Why IBSI's Advocacy Will Succeed Where Others Have Fallen Short
PEACE - Plan for Education, Advocacy, & Community Engagement
According to Attorney General Eric Holder, Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri was not shot in the back by police officer Darren Wilson. The Obama Justice Department determined that “hands up, don’t shoot” was a lie. What the Department of Justice did report about Ferguson in 2015 was an abundance of evidence of police misconduct and exploitation of the city’s residence, nearly 70% of whom were Black. As per AG Holder’s DOJ, this abuse of power had been happening for years and partially explained the visceral reaction to Brown’s death.
One of the many byproducts of the Hands Up Don’t Shoot false narrative was the meteoric rise of Black Lives Matter which was formed in 2013. BLM co-founder, Patrisse Cullors chose to use the tragic occasion to inject Israel-hatred into the already racially-charged conversation. This was a decades-long, KGB-inspired tactic perfected by Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969 to 2004. So, in addition to using the Black community to further the cause of Jew-hatred, BLM missed an opportunity to address the reported injustices endured by the people of Ferguson. BLM’s pattern of obfuscation and scapegoating Israel has only increased and intensified, culminating in what one L.A. rabbi called a pogrom. Further, the effects of BLM’s misguided policies directed at “helping” Black lives have been devastating to the Black Community.
The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI) has launched an initiative called PEACE – Plan for Education, Advocacy, and Community Engagement. PEACE a nine-month journey of discovery that will enroll Black American and African men and women ages 18 & up, lead them in a 16-course study on Israel-Africa, and Black-Jewish relations, take them both to an African nation and to Israel, and return them to their cities as IBSI Ambassadors. Once they have returned home, the IBSI Ambassadors will be the hub of Black-Jewish synergy by forming Tesfa Centers. (Tesfa is the Amharic word for hope). IBSI is also preparing to launch a form of the PEACE Initiative that will see its Ambassadors travel to an African nation before visiting Israel. In this way, the Ambassadors will experience the Israel-Africa relationship in real-time and be even more prepared to defend and advance it.
The community engagement led by IBSI Ambassadors across the country will follow the pattern of Black-Jewish cooperation established over a century ago by educator Booker T. Washington and Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. They were founders of the Rosenwald Schools. Just as Washington and Rosenwald worked to address the lack of access to education for Black people in the segregated south, so IBSI Ambassadors will identify and address the real needs of the primarily poor and working-class families in their cities. This means that the IBSI Ambassadors, all of whom will be residents of the city or the surrounding area in which they work, will have intimate knowledge of their community—knowledge that is not filtered through agenda-driven “justice” groups, or by news media selling a narrative to increase its profits.
This needs-based approach to Jewish and Israel solidarity in the Black community was advanced a generation after Washington and Rosenwald during the civil rights era. As the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told the Rabbinical Assembly in 1968, “probably more than any other ethnic group, the Jewish community has been sympathetic and has stood as an ally to the Negro in his struggle for justice.” Jewish allies joined with Black leaders to address the need in the Black community; that was, to dismantle the century-long Jim Crow system of segregation and oppression. This was the ultimate success and global inspiration of the civil rights movement.
Today, across the country, poor and working-class Black families face related but very different challenges. In most cities, the public school system is failing students. Illiteracy rates are at highs not seen since the early 1900s. Violence, homicides, and lack of jobs create a deadly, vicious cycle producing more of the same. Black small business owners and entrepreneurs are saddled with the historic challenges of access to capital relative to others; challenges greatly exacerbated by the effects of the COVID pandemic. In a 2020 Forbes article, it is revealed that Black, billionaire investor Robert Smith, “discovered the structural racism in banking firsthand as he tried to help Black businesses and banks that serve Black communities obtain Paycheck Protection Program loans. Smith found that Black-owned businesses faced numerous structural obstacles and as a result had trouble accessing the emergency financing being provided by the federal government through the banking sector.” It is a bitter irony that, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis (and I would add the BLM-endorsed violent riots and looting that destroyed entire city blocks), nearly half of all Black small businesses were completely wiped out in 2020.
The Black struggle for justice and the Jewish quest for Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) have converged many times in the U.S., to the benefit of everyone. IBSI’s PEACE Initiative will produce Ambassadors that will enjoin and assist the Black and Jewish communities in improving people’s lives by helping them move forward. This may entail helping establish after-school tutoring programs or organizing affordable music lessons for children. It may include facilitating meetings and events with clergy or houses of worship. It may even mean helping create sustainable urban farms for access to healthy food where that is the need. IBSI Ambassadors will also represent the true Israel-Africa, Black-Jewish alliance by helping provide accurate information about Israel and (when necessary) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
We at IBSI believe that this holistic, historically proven approach is what will ultimately be successful in Israel advocacy and Black-Jewish relations going forward. In fact, given the considerable damage done by well-financed, anti-Israel, pro-BDS groups like BLM, anything short of an organic, embedded effort will likely fail. We are at a crucial point in time for Africa and Israel, as well as the African diaspora and the Jewish people. This is very reminiscent of the time after Israel’s 1973 (Yom Kippur) War against the Arab states. The Arabs and the Soviet Union lost the war, and began a new disinformation campaign against Israel, coercing the African nations to sever their close ties with the Jewish State. As I write in my book, Zionism & the Black Church, several African economies were thriving at that time, thanks in large part to Israeli innovation and cooperation. It is even said that the Nigerian naira was stronger than the U.S. dollar.
Forty-plus years after that golden age of the Israel-Africa partnership, we have come full circle. With the Abraham Accords revealing unprecedented peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors, the time is ripe for Africans—as well as Black Americans—to reassert their solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people. IBSI foresees great peace and economic prosperity in the region which will have positive implications for the world.
When asked what was the big mistake of his life, former Israeli Prime Minister, Shimon Peres said, “I did not dream enough, and my dreams were too small. My recommendation is to dream big! Do not be afraid, do not hesitate, leave the past to historians.” Through our Plan for Education, Advocacy, and Community Engagement, IBSI will heed the late Prime Minister’s advice.