Rachel Gilmer was recruited as a teenager to join Young Judaea. This Zionist organization for Jewish youths offers scholarships. “They were giving scholarships to go on summer camp, and I was one of six siblings. My mom thought, ‘Great! Let’s get all the kids out of this house.'”
Rachel Gilmer, a Black and Hebrew activist, was enlisted by Young Judaea when she was just 17 years old to work for the Zionist organization for Jewish youth. My mother was like,” Great, let’s get the kids out of the house,” because they were offering scholarships to attend summer camp and I’m one of six siblings. The program sent her to Israel for the summer when she was in high school. It was extremely politicizing, according to Gilmer. I stayed that for a period of six weeks. The entire trip, we did n’t encounter a single Palestinian. They always gave any details about the job. For a week, they forced us to enlist in the Israeli army, and one of the rites of passage involved aiming an M16 at an actual human-shaped cardboard cutout.
She returned to the area in the spring of 2016. This time, she was in her twenties and traveling to Palestine with a group of Black and Latinx activists who were all banding together to form Black Lives Matter. They visited Arab civil society organizations and advocates working on behalf of political prisoners and LGBTQ communities over the course of a 10-day journey across the West Bank.
Going to Palestine revealed the depths of what Gilmer started to perceive as Jewish propaganda. She stated that it was obvious that these were apartheid conditions. It “felt like the total annihilation of a people” to witness homes being destroyed, native plants being obliterated to erase the history of Palestinians, and the way Arab food has been rebranded as Jewish food.
According to Ahmad Abuznaid, who organized six delegations to Palestine for Black Lives Matter network members between 2015 and 2022, that exposure was a part of the plan. Thanks to funding from organizations like the Hasib Sabbagh Foundation, which supports education opportunities for young people living in the West Bank and Gaza, some of the trips were completely for participants. Abuznaid and his traveling companions visited Haifa, Ramallah, and Hebron while on the second trip in January 2015. They also traveled through Israel and Palestine. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions ( BDS ) movement leaders, who work to end international support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine, were also present when the group met with Palestinians who had been displaced by Israeli settlers. When it was possible, they stayed with families and friends, and when it was n’t, inexpensive hotels. This was n’t one of those AIPAC delegations that was funded by corporations. It was a local initiative led by Palestinians. They encountered Ali Jiddah, a 73-year-old Afro-Palestinian who was imprisoned for his activism, during one stop in East Jerusalem. Jiddah, who spent 17 years in an Israeli prison before becoming a journalist and planted hand grenades in Jerusalem in 1968 as part of the Palestinian national struggle, saw the group and wiped his tears away before casually introducing himself as” the Denzel Washington of Palestine.”
The majority of Abuznaid’s family also resides in the West Bank, where he was born in East Jerusalem and is the director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. He grew up in South Florida after leaving Palestine as a young child. He co-founded Dream Defenders, a grassroots racial justice organization, by 2012, where he collaborated with Gilmer and others in the wake of the shooting of armed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to draw attention to Florida’s gun laws. Abuznaid saw striking similarities between Israel’s policing of Palestinians and the criminalization of Black people in the United States. Like their US counterparts, Israeli law enforcement usually practices unfair and illegal policing. In response to these similarities, Black and Palestinian organizers have constantly planned to alter that treatment.
Reading about something is different from meeting people, eating from their plates, and listening to their stories, according to Abuznaid.
Abuznaid is just one of a group of political activists who have huge considered Palestine to be among the most urgent instances of US-backed oppression in the world. Black leaders have been visiting the area since the 1960s to observe the occupation up close and establish connections with those who are opposing it. Over the years, these trips—which some activists have referred to as solidarity delegations—have proliferated. They are all a part of an ecosystem of activists and academics who believe that Black people’s freedom is inextricably linked to the struggles of downtrodden people all over the world. Long-standing US support for Israel and its war in Gaza is being questioned by a new generation of Americans. According to the New York Times, 46 % of young voters support Palestine, and 63 percent of older voters back Israel. Some activists attribute these figures to Black and Israeli resistance movements.
