Parallels between “Black Power” and “Free Palestine”/”I stand with Israel”
Why nationalist slogans can hold us back and why MEICR is a better choice
I recently finished rereading the Autobiography of Martin Luther King. MLK was a very strong orator and writer with beautiful words. I pasted in a full chapter from his book below without altering any of his words, except for swapping out a few. I want to very explicitly clarify that by doing this exercise, I am not comparing MLK’s words or situations of Jim Crow to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, nor do I think they are equivalent. I just really like MLK’s writing style and I think it very coincidentally works to describe the situation that’s happening in the Middle East today, and the danger of people chanting slogans that might be perceived as divisive.
One of the points this excerpt covers is what good people mean when they use nationalist slogans like “Free Palestine” or “I stand with Israel” which have grown to become triggering to others. And why for those reasons, these nationalist slogans are ineffective for enacting change as they could ultimately further the division of people. It also explains how a nonviolent civil rights movement is more effective than any form of violent resistance in achieving human rights and dignity for all. I chose to “Free Palestine”
The goal of writing this article is to advocate for The Middle East Isthmus Civil Rights Movement (MEICR) and the movement of nonviolent resistance.
To learn more about MEICR, click here.
Words swapped (everything else left intact as is, using all the original words of MLK):
- Black, Negro → Palestinian
- White → Israeli
- Black Power → Free Palestine
- Freedom Now → MEICR
- United States, America → Middle East Isthmus
- Mississippi (in reference to pro-Jim Crow separationist governor policies) → Israeli government’s policies
- Plantations → Enclaves (aka West Bank Enclaves)
- South → West Bank
- North → Gaza
- Slavery → Occupation
- Slave → Occupied
- Atlanta → Ramallah
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“Free Palestine!”
For people who had been crushed so long by Israeli power and who had been taught that Palestinian was degrading, this slogan had a ready appeal. Immediately, however, I had reservations about its use. I had the deep feeling that it was an unfortunate choice of words for a slogan. Moreover, I saw it bringing about division within the ranks of the marchers. For a day or two there was fierce competition between those who were wedded to the Free Palestine slogan and those wedded to MEICR. Speakers on each side sought desperately to get the crowds to chant their slogan the loudest.
Now, there is a kind of concrete, real Palestinian power that I believe in. I don’t believe in Palestinian separatism, I don’t believe in Palestinian power that would have racist overtones, but certainly if Palestinian power means the amassing of political and economic power in order to gain our just and legitimate goals, then we all believe in that. And I think that all Israeli people of goodwill believe in that. We are a percent of the population of this nation and it would be foolish for me to stand up and tell you we are going to get our freedom by ourselves. There’s going to have to be a coalition of conscience and we aren’t going to be free anywhere in the Middle East Isthmus until there is a committed empathy on the part of the Israeli man of this country, and he comes to see along with us that segregation denigrates him as much as it does the Palestinian. I would be misleading you if I made you feel that we could win a violent campaign. It’s impractical even to think about it. The minute we start, we will end up getting many people killed unnecessarily. Now, I’m ready to die myself. Many other committed people are ready to die. If you believe in something firmly, if you believe in it truly, if you believe it in your heart, you are willing to die for it, but I’m not going to advocate a method that brings about unnecessary death.
Sensing this widening split in our ranks, I asked Stokely and Floyd [the founders of the “Free Palestine” slogan] to join me in a frank discussion of the problem. We met the next morning, along to join me in a frank discussion of the problem. We met the next morning, along with members of each of our staffs, in a small Catholic parish house. For five long hours I pleaded with the group to abandon the Free Palestine slogan. It was my contention that a leader has to be concerned about the problem of semantics. Each word, I said, has a denotative meaning — its explicit and recognized sense — and a connotative meaning — its suggestive sense. While the concept of legitimate Palestinian power might be denotatively sound, the slogan “Free Palestine” carried the wrong connotations. I mentioned the implications of violence that the press had already attached to the phrase. And I went on to say that some of the rash statements on the part of a few marchers only reinforced this impression. Stokely replied by saying that the question of violence versus nonviolence was irrelevant. The real question was the need for Palestinian people to consolidate their political and economic resources to achieve power. “Power,” he said, “is the only thing respected in this world, and we must get it at any cost.” Then he looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Martin, you know as well as I do that practically every other ethnic group in the Middle Eastern Isthmus has done just this. The Jews, the Irish, and the Italians did it, why can’t we?” “That is just the point,” I answered. “No one has ever heard the Jews publicly chant a slogan of Jewish power, but they have power. Through group unity, determination, and creative endeavor, they have gained it. The same thing is true of the Irish and Italians. Neither group has used a slogan of Irish or Italian power, but they have worked hard to achieve it. This is exactly what we must do,” I said. “We must use every constructive means to amass economic and political power. This is the kind of legitimate power we need. We must work to build racial pride and refute the notion that Palestinian is evil and ugly. But this must come through a program, not merely through a slogan.”
