Totalitarian regimes have long sought propaganda opportunities in America’s racial tension and unrest.
A delegation of black American journalists, artists and political organizers visited the Palestinian territories in 2015, several months after Michael Brown was shot dead by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo. Among them were Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, and Marc Lamont Hill, a left-wing academic and commentator.
According to an account published in Ebony magazine, the trip was arranged by Ahmad Abuznaid, a Palestinian lawyer and political activist based in Florida. Its purpose, he explained, was “to allow for the group members to experience and see first hand the occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality Israel has levied against Palestinians” and “to build real relationships” with fellow critics of the Jewish state. “In the spirit of Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael and many others,” Mr. Abuznaid added, “we thought the connections between the African American leadership of the movement in the US and those on the ground in Palestine needed to be reestablished and fortified.”
Mr. Abuznaid’s trio of pinup activists is revealing. Malcolm X was not only a member of the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist group that thrived on hatred of whites in the same way that Islamist organizations today thrive on Jew-hatred. He also was a vocal supporter of Mao Zedong, chairman of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cold War. Ms. Davis was a Black Panther in the 1960s and a longtime member of the Communist Party USA. Carmichael, another 1960s black militant and unabashed racial separatist, called Zionism a “diabolical movement.”
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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.
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