Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

358 // GARY E. RUBIN
The roots of this current can be found, once again, in the late-1960s transformation
of the civil rights movement into a race revolution. That shift
spurred a movement by some elements of the black intelligentsia to link
themselves more closely with the struggle of colored peoples throughout
the world against colonial oppression, notably including Palestinian Arabs
living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.... [R]ather
than recognise Zionism as the national liberation movement of the Jewish
people—a movement not unlike those that gave rise to many newly created
African countries—these writers portray the Jewish state as an outpost
of Western imperialism and its actions as a counterpart to "Jewish
exploitation" in black ghettos.•'
The basis for this conclusion is laid out in standard histories of Black-Jewish
relations in this era. Proponents of this viewpoint essentially marshal three types
of evidence for Black hostility toward Israel. First, they argue that in the late
1960s, a group of nationalist-oriented African Americans began to attack Israel as
a colonialist-oppressive state and that their views influenced Black attitudes
toward Israel generally. A typical review of this period cites the following developments
as indicative of emerging African American evaluations of Israel:
—In an interview with Black scholar C. Eric Lincoln, Malcolm X "voiced
resentment at 'the Jews who with the help of Christians in America and
Europe drove our Muslim brothers (i.e., the Arabs) out of their homeland
where they had been settled for centuries and took over the land for
themselves.'"' This is one of several quotes attributable to Malcolm X
in which he listed Zionism as among the major manifestations of white
imperialism threatening the flowering of Black nationalism.
—The Chicago publication Muhammad Speaks regularly "used loaded
phrases such as 'Israeli persecutors' and 'Israeli occupation of Palestine.'
One {article} spoke of'Nazi-like tactics exercised by the Zionists against
the defenseless civilian population in the occupied Arab lands.'" 4
—Black nationalist leader Stokely Carmichael began to attack Israel consistently
in the late 1960s, using phrases such as the "trickery of
Zionism," the "evil of Zionism," and "Zionist aggression.'"'
—At Chicago's New Politics Convention of 1967, which some observers
saw as a repudiation of the integraf ionist aims of the civil rights movement,
6 one of the thirteen resolutions demanded by the Black Caucus
condemned the "imperialist Zionist war," referring to the Six Day War
which the overwhelming majority of Jews, including many of the organizers
of the convention, regarded as defensive and necessary for Israel's
survival. 7
—The most controversial attack by emerging African American groups on
Israel during this period was doubtless the June-July 1967 newsletter of