Timothy Alexander Guzman, Silent Crow News – On April 16, 1963. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (MLK Jr) wrote a letter from Birmingham, Alabama jail cell, here is part of what he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr is seen as a man who had moral principles, a man who wanted peace and equality around the world. Yes, that is true, but one thing that is overlooked historically speaking especially in the US is that MLK Jr was a strong supporter of Israel, we can even call him a Zionist.
Then there is the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist-led Israeli government and their illegal occupation, which is something that MLK Jr barely spoke about. There are many unanswered questions on how MLK Jr viewed the Israel-Palestine conflict. Did he just ignore Palestinians out of convenience so that he would not ruffle the feathers of the massive support he received from the Jewish community within the US and Israel? or was he just misinformed, or better yet, was he just ignorant to what was really going on with Israel’s brutality against the Palestinian people?
The Jewish Support of Martin Luther King Jr
There were and still are Jewish organizations who staunchly supported MLK Jr such as the Jewish National Fund (USA) who published an article ‘MLK: A Zionist Who Spoke Truth to Israel’s Detractors’ by Dr. Sol Lizerbram who said that “Each year, millions of Americans celebrate the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his tireless fight for civil rights. However, in addition to his monumental legacy advocating for the rights of black Americans, he also leaves behind a lesser-known legacy: one of Israel advocacy and fighting anti-Semitism.”
Dr. Lizerbram claimed that “Throughout his entire life, King was a staunch supporter of both the land and people of Israel and Jewish people everywhere. Whenever he was confronted by individuals who denounced Israel, both within and outside of his movement, he would unequivocally denounce their libel and recommit himself to the Zionist cause.”
Whether it was the mainstream media, the US education system, Hollywood, and others barely any of them mentioned anything about Dr. king’s full-support for Israel. “In addition to his fervent Zionism, Dr. King also made strong efforts to bridge the gaps between black and Jewish communities, believing that we shared a similar culture and a mutual responsibility to fight for each other’s rights” Dr. Lizerbram continued, “Famously, King marched on Selma with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel by his side, and the two of them remained friends up until King’s death. In fact, 10 days before he was assassinated, King even spoke at an event celebrating Rabbi Heschel that was attended by over 1,000 Rabbis. When Heschel spoke at King’s funeral, he said, “Martin Luther King is a voice, a vision, and a way. I call upon every Jew to harken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way.”
What is interesting about Dr. Lizerbram’s article is that he did not mention anything about the Palestinians and their struggle against the state of Israel.
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism or rac.org published an article by Stuart Appelbaum, ‘A Special Bond: Martin Luther King, Jr., Israel, and American Jewry’ about MLK Jr’s letter he sent to Adolph Held, President of the Jewish Labor Committee regarding a conference involving his Southern Christian Leadership Conference where resolutions against criticizing Zionism and backing Arab countries who opposed Israel’s occupation of Palestine were established. Appelbaum said that “Understanding Held’s worries, Dr. King explained that, beyond offering opening remarks, he had no part in the conference. But, Dr. King said, had he been present during the discussion of the resolutions “I would have made it crystal clear that I could not have supported any resolution calling for Black separatism or calling for a condemnation of Israel and an unqualified endorsement of the policy of the Arab powers.”
It seemed that Dr. King was a true Zionist sympathizer as he declared that “Israel’s right to exist as a state is incontestable,” Dr. King wrote. He then added, almost prophetically, “At the same time the great powers have the obligation to recognize that the Arab world is in a state of imposed poverty and backwardness that must threaten peace and harmony.” Dr. King said that “some Arab feudal rulers are no less concerned for oil wealth and neglect the plight of their own peoples. The solution will have to be found in statesmanship by Israel and progressive Arab forces who in concert with the great powers recognize fair and peaceful solutions are the concern of all humanity and must be found.”
