Josh and Rudy join Michael Fischbach, author of Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Communities of Color and The Movement and the Middle East: How the Arab-Israeli Conflict Divided the American Left for a discussion on the history how the Left and the black liberation movements have historically related to the Israel-Palestine conflict, exploring the distinct factions of these movements which were pro-Zionism and pro-Palestinian. We discuss the initial reaction of the left parties to the ’48 war and to the Suez invasion of ’56, how Malcolm X reacted to, and influenced pro-Palestine solidarity before his murder, how Zionism divided the black struggle, how the Andrew Young affair solidified black mainstream attitudes towards Palestine and the meetings between black leaders and Arafat in the late 70s-early 80s. We then talk about how the Old and New left reacted to the ’68 war, and how Zionism generated a ‘civil war’ between Jewish leftists and helped form a Jewish conservative base. We finish off by talking about the role of Zionism in the founding of DSA and how Palestinian solidarity today sees very similar faultlines.
