by HAMID DABASHI
The acclaimed African-American author’s new book marks his deliverance from Zionist prose and signals a broader cultural shift in the US that is critical of Israel
The United States is the single most powerful supporter of the Israeli settler colony.
The US government heavily arms and gives political cover to Israel, and considers the people at the mercy of its aggression as America’s enemies. And president after president, Republican and Democrat, has enabled Israel to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and even genocide with total impunity.
The current genocide Israel is committing in Palestine is legally and morally placed at the doorstep of the US.
Therefore, what happens in the US – especially when the political mainstream begins to wake up and see Zionism for the apocalyptic genocidal fanaticism that it is – matters for world peace.
Zionists – whether Israeli or American, Christian or Jewish – do not like the prospects of that awakening.
As the racist and colonial nature of Israel’s regime became more widely recognised, the experiences between Palestinians and the African American community also became more prominently linked, especially in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Over the last year, several outlets – from The New York Times to Politico, Vox, and others – published articles examining the history of Black and Palestinian solidarity.
Indeed, these discussions emerged in full force after 7 October 2023 as several leading African American public figures and intellectuals made clear their stance on Israel – even making headlines on “how Gaza has shaken Black politics”.
When US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield raises her hand and vetoes one Security Council resolution after another to stop the Israeli murderous machinery; when we see US Secretary of Defence Lloyd J Austin III in the news pledging his mighty military will protect Israel against attempts to stop its rampage; when the irredeemably corrupt New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivers nauseating “stand with Israel” speeches, something deep in the history of African American experience cries foul.
And when Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri avows: “Aipac [American Israel Public Affairs Committee], I’m coming to tear your kingdom down!” she invokes an entirely different legacy of solidarity with Palestinians in African American history, as Israel systematically unleashes its savageries against Palestinians and other Arab nations like Lebanon.
Towering figures like Malcolm X, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, and Cornel West have been bold, precise, and hard-hitting when it comes to condemningthe criminal atrocities of the US and Israel in cahoots together.
Re-enter Ta-Nehisi Coates
It was not too long ago when the heat on Ta-Nehisi Coates, a prominent African-American literary and critical voice, got so bad he ran out of the kitchen.
Back in 2017, he deleted his Twitter account with millions of followers and went into occultation following a scathing critique levelled against him by the unflinching moral conscience of Cornel West, a distinguished scholar and activist who called him “the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle”.
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