On a March 25, 1968, Dr. King gave a speech to the Rabbinical Assembly and said, “peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”
MLK Jr Admired Theologian and Pro-Zionist, Reinhold Niebuhr
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr was influenced by Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian and a Zionist at heart according to Martin Seth Kramer, an American-Israeli scholar at Tel Aviv University and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) where he specialized on the history and politics in the Middle East who wrote an lengthy article for Mosaic magazine titled ‘Where MLK Really Stood on Israel and the Palestinians’. Kramer mentioned the influence of Protestant liberal theology it had on MLK Jr which is described as theological movement based on a pro-Zionist and anti-Arab agenda which was led by Reinhold Niebuhr a highly influential theologian and ethicist at the time when MLK Jr was just a student.
Kramer said, “As King himself would relate, he soon came under Niebuhr’s spell” In other words, Dr. King became indoctrinated and believed what Niebuhr preached. MLK Jr went on to say that “During my last year in theological school, I began to read the works of Reinhold Niebuhr. The prophetic and realistic elements in Niebuhr’s passionate style and profound thought were appealing to me, and I became so enamored of his social ethics that I almost fell into the trap of accepting uncritically everything he wrote.” In Fact, MLK Jr mentioned Niebuhr in his book, ‘Stride Toward Freedom’ which was published in 1958 and said, “your great prophetic vision, your creative contribution to the world of ideas, and your unswerving devotion to the ideas of freedom and justice.”
According to one of MLK Jr’s closest advisors, Andrew Young, “King always claimed to have been much more influenced by Niebuhr than by Gandhi; he considered his [own] nonviolent technique to be a Niebuhrian strategy of power.” That’s a revealing fact. Here is how Kramer described Niebuhr’s stand on Israel:
Given his influence upon King, it’s important to recall the vigor with which Niebuhr supported both the establishment of Israel and its right to defend itself. He had expressed sympathy for Zionism as early as 1929, and in 1942 he founded the Christian Council on Palestine, a pro-Zionist association that grew to include thousands of (mostly Protestant) clergymen. In 1946, he testified in favor of a Jewish state before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine. “The fact that the Arabs have a vast hinterland in the Middle East,” he said there, “and the fact that the Jews have nowhere to go, establishes the relative justice of their claims and of their cause”
Later, Kramer describes Niebuhr’s concerns regarding Israel’s Arab neighbors which explains MLK Jr’s views on the Middle East:
To Niebuhr, the Middle East was a place of greatness lost. “This whole Near Eastern world,” he asserted, “has fallen from the glory where the same lands, which now maintain only a miserable pastoral economy, supported the great empires in which civilization arose.” Whatever grandeur was once introduced to the area by Islam had long since faded. Islam “still believes in a holy war,” he thought, but it “does not believe in itself sufficiently to challenge the whole world.” Israel thus found itself, in Niebuhr’s words, “surrounded by Islamic nations in various stages of feudal decay”
Could King have been unaffected by Niebuhr’s views of the Arabs? asked Kramer, “So perhaps it isn’t surprising to hear echoes of Niebuhr in King’s words on the Middle East. In 1957, King described it as a region in the grip of “the last vestiges of feudalism.” Ten years later, he invoked the same term to describe the “Arab feudal rulers” of the oil states who “neglect the plight of their own peoples,” leaving the Arab world “in a state of imposed poverty and backwardness.” If, in speaking of Africa and India, King would blame their abject poverty on “the domination of the British empire,” when turning to the Arabs he pointed an accusatory finger at homegrown “feudalism.”
What is interesting about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s views on the Arab world is that those who who were against any form of Arab “feudalism” (which MLK Jr opposed) such as Gamal Abdel Nasser, the former president of Egypt, he simply ignored them as well:
Nor did King ever mention Nasser, hero of the Arabs and purported enemy of “feudalism.” When, upon leaving the Holy Land in March 1959, King and his wife Coretta spent a day in Nasser’s Cairo before flying on to Athens and New York, they devoted themselves mainly to touring the Pyramids. Unlike other contemporary pilgrims to Egypt like Che Guevara and Malcolm X, King steered well clear of Arab “revolution” and its champion. Perhaps here, too, Niebuhr exerted an influence
MLK Jr followed Niebuhr’s approach to the Middle East conflict, “The most striking parallel between Niebuhr and King lay in their shared approach toward mitigating the conflict in the Middle East” Kramer explains Niebuhr’s formula for peace, “In 1956, therefore, he called for a “stupendous undertaking” involving the investment of “billions of dollars” in power generation, soil conservation, and industrialization” because, at least according to Niebuhr, “It would lift the economic well-being of the whole area and change the moribund agrarian-pastoral economy of the Arab states. It would help to absorb the refugees who are now rotting in their camps. It would mitigate the fears of the Arabs of a highly technical Israeli economy, and it would make the drift toward the [Communist] East less inevitable.”