” Black and Palestinian leaders owe the entire left a debt of gratitude.” According to Stefanie Fox, senior director of Jewish Voice for Peace, a grassroots Israeli anti-Zionist organization that organizes protests against war across the nation. The strength of what is occurring in the streets is evidence of their cooperation.
Many Black leaders in the years following World War II supported the establishment of a Jewish state because they compared the pursuit of an Egyptian homeland to their desire to found one for the African diaspora. One first exception, Malcolm X, traveled to Gaza in 1964 with assistance from the Ancient government. However, the support of Black Americans was questioned during the summer of 1967. Israel’s borders were drastically expanded during the Six-Day War, which claimed the lives of an estimated 20,000 Arabs and 800 Israelis. Less than a month after, Harlem caught fire as Black neighborhoods rose up in revolt against the New York Police Department’s murder of teen Black people. As hundreds of cities erupted over the lethal effects of police violence and segregation, the summer of 1967 became known as the “long warm summer.”
Some Black scholars and activists witnessed reflections of their uneven society in Palestine, scenes of which were rife in the news at the time, as the National Guard descended on American cities. Some went to witness the occupation and confront its opponents. In 1969 and 1980, leaders of the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton, met with the Palestine Liberation Organization ( PLO ) in Lebanon and Algeria. Following in their footsteps, Muhammad Ali, June Jordan, Jesse Jackson, Angela Davis, and Alice Walker visited the West Bank and Lebanon to interact with Palestinians who were being occupied and living in exile.
A new generation of Black and Arab activists would come together in the summer of 2014, nearly 50 years later. Israel besieged Gaza in July of that year in a conflict that would claim the lives of more than 2,000 people. After an armed Black teenager named Mike Brown was killed by police the following month, protests broke out in Ferguson, Missouri. His body was left in the street by police for several hours.
According to Kristian Bailey Davis, the founder of Black for Palestine, a nationwide network of more than 6,000 activists founded in the wake of the Ferguson uprisings, “it was saturday of mass atrocities.” ” It was n’t difficult to make material and metaphorical connections between our experiences between the war on Gaza and the flagrant disrespect for Mike Brown’s life and body.”
Black protesters using military-grade weapons in Ferguson received advice from Palestinians. Do n’t rub your eyes, West Bank journalist Mariam Barghouti advised on Twitter, “always make sure to run against the wind/to keep calm when you’re teargassed.” Ferguson Solidarity, please.
When you’re teargassed, always make sure to run against the wind and maintain your composure. The pain will pass, so do n’t rub your eyes! Solidarity# Ferguson
— August 14, 2014, Mariam Barghouti ( @MariamBargheti )
The video series Surviving R. Kelly’s director and executive producer, dream hampton, visited Palestine in 2014. The trip was a natural progression in Hampton’s social identity. She was raised in Detroit, close to the largest Egyptian neighborhood outside of the Middle East, and has spent the majority of her life practicing Islam. Earlier in her career, Hampton worked as a hip-hop writer for The Source and Village Voice while also founding the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, which went on to become the defining voice for her generation regarding how institutions use power to oppress marginalized people. A well-known labor activist named Bill Fletcher Jr. invited her to join a delegation to Palestine put together by the Carter Center. She observed instances of state violence and abuse anywhere in the West Bank.
Remi Kanazi, a Palestinian-American poet who traveled with her in Hebron, was forced to exit the bus and pass through different checkpoints than the rest of the group. According to Hampton, it was n’t a Black versus White issue like we’re used to in America. Even if you have a US passport, you will still be separated from the group and subjected to checkpoints because they have been trained to recognize Israeli last names.
Her group would disembark from the bus and accompany Kanazi through each checkpoint out of solidarity. The Israeli Defense Forces ( IDF) waved them all through, but in reality, the situation was very personal. She told me,” That’s the kind of thing that appeals to Black people.” ” We understand what that humiliation feels like.”
