It is so disturbing to witness this latest "lynching" of a Black candidate, all in the name of fighting antisemitism. This time it is the Democratic senatorial candidate, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, who dared to bring up the suffering of the Palestinians.
His words spoken at a sermon in 2018 bear repeating. "We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey. And I don’t care who does it, it is wrong. It is wrong to shoot down God’s children like they don’t matter at all. And it’s no more anti-Semitic for me to say that than it is anti-white for me to say that black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.”
Why is the Israel Lobby attacking Rev. Warnock for words like these? Doesn't the Lobby know how important his race in Georgia is to controlling the US Senate? Would the Lobby prefer a white supremacist over a candidate of color?
Part of the explanation is the deep ties that the Israel Lobby has with racist movements in America. For example, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) has been funding attacks on Black movements and the left for decades. More recently according to the Boston Review, the ADL has been pushing high school and university boards "to characterize Palestinian human rights demands as violations of American Jews' civil rights."
But there are other reasons as well. Israel is a racist state, built on the ethnic and religious concept of Jewish supremacy. White Christian nationalists want the same freedom to marginalize and terrorize people of the wrong faith and ethnicity here in the US. The radical right sees Israel as a kindred state, and the Israel Lobby has come to the same conclusion.
Fred Nagel