Left-wing Blacks Score Zionism, Israel; Identity with Terrorists, Matzpen

A group of fifty black Americans lashed out today at U.S. support of Israel and expressed their solidarity with their “Palestinian brothers and sisters.” Many of them, supporters, sympathizers and well known activists in the left-wing movement, demanded “that all military aid or assistance of any kind to Israel must stop. Imperialism and Zionism must and will get out of the Middle East. We call for Afro-American solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for national liberation and to regain all of their stolen land.” A number of signatories were identified as members of the Socialist Workers Party, a Trotskyist organization which expresses the most virulent anti-Zionist, anti-Israel views in the left-wing movement. Several other signatories are leaders in the civil rights movement, including Phil Hutchings, former chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); the Rev. Albert Cleague of Detroit; Robert Williams, who returned recently from several years of exile in Cuba and China after fleeing his home in Monroe. North Carolina where he was involved in organizing the self defense of the black community there; Florence R. Kennedy, a New York attorney; and Florence Beal. a leader of the Third World Womens Alliance.

The venomous attack on Israel and Zionism by the group which calls itself “Committee of Black Americans for Truth About the Middle East.” appeared in a half-page advertisement in today’s New York Times. The statement expressed solidarity with the three major Arab guerrilla groups and singled out an anti-Zionist group within Israel as proof that anti-Zionism exists even among Jews. The group singled out is the Israeli Socialist Organization, known more popularly abroad as “Matzpen” (Compass). This particular group calls for the dismantling of the Israeli state and hews to the line of the Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine which is led by Dr. Nayef Hawetmeh. In recent months one of the leaders of Matzpen, Arie Bober, an Israeli, has been touring the United States under the sponsorship of a group whose list of sponsors include Noam Chomsky and whose secretary is Berta Langston, a member of the Socialist Workers Party. The Committee of Black Americans stated that they are not anti-Jewish. “We are anti-Zionist and against the Zionist State of Israel, the outpost of American imperialism in the Middle East,” they declared. “Zionism is a reactionary racist ideology that justifies the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and lands, and attempts to enlist the Jewish masses of Israel and elsewhere in the service of imperialism to hold back the Middle East revolution.”

The signatories also claimed that it is the United States which is responsible for “the slaughter of Palestinian refugees and freedom fighters” because of its financial and moral support of the Hussein government during the recent Jordanian civil war. “America’s support for King Hussein is consistent with its support of reactionary dictatorships throughout the world,” they contended. They also asserted, without any facts or proof to back their final venomous statement, that “Israel supported the United States in the Korean War; aided France and the Terrorist Secret Army Organization in Algeria against the Algerian revolution; opposed the anti-colonial independence movements in Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia and elsewhere; trained the counter-revolutionary para-commandos of General Mobuto who was one of the persons responsible for the murder of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo; and presently provides arms and other equipment to the Portuguese troops fighting against the Angolan and Mozambican freedom fighters.” The advertisement also includes an appeal for funds and invites the reader to send away for a “truth kit about the Middle East.”