Trusted Black Mouthpieces for Israel?

Among Israel apologists are civil rights leader Al Sharpton, Afro Latino congressman Richie Torres andsports broadcaster and author Emmanuel Acho.

Protests over Gaza genocide have ballooned on college campuses with cops coming in to shut them down, the president demanding law and order instead of cooler heads, discipline and respect for freedom of speech while Jewish and Zionist groups are protecting Israel at all costs.

Serious battle lines have been drawn.

Those lines include the Israeli government and their U.S. operatives working to muzzle Americans who want the slaughter of Palestinians to end. They want the U.S. government to stop funding Israel’s crimes against humanity and public support for Israel is falling.

Those wielding Jewish Power plan to keep funding and the war going. And, they have a plan: “As worldwide protest escalates over Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, academic freedom and free speech are under all-out attack on university campuses in the United States, not just from university administrations and pro-Israeli groups, but now directly from the highest levels of the Israeli state.

“In a story that has been largely ignored in the Western press, the Israeli news website Ynetnews, one of the largest media outlets in the country, reported that the Israeli government has launched what appears to be a wide-ranging covert campaign to harass and intimidate students, faculty, and administrators into silence,” observed William I. Robinson in a TruthOut.org report published online March 23.

“The playbook of tactics employed by the Israel lobby include character assassination, selective misquotation, the willful distortion of the record, the fabrication of falsehoods and a complete disregard for the truth, gaslighting, blacklisting targeted individuals, political and economic blackmail, and even threats of violence,” Mr. Robinson added.

While Israel has murdered over 34,000 Palestinians and the world recoils at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unrepentant butchery, Zionists are moving and calling in their troops—Black troops. They need mouthpieces to repeat their lines and lies—and once again they call Negroes into service.  

Their targets are Black pastors, Black lawmakers, the Black Press and even Black institutions like Morehouse College in Atlanta where many blasted plans for President Biden, an unmovable backer of Israel, to deliver the 2024 commencement address. They didn’t want a president nicknamed “Genocide Joe” speaking at the venerable HBCU.

Among Israel apologists are civil rights leader Al Sharpton, who before his rehabilitated image was called a raging antisemite. Then there is Afro Latino congressman Richie Torres, a House Democrat from New York, and sports broadcaster and author Emmanuel Acho, who has written a book with  Israeli activist-actress and hardcore Zionist Noa Tishby. Tishby appeared on Acho’s YouTube program “Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man” after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The Nigerian American, who is a former pro football player and grew up in Dallas, had a bestselling book of the same title. The new book is called “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew.”

Acho told the New York Post, “ ‘Rather than talking about racism and the misunderstandings of the Black struggle’ … ‘we’re going to talk about antisemitism and the misunderstandings of the Jewish struggle.’ ”

The Post says Acho believes it could “help heal the battered black-Jewish connection that’s been ‘hijacked’ by misunderstanding. ‘If the two communities would just spend more time talking, they would understand the similarities, and thus the tension would dissipate,’ he said of the natural affinity both communities have had for one another throughout American history.”

He asks whether Jews are White, which the vast majority of the settler Zionists are in Israel as are powerful Jews originally from Europe. These are the same people who oppress Ethiopian Jews in what is supposed to be a Jewish homeland. Their wrongs are backed by the power of their White brethren in America, the UK, Germany and other White nations.

According to a 2020 Pew Research Center study, over 90 percent of Jews in America considered themselves White.

Using the myth of Black-Jewish relations

Critical to using Black faces to impact Black spaces is repeating myths and falsehoods about Black-Jewish relations. Like others Acho repeats old lies and omits harsh truths: Jewish involvement in the slave trade, Jews in the Confederacy, Jewish exploitation of Blacks in urban centers, Jews who opposed having Blacks in White suburbs, and Jewish opposition to landmark affirmative action programs killed in 1978. Then there are the threats and targeting of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who called for a balanced policy in the Middle East during his 1984 presidential run. That started a 40 year assault and smear campaign against Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, and his good works, because he mounted a fearless defense of the King disciple.

There was the self-serving use of the Civil Rights movement to assert Jewish political power in ways not previously seen, according to historian Marc Dollinger’s book, Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s.

“So there are basically three areas advanced for why Jews would involve themselves in the struggle for racial equality. All three turn out to be false. But the first would be the history argument, that says Blacks and Jews share a common history, and therefore Jews empathize with the historical experience of Blacks, and therefore they're willing to help. Right?” he noted in an NPR interview.

“When I talk generally with white Jews about why Jews are involved in social justice or civil rights or racial equality, they'll talk about this shared history of oppression. And the problem is that American Jewish history and African-American history are 180 degrees opposite on that question. … (And) if Jews have to go back to ancient Egypt to get the slavery metaphor, then they've kind of missed that American Jewish history is a story of rapid social ascent, and African-American history is the legacy of slavery.”