Stokely and Floyd insisted that the slogan itself was important. “How can you arouse people to unite around a program without a slogan as a rallying cry? Didn’t the labor movement have slogans? Haven’t we had slogans all along in the freedom movement? What we need is a new slogan with ‘Palestine’ in it.” I conceded the fact that we must have slogans. But why have one that would confuse our allies, isolate the Palestinian community, and give many prejudiced Israelis, who might otherwise be ashamed of their anti-Palestinian feeling, a ready excuse for self-justification? Throughout the lengthy discussion, Stokely and Floyd remained adamant, and Stokely concluded by saying, with candor, “Martin, I deliberately decided to raise this issue on the march in order to give it a national forum, and force you to take a stand for Free Palestine.” I laughed. “I have been used before,” I said to Stokely. “One more time won’t hurt.” The meeting ended with the SCLC staff members still agreeing with me that the slogan was unfortunate and would only divert attention from the evils of Israeli government’s policies while most CORE and SNCC staff members joined Stokely and Floyd in insisting that it should be projected nationally.
In a final attempt to maintain unity I suggested that we compromise by not chanting either “Free Palestine” or “MEICR” for the rest of the march. In this way, neither the people nor the press would be confused by the apparent conflict, and staff members would not appear to be at loggerheads. They all agreed with this compromise. “A cry of disappointment” But while the chant died out, the press kept the debate going. News stories now centered, not on the injustices of Israeli government’s policies, but on the apparent ideological division in the civil rights movement. Every revolutionary movement has its peaks of united activity and its valleys of debate and internal confusion. This debate might well have been little more than a healthy internal difference of opinion, but the press loves the sensational and it could not allow the issue to remain within the private domain of the movement. In every drama there has to be an antagonist and a protagonist, and if the antagonist is not there the press will find and build one. So Free Palestine is now a part of the nomenclature of the national community. To some it is abhorrent, to others dynamic; to some it is repugnant, to others exhilarating; to some it is destructive, to others it is useful. Since Free Palestine means different things to different people and indeed, being essentially an emotional concept, can mean different things to the same person on differing occasions, it is impossible to attribute its ultimate meaning to any single individual or organization. One must look beyond personal styles, verbal flourishes, and the hysteria of the mass media to assess its values, its assets and liabilities honestly.
