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THREAD: 1/ People interested in African American engagement with the cause of Palestinian human rights might read this: “Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color:” amazon.com/dp/1503607380/…
2/ There are historically specific reasons for African American identification with Israel and with Jews as a persecuted minority, as well as sincere gratitude for the role many Jewish orgs and activists played in the civil rights movement. The turning point is 1967.
3/ After the 1967 war many African Americans began to identify with Palestinians as oppressed kin and to view Israel as a bully, rather than the bullied. This turn coincides with the PLO’s identification with the Third World left and radical anti-colonial nationalism, Cuba, etc.
4/ The Black Panther Party, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and many other radical black organizations declared solidarity with Palestinians and the PLO around this time, as Alex Lubis has written about here: …rolina.universitypressscholarship.com/mobile/view/10…
5/ In response, some Jewish leaders began to distance themselves from a civil rights and black power movement whose identification with the suffering of Palestinians they felt verged on, and sometimes employed tropes of anti-Semitism.
6/ amazingly, there was even a Black Panther Party in Israel, consisting mainly of Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews, who expressed solidarity with the PLO and their black American counterparts: jstor.org/stable/3011125 
7/ Implicit in some of the later Jewish critiques was a sense of betrayal at black “in gratitude” Jewish support for the civil rights movement and, by extension, the identification African Americans should have with Israel.
8/ criticism of @marclamonthill, Angela Davis and others for their support for Palestinian rights and BDS should be understood in this context. Many Americans are reading denunciations of @IlhanMN as anti-Semitic in precisely this context as well.