Gilmer, who currently co-directs Dream Defenders and serves on the board of the social action arm of Jewish Voice for Peace, was one of dozens of Black activists who visited Palestine as a result of Abuznaid’s trips after the Ferguson uprising. She traveled to Palestine in 2016 and then came back in 2018 and 2019 with the Dream Defenders. She followed Abuznaid’s lead and drew inspiration from the stories of Black radicals who visited Palestine. Realizing that Malcolm X, SNCC, and all of these other organizations, which laid a really strong foundation for the Movement for Black Lives, were also internationalists after learning that Angela Davis is n’t just an anti-prisoner. Our legacy of solidarity is substantial.
She was not merely made aware of how Israel treated Palestinians by the delegations, but they even had an impact on how she went about organizing at home. She told me,” It helped me understand the implications for downtrodden people all over the world when we fight for our liberation in the US.” ” If we can change this nation, the rest of the world will change as well.” After returning to the US in the summer of 2016, she joined a national group of Black activists who made Palestinian liberation ingrained in their Movement for Black Lives ‘ ( M4BL ) first-ever policy platform. The platform, which accused Israel of being an apartheid state that had committed genocide, drew criticism from popular Israeli leaders and the right, but it also served as a lesson for many people who are now openly criticizing the US for supporting Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
Gilmer says,” I do n’t think any of us anticipated the level of criticism we received.” ” Funders pulled resources, fundraisers were canceled because no one wanted to host us, and we were openly referred to as anti-Semitic.” For all of us, it was a frightening time.
She recalled her time in Palestine when things started to get poor. We simply needed to keep in mind what we had seen and understand that there is no difference between supporting or opposing one group. It concerns fundamental individual rights.
Gilmer is aware of the effects of M4BL’s platform as the death toll from Israels ‘ attack on Gaza rises above 23, 000 and support for Palestine is growing on a global scale. She told me,” Solidarity is the antidote to violence.” ” We’re seeing that message in protests all over the world. That was the vision behind the M4BL statement.”
She claims that some Jewish Americans are now embracing the safety and solidarity that Black Americans have long pushed for. It gives me a lot of hope to hear Jewish people of all ages say that Zionism and Israel do n’t reflect their Judaism and that both are futile attempts to ensure Jewish safety.
At an event in Harlem next November, one justification for that hope was on display. Around 175 people gathered in the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Center’s large community hall to write letters to Palestinians who were being bombarded by Jewish forces. A diverse group of attendees greeted one another like old friends as they were surrounded by colored murals of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., scenes from civil rights marches, and the Harlem jazz scene. Everyone helped themselves to a substantial buffet of Middle Eastern food as older men and women carrying walkers kissed their younger companions on the cheek.
The participants were given 20 minutes to get to know their neighbors after receiving a hearty welcome from our MCs for the evening. We were reminded of the history that had led us to this point when it came time to write the letters, which would be given to Palestinians living in Gaza through individual rights partners. However, the hosts became upset when the sound of a crying baby pierced the space. They thanked the mother for bringing her child to the occasion while beaming. They emphasized the necessity of being reminded that the future is something to fight for.
Mother Jones illustration, Abid Katib/Getty, Movie Star News/ZUMA, Charles Gorry/AP, Ley/Mirrorpix/Newscom, Cal Ford, Jimin Kim/SOPA Images, Tayfun Salci, and Probal Rashid are all depicted in the best image. A Zionist organization for Israeli youth called Young Judaea hired Black and Israeli activist Rachel Gilmer as a teenager. My mother was like,” Great, let’s get the kids out of the house,” because they were offering scholarships to attend summer camp and I’m one of six siblings. When she was tall
Rachel Gilmer was recruited as a teenager to join Young Judaea. This Zionist organization for Jewish youths offers scholarships. “They were giving scholarships to go on summer camp, and I was one of six siblings. My mom thought, ‘Great! Let’s get all the kids out of this house.'”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/black-activists-palestine-delegations/
