Dumisani Washington-Vast Majority of African Americans Support Jewish State
by Rachel Frommer/Algemeiner
Black Zionist Leader: Despite Anti-Israel Movement Efforts, Vast Majority of African Americans Support Jewish State.
A black Christian Zionist leader told The Algemeiner on Friday that, “despite the anti-Israel movement’s best efforts, the vast majority of the African American community support the Jewish state.”
Dumisani Washington — senior pastor for California’s Congregation of Zion, founder of the Institute of Black Solidarity with Israel and diversity outreach coordinator with Christians United for Israel — was responding to endeavors such as Black History Month in February, during which anti-Israel Palestinian activism was highlighted at college campuses throughout the country.
“Only the intellectually lazy buy into intersectionality,” he said, referring to the concept of placing under the same ideological umbrella all racial, class or gender groups self-described as discriminated against — among these blacks and Palestinians.
“Most members of the Black community attend church, where they are taught a biblical worldview of Israel, of the Jewish people as God’s chosen,” Washington explained. “When many blacks hear, for example, that Black Lives Matter has brought an anti-Israel position into their movement, they are pissed off or confused. They don’t get what one has to do with the other.”
Washington said that pro-Israel students should remember that “no community — black, Hispanic or Jewish — is monolothic, and the hard-left academic world involved in ‘black-Palestinian solidarity’ are not representative of the majority of the African-American population. The anti-Israel view is not true. It’s crap, and smart people don’t want crap.”
According to David Brog, executive director of the Maccabee Task Force — a group formed in 2015 to combat demonization of Israel on campus — “A false narrative of shared oppression has been tailored over years by the anti-Israel movement to appeal to minority communities. At some universities, the BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) issue has become so racialized that African-American students are its primary promoters,” he said. “But, though the anti-Israel bullies might have been winning for the last few years, the tide is turning.”
Brog said, “Now, Jewish students have to put in the time in building their own relationships with minority groups. You have to invest and communicate with these communities and teach them truth about Israel. You have to demonstrate that being a Zionist includes concern about human rights or race relations. You have to show them that supporting Israel is not about changing their entire worldview.”
As The Algemeiner reported, an American higher-education-reform group released a report this month labeling BDS as “one of the greatest threats to academic freedom in the United States today,” and offering recommendations for how university boards can combat the movement on campus.