MLK Jr practically repeated Niebuhr’s idea, “Here again King echoed Niebuhr. After the Six-Day War, the civil-rights leader (who by then had won a Nobel peace prize) was asked what should be done to promote peace in the Middle East” he continued, “for Israel, “peace means security and . . . territorial integrity.” But the Arabs required something different: “a kind of economic security that they so desperately need” and that “These nations . . . are part of that third world of hunger, of disease, of illiteracy. I think that as long as these conditions exist there will be tensions, there will be the endless quest to find scapegoats. So, there is a need for a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, where we lift those who are at the bottom of the economic ladder and bring them into the mainstream of economic security.”
Realistically speaking, a Marshall Plan would not have brought lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians then, and it surely wont bring lasting peace now, in fact it would preserve Israel’s occupation and undermine Palestinian rights with the excuse that they have economic opportunities, therefore, they should not complain about the land they lost due to Israel’s expansionist policies. The main problem is not about economics, it’s about Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land.
Protecting MLK Jr’s Legacy at all Costs
According to Axios, an online news website, MLK Jr’s son, Martin Luther King III commented on what his father would have said about the Israel-Palestine conflict today, “First and foremost, he always was for nonviolence. So, I can be sure that he would be for a ceasefire” in Gaza today,” he continued, “I don’t know the answer to the Middle East. What I do know is that my father would be for the support of all humanity, whatever that looks like. And today, it does not look like humanity is existing in an appropriate way in the Middle East.”
In another article by Martin Kramer ‘MLK: The Six-Day War interview’ he asked a relevant question, “A blind eye?” MLK Jr travelled to Beirut, Lebanon, East Jerusalem and Cairo, Egypt in 1959, and in 1967, according to Kramer, “the bitterness of the Arabs” was apparent since MLK Jr travelled to the Middle East in 1959 and decided to hear the point of view from Arabs themselves, those in attendance were Ruhi al-Khatib, the Muslim mayor of East Jerusalem, Musa Nasir, a Christian from Birzeit near Ramallah, Anton Atallah, a Christian judge, bank proprietor and former deputy mayor of East Jerusalem, Anwar Nusseibeh, a Muslim from an old aristocratic family and Raja al-Issa, a Christian, and publisher of Filastin, the most influential Arab daily in Mandatory Palestine. The result was as follows according to Kramer’s observation:
Their talk would not have been about the “occupation” or about Israeli settlements. This, remember, was a full eight years before the 1967 war, and at the time both eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank belonged to Jordan. Instead, King’s hosts would have tried to impress upon him the injustice inflicted by the creation of Israel itself in 1948, culminating in the dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs
Referencing the article I mentioned earlier, Kramer had made an interesting point, “In Jerusalem, then, King would have heard the story and seen the still-raw effects of the Nakba, the 1948 “catastrophe,” as the Palestinians now call it.” Kramer even said that “Such an experience had been enough to turn some other visiting Americans into strong advocates of the Arab cause.” Kramer disagrees with Michael R. Fischbach’s observation who is a historian at Randolph-Macon College who claimed that “The trip allowed King to come face-to-face with Palestinians and hear their story, something that led him to understand the Palestinians’ plight. The plight of the Palestinians and the Arab-Israeli conflict remained on King’s mind as the 1950s turned into the 1960s.” But Kramer found Fischbach’s understanding of what MLK Jr thought about the Arab-Israel conflict to be flawed:
But here a problem—the same problem—arises. There isn’t any evidence that the “plight of the Palestinians” weighed on King at all. He wrote nothing and said nothing—this, despite the on-the-ground, first-hand tutorial on Palestine he’d received in March 1959