Mr. Dollinger, who also happens to be Jewish, argues that if Jews were compelled by sentiment to stand with Blacks the Civil Rights movement should have happened 10 years earlier. Jews were well established in American society as Blacks sought an end to legal segregation and racial oppression, he said.

Money, money, money?

There was the targeting of Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, and joke-tellers Dave Chappelle and Whoopi Goldberg. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) was attacked for having supported his uncle, the great scholar Dr. Leonard Jeffries, 32 years ago. Dr. Jeffries was targeted for not agreeing to hide the truth of Jewish slave trading. Mr. Jeffries, Democratic leader in the House, is among strong defenders of Israel today. His top campaign contributor for 2023-2024 was the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which gave him $323,050.

Meanwhile AIPAC proudly and loudly invested $100 million in political spending to try to defeat members of “The Squad,” a group of progressive mostly Black and Latino Democrats in the House who are outspoken critics of Israel who condemn the Gaza genocide.

Rev. Sharpton’s role is especially interesting as he has a strong relationship with Jonathan Greenblat of the ADL, which regularly attacks Black leaders, celebrities, organizations and causes.

Dangerous false equivalencies

Rev. Sharpton is not only a reliable champion for Israel but recently repeated a dangerous lie on MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough Show. The reverend agreed with Scarborough, a conservative, and called protests by students pretty much the same as the January 6, 2020, insurrection led by Donald Trump. A man who built his career on protests and civil disobedience argued that if the student protests were not condemned, Democrats would lose the moral high ground. Such is the demand for fealty to Israel apparently.

Like Sharpton, former Black police chief Charles Ramsey actually equated student protests against Israel to pre-planned violence aimed at overthrowing an election. The day included assaults on law enforcement as Trumpsters built a gallows, called for hanging then Vice President Mike Pence, the murder of U.S. congressmen and used weapons as they took over the U.S. Capitol. People died as a result of their actions.

That wasn’t a protest, that was the unraveling of a great nation and sedition, an attempt to violently overthrow the U.S. government. Such false equivalencies are dangerous. It’s all pushed by Jewish groups to kill criticism of Israel and scare up support for Joe Biden—and they need Black parrots to repeat the lies.

Legislation to protect Jews, Zionists that threatens free speech?

Rep. Torres has been a major cheerleader for the Zionist state and has been well paid for his service. According to  Open Secrets, which tracks political donations, the Bronx congressman received $141,008 in funds from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. AIPAC was his top contributor for 2021-2022, Open Secrets reported.

Not only does he toe the line and back billions in U.S. aid to Israel, he was a major backer of House legislation that threatens free speech.

“The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday aimed at addressing reports of rising antisemitism on college campuses, where activists angered by Israel's war against Hamas have been protesting for months and more recently set up encampments on campus grounds,” NPR reported May 2.

“The Antisemitism Awareness Act would see the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism for the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination laws regarding education programs. … The international group defines antisemitism as ‘a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews’ and gives examples of the definition's application, which includes ‘accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagine wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group’ and making ‘dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective.’ ”

“The bill goes further than an executive order former President Donald Trump signed in 2019. Opponents argue the measure could restrict free speech,” said NPR. That didn’t bother Rep. Torres “one of the 15 Democratic cosponsors of the bill.” “There's a false narrative that the definition censors criticism of the Israeli government. I consider it complete nonsense,” he told NPR.

Though pieces of silver have been disbursed and the lackeys are stepping up, their job may not be easy. “As Black faith and congressional leaders call for a ceasefire, there is also widespread support for a ceasefire among the larger Black community, judging from our polling. A majority (68 percent) of Black Americans in our survey favored a U.S. call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. A plurality (46 percent) of respondents strongly supported the United States calling for an immediate ceasefire, while 22 percent somewhat supported the idea,” the Carnegie Endowment for Peace found at the end of 2023.

“Even before the humanitarian conflict in Gaza compounded, African American religious leaders, responding to pressure from young parishioners, began to pressure Biden to call for a ceasefire. In February, leaders in the influential African Methodist Episcopal Church—one of Black America’s oldest religious and civic institutions—called for an end to all financial aid to Israel,” the Carnegie Endowment for Peace said.

Looks like it’s going to be hard for Israel’s Black messengers to move the crowd. That’s a good thing.

Naba’a Muhammad, award winning Final Call editor, is host of “Straight Words With Naba’a Richard Muhammad, Bj Murphy and James G. Muhammad,” which airs live Tuesdays, 9 p.m. to Midnight Central Time on WVON AM 1690 Black Talk Radio Chicago and is livestreamed at the I Heart Radio app and WVON.com. Get more of his writing and content at straightwords.com.