERN, ASIAN OR AFRICAN COUNTRY!” Stokely Carmichael, the SNCC chairman from 1966-1967 who would later become a pan-African activist, promoted a “tricontinental” vision uniting peoples of color in the Global South against imperialism, and capitalism—with Palestinians playing a critical role in this revolutionary project.
Acclaimed writer James Baldwin, initially optimistic about Israel, shifted dramatically to the pro-Palestinian side of the aisle by the late 1960s. Palestinian scholar Nadia Alahmed noted that “once Baldwin changed his mind about Israel, he never stopped criticizing it. Baldwin was one of the very first prolific black American voices to recognize Israel for what it really is.” In a 1979 essay for The Nation, Baldwin wrote: “But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests… The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of ‘divide and rule’ and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.” Baldwin’s change in opinion was particularly influenced by his conversations with Black Panther Party members Stokely Carmichael, Huey P. Newton, and Bobby Seale.
For many within the Black Power movement, Palestinians represented a kindred people resisting colonial domination. The United States’ close alignment with Israel merely confirmed this sense of shared struggle. By contrast, for Jewish liberals who had marched for civil rights, supported Black causes, and long identified with the progressive coalition, this shift came as a profound disappointment.
The once-vaunted Jewish-Black alliance, born in the crucible of America’s civil rights struggle, ultimately broke apart against the hard realities of global south nationalism and mounting anti-Zionist sentiment among certain sectors of the Black political community.
Such tensions would continue in ensuing decades. In August 1991, the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights—home to a large Caribbean-American population and the Lubavitch Hasidic Jewish community—erupted into three days of violent unrest after a Hasidic driver accidentally struck and killed a Black child. What began as a tragic traffic accident quickly spiraled into a wave of anti-Jewish rioting that left one man dead, hundreds injured, and continued Black-Jewish tensions.
The 1991 Crown Heights riots marked a decisive rupture in Black–Jewish relations. As historian Edward Shapiro bluntly put it, this was “the only riot in American history in which the violence was directed at Jews,” with mobs chanting “Kill the Jew.” The killing of Yankel Rosenbaum and the initial acquittal of his attacker produced “immediate and angered disbelief” in the Jewish community, according to a report by then-Director of Criminal Justice and Commissioner of the Division of Criminal Justice Services Richard H. Girgentini.
Leadership failures deepened the break. The state’s Girgenti Report called Crown Heights “the most extensive racial unrest in New York City in over 20 years.” and faulted City Hall for not acting “in a timely and decisive manner.”
Black Lives Matter’s 2020 revival re-opened deep fissures in the uneasy alliance between Blacks and Jews. Following the death of George Floyd, BLM declared solidarity with Palestinians and called for an end to “settler colonialism in all forms,” signaling a turn toward anti-Israel rhetoric that unnerved many Jewish groups who had once embraced the movement.
The rupture widened after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks. BLM Chicago posted—and then deleted—an image of a paraglider carrying a Palestinian flag, widely interpreted as a show of support for Hamas. BLM Grassroots soon followed with a statement condemning Israel’s “apartheid system” and defending the Palestinians’ “right to resist.”
The reaction from organized Jewry was swift. The ADL publicly condemned BLM’s national chapters for spreading “sick, twisted, and dehumanizing” messages. CEO Jonathan Greenblatt warned that glorifying Hamas would not be tolerated—a message unmistakably aimed at reminding Black activists of their place in the anti-White totem pole.
Even prominent Jewish entertainers joined in. In a November 2023 interview on The Back Room with Andy Ostroy, actress Julianna Margulies, of Ashkenazi Jewish background and best known for her roles in The Good Wife and ER, alleged that Black Americans had been “brainwashed to hate Jews.”
For all the talk of “shared oppression,” history shows that moral alliances rarely survive political realities. From Malcolm X to Black Lives Matter, the story remains the same: every time the Palestinian cause rises to prominence, it reopens the rift between Black radicals and Jewish power brokers—reminding American Jewry that even the most reliable golems will eventually turn against their Hebraic masters.
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2025/11/11/when-black-power-turned-against-israel/