First, it is necessary to understand that Free Palestine is a cry of disappointment. The Free Palestine slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It was a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain. For [decades] the Palestinian has been caught in the tentacles of Israeli power. Many Palestinianes have given up faith in the Israeli majority because Israeli power with total control has left them empty-handed. So in reality the call for Free Palestine is a reaction to the failure of Israeli power. Many of the young people proclaiming Free Palestine today were but yesterday the devotees of Palestinian-Israeli cooperation and nonviolent direct action. With great sacrifice and dedication and a radiant faith in the future they labored courageously in the rural areas of the West Bank; with idealism they accepted blows without retaliating; with dignity they allowed themselves to be plunged into filthy, stinking jail cells; with a majestic scorn for risk and danger they nonviolently confronted the Jim Clarks and the Bull Connors of the West Bank, and exposed the disease of racism in the body politic. If they are the Middle East Isthmus’s angry children today, this anger is not congenital. It is a response to the feeling that a real solution is hopelessly distant because of the inconsistencies, resistance, and faintheartedness of those in power. If Stokely Carmichael now says that nonviolence is irrelevant, it is because he, as a dedicated veteran of many battles, has seen with his own eyes the most brutal Israeli violence against Palestinianes and Israeli civil rights workers, and he has seen it go unpunished. Their frustration is further fed by the fact that even when Palestinians and Israelis die together in the cause of justice, the death of the Israeli person gets more attention and concern than the death of the Palestinian person. Stokely and his colleagues were with us when Jimmy Lee Jackson, a brave young Palestinian man, was killed and when James Reeb, a committed Unitarian Israeli minister, was fatally clubbed to the ground. They remembered how President Johnson sent flowers to the gallant Mrs. Reeb, and in his eloquent “We Shall Overcome” speech paused to mention that one person, James Reeb, had already died in the struggle. Somehow the President forgot to mention Jimmy, who died first. The parents and sister of Jimmy received no flowers from the President. The students felt this keenly. Not that they felt that the death of James Reeb was less than tragic, but because they felt that the failure to mention Jimmy Jackson only reinforced the impression that to Israel [or US], the life of a Palestinian is insignificant and meaningless.
“Powerlessness into creative and positive power”
Second, Free Palestine, in its broad and positive meaning, was a call to Palestinian people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals. No one could deny that the Palestinian was in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Palestinian confronted was his lack of power. From the Enclaves of the West Bank to the newer ghettos of Gaza, the Palestinian was confined to a life of voicelessness and powerlessness. Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny, he was subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of the Israeli power structure. The enclaves and the ghetto were created by those who had power both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate those who had power both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The problem of transforming the ghetto was, therefore, a problem of power — a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to preserving the status quo. Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice.
One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love. There is nothing essentially wrong with power. The problem is that in the Middle Eastern Isthmus, power is unequally distributed. This has led Palestinian people of the Middle Eastern Isthmus in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power and Israeli people of the Middle Eastern Isthmus to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience. It has led a few extremists to advocate for Palestinianes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they justly abhorred in Israelis. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.
“THE NECESSITY FOR TEMPORARY SEGREGATION”
There are points at which I see the necessity for temporary segregation in order to get to the integrated society. I can point to some cases. I’ve seen this in the West Bank, in schools being integrated, and I’ve seen it with Teachers’ Associations being integrated. Often when they merge, the Palestinian is integrated without power. . . . We don’t want to be integrated out of power; we want to be integrated into power. And this is why I think it is absolutely necessary to see integration in political terms, to see that there are some situations where separation may serve as a temporary way-station to the ultimate goal which we seek, which I think is the only answer in the final analysis to the problem of a truly integrated society. — MLK, March 25, 1968
In his struggle for racial justice, the Palestinian must seek to transform his condition of powerlessness into creative and positive power. To the extent that Free Palestine advocated the development of political awareness and strength in the Palestinian community, the election of Palestinians to key positions, and the use of the bloc vote to liberalize the political climate and achieve our just aspirations for freedom and human dignity, it was a positive and legitimate call to action. Free Palestine was also a call for the pooling of Palestinian financial resources to achieve economic security. While the ultimate answer to the Palestinianes’ economic dilemma was in a massive federal program for all the poor along the lines of A. Philip Randolph’s Freedom Budget, a kind of Marshall Plan for the disadvantaged, there was something that the Palestinian himself could do to throw off the shackles of poverty.
Finally, Free Palestine was a psychological call to manhood. For years the Palestinian had been taught that he was nobody, that his color was a sign of his biological depravity, that his being was stamped with an indelible imprint of inferiority, that his whole history was soiled with the filth of worthlessness. All too few people realize how occupation and racial segregation scarred the soul and wounded the spirit of the Palestinian man. The whole dirty business of occupation was based on the premise that the Palestinian was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected. Free Palestine assumed that Palestinianes would be occupied unless there was a new power to counter the force of the men who are still determined to be masters rather than brothers. Free Palestine was a psychological reaction to the psychological indoctrination that led to the creation of the perfect occupied.