Kramer mentioned Edward Said, a Palestinian-American academic, philosopher and political activist at Columbia University who was basically disappointed with MLK Jr in a 1993 interview when he declared that “With the emergence of the civil rights movement in the middle ’60s — and particularly in ’66-’67 — I was very soon turned off by Martin Luther King, who revealed himself to be a tremendous Zionist, and who always used to speak very warmly in support of Israel, particularly in ’67, after the war” and Said’s nephew, historian and activist Ussama Makdisi also shared the same sentiment according to Kramer’s book, ‘The War on Error: Israel, Islam, and the Middle East’, one of the chapters titled ‘In the Words of Martin Luther King’ which suggests that “Not only did King stand accused of abandoning his antiwar pacifism. He was thought to have ignored the claims of the Arabs, a perception that has persisted,” however, the book mentions that in 2010, Makdisi had criticized King’s signing of the “Moral Responsibility” statement:
That a man like Martin Luther King could stand so openly with Israel, despite his own private qualms and criticism by younger, more radical, black Americans who had discovered the plight of the Palestinians, indicated the degree to which Zionism was embraced by the American mainstream. . . . One of the ways [King] reciprocated Jewish American support for desegregation in the United States was by turning a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinians
According to the FBI wiretaps, King had claimed in private that “he never saw the text as published and would not have signed it if he had.”:
On June 6, 1967, the day after the war began, King said this to his associates:
Did you see the ad in the New York Times Sunday [June 4]? This was the ad they got me to sign with [John C.] Bennett, etc. I really hadn’t seen the statement. I felt after seeing it, it was a little unbalanced and it is pro-Israel. It put us in the position almost of setting the turning-hawks on the Middle East while being doves in Vietnam and I wouldn’t have given a statement like that at all
On June 8, MLK Jr told his advisers he was under pressure to make a statement on the Israel-Palestine conflict:
The statement I signed in the N.Y. Times as you know was agreed with by a lot of people in the Jewish community. But there was those in the negro community [who] have been disappointed. SNCC for one has been very critical. The problem was that the N.Y. Times played it up as a total endorsement of Israel. What they printed up wasn’t the complete text, even the introduction wasn’t the text. I can’t back up on the statement now, my problem is whether I should make another statement, or maybe I could just avoid making a statement. I don’t want to make a statement that backs up on me [;] that wouldn’t be good. Well, what do you think?
King’s legal counsel, Harry Wachtel reportedly told him that “I don’t think you have to worry too much about losing the support of the Jewish community at this time,” advised Wachtel. “They’re very happy at this point, with their apparent victory. I think you should just stride very lightly and stress the end of violence.”
On June 18, MLK Jr appeared on ABC’s ‘Issues and Answers’ in efforts to respond to his long-standing silence on the Palestinian issue:
Well, I think these guarantees should all be worked out by the United Nations. I would hope that all of the nations, and particularly the Soviet Union and the United States, and I would say France and Great Britain, these four powers can really determine how that situation is going. I think the Israelis will have to have access to the Gulf of Aqaba. I mean the very survival of Israel may well depend on access to not only the Suez Canal, but the Gulf and the Strait of Tiran. These things are very important. But I think for the ultimate peace and security of the situation it will probably be necessary for Israel to give up this conquered territory because to hold on to it will only exacerbate the tensions and deepen the bitterness of the Arabs
Notice how MLK Jr never mentioned “the Palestinians.” It is astonishing that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr remained silent for so long towards the brutality the Palestinians faced under the Israeli government. Basically, it is fair to say that he was forced to say something about Israel’s atrocities after public scrutiny.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s letter from his jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama said that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” unfortunately, it seemed that MLK Jr’s only concern was for Israel and its right to exist. He was forced to say something about the Palestinian issue only after the New York Times had published his statement as an endorsement of Israel.
It is fair to say that the injustice that the Palestinians faced on a daily basis did not affect Dr. King’s views on the Arab world since he saw Israel as “one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”
