Cydney Wallace, a Black Jewish community activist, never felt compelled to travel to Israel, though \u201cNext year in Jerusalem\u201d was a constant refrain at her Chicago synagogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 39-year-old said she had plenty to focus on at home, where she frequently gives talks on addressing anti-Black sentiment in the American Jewish community and dismantling white supremacy in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI know what I\u2019m fighting for here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That all changed when she visited Israel and the West Bank at the invitation of a Palestinian American community organizer from Chicago\u2019s south side, along with two dozen other Black Americans and Muslim, Jewish and Christian faith leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>The trip, which began Sept. 26, enhanced Wallace\u2019s understanding of the struggles of Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli military occupation. But, horrifyingly, it was cut short by the unprecedented Oct. 7 attacks on Israel<\/u><\/a> by Hamas militants. In Israel\u2019s ensuing bombardment of the Gaza Strip, shocking images of destruction and death<\/u><\/a> seen around the world have mobilized activists in the U.S. and elsewhere<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Wallace, and a growing number of Black Americans, see the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank and Gaza reflected in their own fight for racial equality and civil rights. The recent rise of protest movements against police brutality in the U.S., where structural racism plagues nearly every facet of life, has connected Black and Palestinian activists under a common cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>But that kinship sometimes strains the more than century-long alliance between Black and Jewish activists. From Black American groups that denounced the U.S. backing of Israel\u2019s occupation of Palestinian territory<\/u><\/a> to Black protesters demonstrating for the Palestinians\u2019 right to self-determination, some Jewish Americans are concerned that support could escalate the threat of antisemitism and weaken Jewish-Black ties fortified during the Civil Rights Movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>\u201cWe are concerned, as a community, about what we feel is a lack of understanding of what Israel is about and how deeply Oct. 7 has affected us,\u201d said Bob Kaplan, executive director of The Center for Shared Society at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAntisemitism has to be seen as a reprehensible form of hate … as any form of hate is,\u201d he said. \u201cAntisemitism is as real to the American Jewish community, and causes as much trauma and fear and upset to the American Jewish community, as racism causes to the Black community, or anti-Asian feeling causes to the Asian community, or anti-Muslim feeling causes in the Muslim community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, he added, many Jews in the U.S. understand that Black Americans can have an affinity for the Palestinian cause that doesn\u2019t conflict with their regard for Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a poll earlier this month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research<\/u><\/a>, Black adults were more likely than white and Hispanic adults to say the U.S. is too supportive of Israel \u2014 44% compared to 30% and 28%, respectively. However, Black Americans weren\u2019t any more likely than others to say the U.S. is not supportive enough of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Generational divides also emerged, with younger Americans more likely to say the U.S. is too supportive of Israel, according to the poll. Even within the Jewish American community, some younger and other progressive Jews tend to be more critical of some of Israel\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Black American support for the Palestinian cause dates back to the Civil Rights Movement, through prominent left-wing voices, including Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, among others. More recent rounds of violence, including the 2021 Israel-Hamas war and now Israel\u2019s unprecedented bombing campaign against Gaza shown live on social media have deepened ties between the two movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is just the latest generation to pick up the mantle, the latest Black folks to organize, build and talk about freedom and justice,\u201d said Ahmad Abuznaid, the director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During a week-long truce between Israel and Hamas as part of the recent deal to free dozens of hostages seized by Hamas militants, Israel released hundreds of Palestinian prisoners and detainees<\/u><\/a>. Many were teenagers who had recently been picked up in the West Bank for minor offenses<\/u><\/a> like stone-throwing and had not been charged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Some Black Americans who watched the Palestinian prisoner release and learned about Israel\u2019s administrative detention<\/u><\/a> policy, where detainees are held without trial, drew comparisons to the U.S. prison system. While more than two-thirds of jail detainees in the U.S. have not been convicted of a crime, Black people are jailed<\/u><\/a> at more than four times the rate of white people, often for low-level offenses, according to studies of the American judicial system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAmericans like to talk about being innocent until proven guilty. But Black folks are predominantly and disproportionately detained in the United States regardless of whether anything has been proven. And that\u2019s very similar to Israel\u2019s administrative detention,\u201d said Julian Rose, an organizer with a Black-run bail fund in Atlanta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rami Nashashibi, executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, invited Wallace and