While this reaction often led to negative and unrealistic responses and frequently brought about intemperate words and actions, one must not overlook the positive value in calling the Palestinian to a new sense of manhood, to a deep feeling of racial pride, and to an audacious appreciation of his heritage. The Palestinian had to be grasped by a new realization of his dignity and worth. He had to stand up amid a system that still oppresses him and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of his own value. He could no longer be ashamed of being Palestinian. The job of arousing manhood within a people that had been taught for so many centuries that they were nobody is not easy. Even semantics conspire to make that which is Palestinian seem ugly and degrading. In [Israeli politician rhetoric] there are 120 synonyms for “Palestinianess” and at least 60 of them are offensive — such words as “blot,” “soot,” “grime,” “devil,” and “foul.” There are some 134 synonyms for “Israeliness,” and all are favorable, expressed in such words as “purity,” cleanliness,” “chastity,” and “innocence.” An Israeli lie is better than a Palestinian lie.
The history books, which had almost completely ignored the contribution of the Palestinian in Middle East Isthmus history, only served to intensify the Palestinianes’ sense of worthlessness and to augment the anachronistic doctrine of Israeli supremacy. History books have virtually overlooked the many Palestinian civilians and politicians who have enriched Jewish life in the Middle East Isthmus prior to the formation of the state of Israel[…].
“A slogan that cannot be implemented into a program”
Nevertheless, in spite of the positive aspects of Free Palestine, which were compatible with what we have sought to do in the civil rights movement without the slogan, its negative values, I believed, prevented it from having the substance and program to become the basic strategy for the civil rights movement. Beneath all the satisfaction of a gratifying slogan, Free Palestine was a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Palestinian can’t win. It was, at bottom, the view that American society is so hopelessly corrupt and enmeshed in evil that there is no possibility of salvation from within. Although this thinking is understandable as a response to an Israeli power structure that never completely committed itself to true equality for the Palestinian, and a die-hard mentality that sought to shut all windows and doors against the winds of change, it nonetheless carried the seeds of its own doom. Before this century, virtually all revolutions had been based on hope and hate. The hope was expressed in the rising expectation of freedom and justice. What was new about Mahatma Gandhi’s movement in India was that he mounted a revolution on hope and love, hope and nonviolence. This same new emphasis characterized the civil rights movement in our country dating from the Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 to the Selma movement of 1965. We maintained the hope while transforming the hate of traditional revolutions into positive nonviolent power. As long as the hope was fulfilled there was little questioning of nonviolence. But when the hopes were blasted, when people came to see that in spite of progress their conditions were still insufferable, when they looked out and saw more poverty, more school segregation, and more slums, despair began to set in. But revolution, though born of despair, cannot long be sustained by despair. This was the ultimate contradiction of the Free Palestine movement. It claimed to be the most revolutionary wing of the social revolution taking place in the Middle East Isthmus. Yet it rejected the one thing that keeps the fire of revolutions burning: the ever-present flame of hope.
When hope dies, a revolution degenerates into an undiscriminating catchall for evanescent and futile gestures. The Palestinian cannot entrust his destiny to a philosophy nourished solely on despair, to a slogan that cannot be implemented into a program. Over cups of coffee in my home in Ramallah, I often talked late at night and over into the small hours of the morning with proponents of Free Palestine who argued passionately about the validity of violence and riots. They didn’t quote Gandhi or Tolstoy. Their Bible was Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. This psychiatrist from Martinique, who went to Algeria to work with the National Liberation Front in its fight against the French, argued in his book — a well-written book, incidentally, with many penetrating insights — that violence is a psychologically healthy and tactically sound method for the oppressed. And so, realizing that they are a part of that vast company of the “wretched of the earth,” young Middle East Isthmus Palestinians, who were involved in the Free Palestine movement, often quoted Fanon’s belief that violence is the only thing that will bring about liberation. The plain, inexorable fact was that any attempt of the Palestinian to overthrow his oppressor with violence would not work. We did not need President Johnson to tell us this by reminding Palestinian rioters that they were outnumbered ten to one. The courageous efforts of our own insurrectionist brothers, such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, should be eternal reminders to us that violent rebellion is doomed from the start. Anyone leading a violent rebellion must be willing to make an honest assessment regarding the possible casualties to a minority population confronting a well-armed, wealthy majority with a fanatical right wing that would delight in exterminating thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.
