Black Orthodox Israelis

"There's African Americans that are walking around saying, 'free Palestine', thinking that they're saying, 'free Black people from racism in America'." 

"They think it's like a heightened sense of racism that ... people are experiencing in another part of the world. And it's the opposite."

"The people who they think are helping the Palestinians are the people who are actually enslaving the Palestinians: Hamas."

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham. Photo by Courtesy Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham

The West's Black liberation movement stood foursquare behind the Palestinians in the days following the massacre of 1,200 civilians in southern Israel October 7, near the Gaza border, in vehement opposition to Israel which as far as BLM was concerned is a settler-colonial state oppressing and persecuting the Palestinians. A photo showing a paraglider, a Palestinian flag and the legend: "I stand with Palestine" was posted on the website of BLM's Chicago branch.

Having done so, it is not possible for them, in recognition of the news filling all legacy news sites not to know the extent of the savage bestiality inflicted by Hamas terrorists on the civilian population of Irsraeli border towns and villages in the marauding massacre that took place on that fateful day; the cruelty in remorselessly killing infants and children, the sadistic pleasure taken in mass-raping Israeli girls and women.

The terrorist attack was characterized as a "desperate act of self defense" by BLM Grassroots. BLM Canada, on the other hand, issued a statement to the effect that it was "horrified by the widespread violence, torture and murder inflicted on innocent civilians across Palestinian lands", studiously avoiding any mention of what had occurred in the state of Israel. 

 

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham takes especial notice and umbrage of the Black community's stance against Israel. And that can be explained by the fact that he is himself an African American Israeli, profoundly disappointed by those of the Black community who feel justified in opposing Israel on the grounds of "liberation". 

His birth name was Shariff Hasan, a native of Los Angeles who converted to Judaism in 2013 and assumed a new name, more fitting to the career he soon found himself engaged in. In 2015 he travelled to Israel for the purpose of study, but he never left. Attracted by the uniting magnetism of a shared national identity with different cultures living together in a Jewish state as citizens.

He was cognizant that in the 1920s, Jewish philanthropy funded Black colleges and the reciprocal fallout in the 1930s and 1940s when Black colleges gave employment to Jewish academics who fled German fascism. That Jews played a lead role in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s was not lost on him. Nor the fact that both communities shared a long history of subjugation.

Blacks in the West turned away from Israel when it defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria in a joint military venture meant to destroy Israel, during the 1967 Six-Day War, leaving Israel in control of land wrenched from Syria and Egypt; the Golan Heights and Sinai respectively. Black student activists supported the Palestinian 'cause'; newsletters described Zionism as a white colonial project. A stance active today.

According to a Wall Street Journal publication by Jason L. Riley, BLM scapegoats Jews, exploiting racial divisions by using an "old but effective playbook to rally others to their cause. And they are counting on the ignorance, complacency and guilt of white liberals to lend the movement credibility and power".

The Apartheid label so beloved of antisemites is an absurdity, with a fifth of Israeli citizens mostly Muslim Arabs. The remaining four-fifths of the population, are majority Jews native to the Middle East and North Africa who were exiled from their millennia-long diaspora in Muslim countries after their Roman-era expulsion from Judaea. A smaller proportion of Jews were mostly refugees from Europe. Additionally, close to 200,000 Black Israeli Jews originated from Ethiopia.

"We never looked to enact violence on white America. You could take the most radical Black groups that have ever existed in American history, and none of them have ever thought about mass murdering the people who they thought were oppressing them. Hamas and their supporters have no justification if they say, 'Oh, well, it's been oppression for 75 years'", stated the Rabbi.

Musician Nissim Black (in black hat and glasses) brings his two children for a visit with Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky in Bnei Brak, Israel. The rabbi told Black, “Being ‘Black’ is your mayla (virtue), not a chesaron (lacking).” Courtesy of Nissim Black

"[Universities] teach this liberation theory, or theology, around the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. So now that this conflict is happening, these people believe that, 'Hey, I'm actually educated  went to classes and my professors taught about this ... I know the truth of what's going on'."

"A lot of it's just the ego of bad, false education."

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Ben Avraham