The Movement for Black Lives, which encompasses a slew of organizations associated with Black Lives Matter, has issued its platform.
The platform, essentially a Marxist screed, states:
We are a collective that centers and is rooted in Black communities, but we recognize we have a shared struggle with all oppressed people; collective liberation will be a product of all of our work.
A section of the platform called “Invest-divest” deals, among other things, with U.S. foreign policy issues. Not surprisingly, this section features the Palestinians as one of the “oppressed people[s]” with which the Movement for Black Lives claims to have a “shared struggle.”
Calling Israel “a state that practices systematic discrimination and has maintained a military occupation of Palestine for decades,” this part of the platform asserts:
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…. 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.
“Genocide,” “apartheid,” “apartheid wall,” and other allegations of monstrous Israeli behavior are, of course, staples of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) and other movements across the world that seek to delegitimize and ultimately dismantle Israel.
If one looks at the record, Israelis appear to be inept genocidists. In 1967, when Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza as a result of the Six Day War, there were about half a million Palestinians living in these territories; today there are three to four million. As for “apartheid,” the Arabs of Israel enjoy full democratic rights and say Israel is the only country they want to live in; the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza were offered statehood in 2000, 2001, and 2008 and each time turned the offer down flat.
The demonization of Israel is, however, a shibboleth of worldwide radical-left movements, and the Movement for Black Lives clearly aligns itself with those.
Meanwhile, the Fatah movement—which governs the West Bank and is seen as the “moderate” Palestinian faction compared to Hamas, which governs Gaza—boasts of having killing 11,000 Israelis.
Fatah made the genocidally tinged boast in an election-propaganda Facebook post that was translated by Palestinian Media Watch. With municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza slated for October 8, and Fatah and Hamas as the main contestants, Fatah—notorious for corruption and headed by the weak, aging Mahmoud Abbas—is worried about Hamas winning.
Hence it wants to burnish its Palestinian credentials. Using grossly inflated figures, the Fatah post begins:
- Fatah has killed 11,000 Israelis
- Fatah has sacrificed 170,000 Martyrs (Shahids)…
The list goes on to adduce some proud achievements—specific, murderous terror attacks—and concludes with the avowal: “Fatah led the Palestinian attack on Israel in the UN.”
As Palestinian Media Watch points out: “Fatah did not cite even one peace-seeking or peace-promoting achievement, but only listed…acts of violence and terror.” As David Keyes, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told the New York Times: “Imagine if Palestinian leaders spent their time praising coexistence instead of terror.”
That, of course, is something they never get around to doing. Yet, for decades, the Palestinians’ glorification of terror and systematic inculcation of deadly hatred of Israelis has never deterred organizations like the Movement for Black Lives from identifying with the “Palestinian struggle.”
The Movement for Black Lives does not, of course, represent all American blacks. For instance, a Pew survey taken about a year after the 2014 Gaza War found 43 percent of African Americans favoring Israel in the war and 20 backing the Palestinians.
But by fully endorsing the Palestinian cause as it is currently expressed and practiced by Palestinians, the Movement for Black Lives has placed itself squarely in the camp of barbarism.
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