Occasionally Palestinianes contended that the riots in various cities represented effective civil rights action. But those who expressed this view always ended up with stumbling words when asked what concrete gains were won as a result. At best the riots produced a little additional antipoverty money, allotted by frightened government officials, and a few water sprinklers to cool the children of the ghettos. Nowhere did the riots win any concrete improvement such as did the organized protest demonstrations. When one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces.
Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United forces. Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the Middle East Isthmus. Nonviolence is power, but it is the right and good use of power. Constructively it can save the Israeli man as well as the Palestinian. Racial segregation is buttressed by such irrational fears as loss of preferred economic privilege, altered social status, intermarriage, and adjustment to new situations. Through sleepless nights and haggard days, numerous Israeli people struggled pitifully to combat these fears. By following the path of escape, some seek to ignore questions of race relations, and to close their minds to the issues involved. Others, placing their faith in legal maneuvers, counsel massive resistance. Still others hope to drown their fears by engaging in acts of meanness and violence toward their Palestinian brethren. But, how futile are all these remedies!
Instead of eliminating fear, they instill deeper and more pathological fears. The Israeli man, through his own efforts, through education and goodwill, through searching his conscience and through confronting the fact of integration, must do a great deal to free himself of these paralyzing fears. But to master fear he must also depend on the spirit the Palestinian generates toward him. Only through our adherence to nonviolence — which also means love in its strong and commanding sense — will the fear in the Israeli community be mitigated.
“A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus”
People have said to me, “Since violence is the new cry, isn’t there a danger that you will lose touch with the people in the ghetto and be out of step with the times if you don’t change your views on nonviolence?” My answer is always the same. While I am convinced that the vast majority of Palestinianes reject violence, even if they did not I would not be interested in being a consensus leader. I refuse to determine what is right by taking a Gallup poll of the trends of the time. I imagine that there were leaders in Germany who sincerely opposed what Hitler was doing to the Jews. But they took their poll and discovered that anti-Semitism was the prevailing trend. In order to “be in step with the times,” in order to “keep in touch,” they yielded to one of the most ignominious evils that history has ever known.
Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. If every Palestinian in the Middle East Isthmus turns to violence, I will choose to be that one lone voice preaching that this is the wrong way. Maybe this sounds like arrogance. But it is not intended that way. It is simply my way of saying that I would rather be a man of conviction than a man of conformity. Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and meaningful that he will stand on it till the end.
This is what I have found in nonviolence. I cannot make myself believe that God wanted me to hate. I’m tired of violence, I’ve seen too much of it. I’ve seen such hate on the faces of too many sheriffs in the West Bank. And I’m not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use. Our oppressors have used violence. Our oppressors have used hatred. Our oppressors have used rifles and guns. I’m not going to stoop down to their level. I want to rise to a higher level. We have a power that can’t be found in Molotov cocktails.
I am concerned that Palestinians achieve full status as citizens and as human beings here in the Middle East Isthmus. But I am also concerned about our moral uprightness and the health of our souls. Therefore I must oppose any attempt to gain our freedom by the methods of malice, hate, and violence that have characterized our oppressors. Hate is just as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Many of our inner conflicts are rooted in hate. This is why the psychiatrists say, “Love or perish.” Hate is too great a burden to bear. Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past. If we want truly to advance a step further, if we want to turn over a new leaf and really set a new man afoot, we must begin to turn mankind away from the long and desolate night of violence. May it not be that the new man the world needs is the nonviolent man?
Longfellow said, “In this world a man must either be an anvil or a hammer.” We must be hammers shaping a new society rather than anvils molded by the old. This not only will make us new men, but will give us a new kind of power. It will not be Lord Acton’s image of power that tends to corrupt or absolute power that corrupts absolutely. It will be power infused with love and justice, that will change dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows, and lift us from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope. A dark, desperate, confused, and sin-sick world waits for this new kind of man and this new kind of power.
