r/JewsOfConscience • u/AshkeNegro • Aug 09 '24
Opinion Black-Jewish Relations
This, in the aftermath of AIPAC’s grotesque primary of Cori Bush, is so apt—and, as a Black Jew myself, I’ve observed so many of these dynamics Jeffrey writes about playing out right in front of me. I’ve included text + screen shots (here’s the thread itself: https://x.com/melnickjeffrey1/status/1821328641298407653?s=46&t=CbiBTaJMC2qzQe-v__e8gw):
“I've been studying Black-Jewish relations for decades and often it parses as "second verse, same as the first." But there is something really different at play right now--so many establishment Jews act triumphalist, demand such complete obeisance from their Black counterparts.
I remain optimistic that it's the last gasp of a dying culture and I hope that Bowman and Bush will shine some needed light on how AIPAC has disfigured our national politics. But it's our job as Jews to show how AIPAC has poisoned us with their dark twisted fantasy of US life.
Last spring showed that establishment Jews (like Josh Shapiro) are in a real Kill Your Sons moment. They'd sooner sacrifice their own kids before questioning their loyalty to the Zionist project. But these children that you spit on? I think they'll abide.
Kamala Harris tried to silence Palestine justice protesters at a rally today--that is (terrible, disgusting) business as usual for Democrats. It's something else I'm trying to index--I guess it's just the logical end of Zionism I'm noting: the insatiable brutal hunger for more.
David Levering Lewis's "Parallels and Divergences: Assimilationist Strategies of Afro-American and Jewish Elites from 1910 to the Early 1930s" really got me going in my research and while still SO useful, it seems so....innocent now.
tbh it's Adolph Reed's insight that stays with me most. In his Jesse Jackson book he reminds us that Black-Jewish relations has been constituted largely by conversations between civil rights groups, but often those conversations had Jews on both sides, helping steer.”
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u/touslesmatins Non-Jewish Ally Aug 09 '24
"Black Power and Palestine" is also a great book. One of the threads in the history the author tells is how every time a black group or politician dared to have a radical view of Palestine instead of the allowed liberal status quo, there were Jewish groups ready to condemn them, threaten or cut funding to them, and destroy them in the public sphere.
It really paints a picture of a transactional partnership where one side held all the reins and the dynamic is playing out to this day with the AIPAC primaries we're seeing. In Missouri I thought it was especially grotesque, hand-picking a compliant corporate candidate, but one with black skin, to go against a black candidate that they had decided to eliminate. To me it reads " there is an acceptable way of being black and you will not deviate from it". So many racist tropes at play.