A Jewish community leader has warned of rising political anti-Semitism among Black Power militants who, he suggested, might eventually muster the support of the white establishment to the detriment of Jews. The opinion was expressed by Earl Raab, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco in an article in the January edition of Commentary magazine, titled, “The Black Revolution and the Jewish Question.”
Mr. Raab, a former sociology professor at the University of California and San Francisco State College, said that while a majority of Negroes may be opposed to the anti-Semitic behavior of the militants, few are willing to do anything about it lest they seem to be attacking the militant movement itself. “This reaction throws another light on the ability of a movement to be anti-Semitic without a corps of anti-Semites,” Mr. Raab wrote.
He termed “obsolete” the Jewish belief that anti-Semitism is obsolescent as a cultural form in America and that the general American population was unwilling to engage in it. He claimed that black militants could find potential allies among politicians willing to pacify extremists at the expense of the Jewish community. The writer contended that some see “the edge of this possibility…actually peeking out in New York.” In what appeared to be a reply to Jewish leaders who see black anti-Semitism as being confined to only a small radical fringe, Mr. Raab wrote “such questions ignore the fact that this movement has already succeeded in reintroducing political anti-Semitism as a fashionable item in the American public arena – with what consequences no one can yet tell.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
