BLM protesters in front of Capitol Hill, Washington D.C.Credit: Amanda Andrade-Rhoades / AP
Roni (Fantanesh) Malkai
Oct 24, 2023 11:57 am IDT
At a time when Israelis are being murdered and the Hamas terror organization is posting live videos of the horrific scenes, at the other end of the world a Facebook page of the Black Lives Matter movement, BLM Chicago, has posted a statement in support of Palestine including the image of a paraglider with a Palestinian flag and the slogan “I stand with Palestine.”
There is no moment lower than this expression of support for Hamas in the history of the important struggle for equal rights for Blacks. And I am writing this as a Jewish, Black, Israeli woman and social activist for the advancement of equality and justice. It appears that the distorted perception of radical extremists in the United States concerning power and class relations has scrambled the moral compass every human being should have.
Photos of murdered, kidnapped and missing Israelis who were targeted by Hamas are presented at Tel Aviv University.Credit: Tomer Appelbaum
You in BLM who have adopted as a slogan “I can’t breathe” – the words of George Floyd lying on the street with a policeman’s knee on his neck suffocating and killing him – how can you avert your gaze as Hamas, a murderous terror organization, suffocates Israeli civilians to death? Because I have news for you: We too are feeling a stranglehold, and we too can’t breathe.
We have not been able to breathe for 20 years now, during which we have been compelled to suffer and somehow live with missiles and rockets falling on our children, and this in order to avoid insofar as possible harming innocent people in the Gaza Strip.
We can’t breathe when we are exposed to the acts of slaughter on October 7 – entire families murdered, executed point-blank or burned to death. Entire families eradicated. We can’t breathe when we discover babies and toddlers who were hidden while their parents who were protecting them were murdered.
We can’t breathe when we see the footage of children and elderly people being cruelly carried away into captivity by a terror organization. We can’t breathe as we watch videos Hamas itself has released, of battered young women, bleeding and stripped naked to sounds of rejoicing from the mob in Gaza.
Burnt cars in Kibbutz Be'eri near the Gaza border, following the Hamas attack on local Israeli families. Credit: Nir Keidar
We can’t breathe as journalists from around the world talk about what they saw with their own eyes: severed heads and desecrated bodies. We can’t breathe when young people at a music festival for peace and love were slaughtered like sitting ducks.
And you in BLM, out of a distorted doctrine that relates to Israel as “White supremacy,” are aloof. You see the horrific pictures being published everywhere and choose to turn your head and look away. You prefer to ignore the horrors perpetrated by Hamas.
So let me tell you something about Israel, where most of the Jews are Brown people who came from the Arab countries and North Africa. Alongside them are Jews from Ethiopia, who are Black, in case you have forgotten.
“Multi-culturalism” is not a progressive agenda or a slogan in Israel. It is our reality. This is a reality in which Jews who were persecuted in their countries of origin around the world returned to their ancestral land, where they created a liberal and democratic national home.
And the struggle is not between “White rulers” and “oppressed indigenous people.” It is not between Blacks and Whites. Nor is it a struggle between Israelis and Palestinians. This struggle is between good and evil. Period. It is a war against one of the most dangerous and extreme terrorist groups in the world.
And in its acts of slaughter Hamas, a quasi-Nazi terror organization, did not differentiate between Black, Brown or White Jews but rather murdered people of all colors, only because they were Jews.
I was born in Ethiopia. I am Black and my people who were murdered on European soil and led to the gas chambers were White. And those Jews who survived the Holocaust in Europe created an alliance of brotherhood and stood beside Martin Luther King and the Blacks in their struggle for equal rights in the United States in the 1960s, the days of racial segregation. And there is no need for an occult reader to know what Dr. King, the great leader, would have said about your doctrine, BLM, against Jews. You have completely lost your moral compass and ability to stand on the right side of history.
Jewish lives are important too.
Source (Archive)
