Institute for Public Affairs of Montreal
"Anti-Zionism is Anti-Semitism"

Rev.Martin Luther King, Jr.
Harvard 1968  

 

"Blacks and Jews were both uprooted involuntarily from their homelands.Both peoples have been shaped by the tragic experience of slavery. Both peoples were forced to live in ghettoes, victims of segregation.Both peoples were subject to laws passed with the particular intent of oppressing them simply because they were Jewish or black.. Both peoples have been subjected to oppression and genocide on a level unprecedented in history.

"After 2000 years of exile, the Jewish People has emerged traumatized. The source of that trauma has been the constant insecurity and fear that characterized most of the Diaspora, in most parts of the world. It is a product of landlessness, massacres, periodic expulsion and flight, persecution by tyrants and abuse by the Church and Mosque who encouraged antisemitism to satisfy their own insecurities and political desires.

"Physical security for the Jews has traditionally been improved in a number of ways: usefulness, mobility, bribery and assimilation. Psychological responses to this insecurity and trauma are well known: self-hatred and blame, identification with and appeasement of abusers, obsessive fantasy of a future paradise on earth. These solutions and responses are so integrated into the Jewish psyche that they have been passed down from generation to generation, displaying themselves even in relatively free societies, even in America and the recently liberated homeland, Israel.

"Despite its significance to the Jewish Nation, the State of Israel has failed to alleviate most of this trauma, and has not reduced the levels of antisemitism - it has simply allowed antisemites to masquerade themselves under the new banner of "anti-Zionism". We cannot expect antisemitism to disappear - Jewish existence and Jewish philosophy will always be threatening to its children: Christianity, and Islam. The trauma and insecurity, on the other hand, is within our power to diminish - should we decide to do so.

"And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism.The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!."