the others to take part in the trip called \u201cBlack Jerusalem\u201d \u2014 an exploration of the sacred city through an African and Black American lens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They met members of Jerusalem\u2019s small Afro-Palestinian community \u2014 Palestinians of Black African heritage, many of whom can trace their lineage in the Old City back centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur Black brothers and sisters in the U.S. suffered from slavery and now they suffer from racism,\u201d said Mousa Qous, executive director of the African Community Society Jerusalem, whose father emigrated to Jerusalem from Chad in 1941 and whose mother is Palestinian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe suffer from the Israeli occupation and racist policies. The Americans and the Israelis are conducting the same policies against us and the Black Americans. So we should support each other,\u201d Qous said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nashashibi agreed, saying: \u201cMy Palestinian identity was very much shaped and influenced by Black American history.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI always hoped that a trip like this would open up new pathways that would connect the dots not just in a political and ideological way,\u201d he said, \u201cbut between the liberation and struggles for humanity that are very familiar to us in the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the trip, Wallace was dismayed by her own ignorance of the reality of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>At an Israeli checkpoint outside the Western Wall, the Jewish holy site, Wallace said her group was asked who was Jewish, Muslim or Christian. Wallace and the others showed IDs issued for the trip, but when an Israeli officer saw her necklace depicting her name in Hebrew, she was waved through, while Palestinians and Muslims in the group were subjected to intense scrutiny and bag checks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeing there made me wonder if this is what it was like to live in the Jim Crow-era\u201d in America, Wallace said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kameelah Oseguera, who grew up in an African American Muslim community in Brooklyn, New York, also said the trip opened her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the entrance to the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem in the West Bank, Oseguera noticed a massive key \u2014 a Palestinian symbol of the homes lost in the 1948 creation of Israel, referred to as the Nakba, or \u201ccatastrophe.\u201d Many kept keys to the homes they fled or were forced out of \u2014 a symbol signifying the Palestinian right to return, which Israel has denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/a>Oseguera said the key recalled her visit to the \u201cdoor of no return\u201d memorial in Senegal dedicated to the enslaved Africans forced onto slave ships and brought to the Americas. As a descendant of enslaved Africans, it brought thoughts of \u201cwhat the dream of my return would have meant for my ancestors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Returning to home, she said, is a \u201clonging that is transmitted through generations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel\u2019s Law of Return grants all Jews the right to settle permanently in Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship \u2014 a concept that drew support from many Black American civil rights leaders, including A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Dorothy Height, Shirley Chisholm and Martin Luther King, Sr., the father of the slain civil rights leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the last decade, however, Black Americans and the Palestinians have also found growing solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer resonated in the West Bank, where Palestinians drew comparisons to their own experiences of brutality under occupation, and a massive mural of Floyd appeared on Israel\u2019s hulking separation barrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2014, protests in Ferguson, Missouri, erupted after the police killing of Michael Brown, a Black teenager, which gave rise to the nascent Black Lives Matter movement. While police officers in Ferguson fired tear gas at protesters, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank tweeted advice about how to manage the effects of the irritants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2016, when BLM activists formed the coalition known as the Movement for Black Lives, they included support for Palestinians<\/u><\/a> in a platform called the \u201cVision for Black Lives.\u201d A handful of Jewish groups<\/u><\/a>, which had largely been supportive of the BLM movement, denounced the Black activists\u2019 characterization of Israel as a purportedly \u201capartheid state\u201d that engages in \u201cdiscrimination against the Palestinian people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere tends to be this doubt or astonishment that Black people care about other oppressed people around the world,\u201d said Phil Agnew, co-director of the national advocacy group, Black Men Build, who has taken four trips to the West Bank since 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It would be a mistake, Agnew said, to ignore significant numbers of Black and Jewish Americans who are united in their support for the Palestinians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n None of the members of the \u201cBlack Jerusalem\u201d trip anticipated it would come to a tragic end with the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in which some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and about 240 taken hostage. Since then, more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed<\/u><\/a> in Israel\u2019s blistering air and ground campaign in Gaza, now in its third month. Violence in the West Bank has also surged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n