Eldridge Cleaver’s transformation is so radical that no one could recognize the once militant Black Panther, ex-convict and author of Soul on lce” in his soft-spoken born-again patriot-pro-Reagan, anti-Communist and staunchly pro-Israel role.
Cleaver has forsaken the tenets — both racial and ideological — that made him one of the leading advocates of revolution and earned him 30,000 votes nationally as a Presidential candidate in 1968. But the new, conservative Cleaver stands little chance of garnering even the 18,000 votes he would need to win a seat on the City Council in Berkeley next week.
Now his thinning hair is gray, his suit is pinstriped and his loyalties are to the American flag that hangs outside his modest and cluttered flat turned into campaign headquarters.
Instead of denouncing American capitalism on college campuses, he addressed Jews in Los Angeles yesterday in a talk sponsored by the Jewish Defense Organization. And his most militant act was getting arrested last Saturday in a fight against rent control laws.
OPPOSES ‘HOLY WAR’ AGAINST ISRAEL
Today, nine years after his return from exile in Cuba, North Korea, Algeria and other Third World countries, Cleaver is quick to speak out against the “Holy War theocratic states which threaten Israel,” against Jesse Jackson’s anti-Semitic slurs, against Berkeley Mayor Gus Newport’s Arab connections.
“Twenty years ago I was a thousand times closer to Jews. Jewish people got me out of jail, all the way up to Leonard Bernstein. The problem is the people I was hooked up with were Jewish leftists,” says Cleaver, who is now seeking support from the Jewish businessman and professionals who support Israel and have tired of what Cleaver terms “Berkeley’s politics of the hidden agenda — all ideological.”
‘WENT THROUGH AN EVOLUTION’
The old, militant Cleaver had never thought through the problems of the Middle East, he now says. His view, like that of leftists and leftist Jews who still live in Berkeley, was derived from his thoughts about politics in America. “I used to basically support the Palestinians because they were a Third World people seeking liberation like the Blacks in America,” says Cleaver.” As for Israel, I opposed its existence because it received support from American imperialists.”
His feelings about the Middle East now sound similar to those of a conservative Israeli. “I went through an evolution,” says Cleaver. “First I began recognizing Israel as a legitimate state, and from that point on, I saw that it wasn’t right to support the existence of an entity without giving it security and guaranteeing its borders.
“I believe in looking at Israel through Jewish history. The existence of Israel has positively transformed the position of Jews after the great slaughters, the pogroms, the Holocaust.”
Cleaver accused Jackson of “pure opportunism” in turning to Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan for support, “I accuse Jesse Jackson of squandering the political capital that Blacks have invested in him. Because of him, the Democratic Party is the most threatening to Israel and has lost the support of the Jewish community.”
“But here in Berkeley,” says Cleaver, shaking his head, “you have Jews for Jesse Jackson and Jews who supported Measure E. Then you have state politics where people who supported Jesse Jackson are running with people who opposed him. The people who support Jesse Jackson and those who supported Measure E ought to be punished at the polls.”
Measure E, which an American Arab group sought to place on the state ballot in the Presidential primary last June, called for cuts in U.S. aid to Israel equal to Israeli expenditures for West Bank settlements. It was defeated by more than a 2-1 margin in the June 5 primary.
CLAIMS VENDETTA BY BLACK LEADERS
Until now, claims Cleaver, he has been excluded from mainstream politics because of a vendetta by estoblished Black leaders. His religious and political vagaries — Cleaver, once a Black Muslim, is now a Mormon — have left Cleaver few organized allies. He supports himself by selling the bulky flowerpots he makes out of rocks and cement while his wife, Kathleen, attends Yale Law School.
“I often speak to the rabbi in Escondido who makes peppermint soap with religious messages in it. We agree that people who speak and can’t use their hands turn doctrine into a graveyard.”
Cleaver, who now wears bifocals and writes and copies his campaign literature through an IBM computer while he watches cable news on his color television set, says, “Everyone else has changed. I went to the Bank of America the other day and met a man with a neatly trimmed beard who told me he admired me when I was a Black Panther but now hates my guts. What are you doing here?’ I asked him. ‘Robbing the bank?”
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.
