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Note: Below please find the statement made by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1967 entitled "The Middle East Crisis."
I was not aware of this statement until this weekend when talking with former SNCC activists and others. The statement is preceded by a commentary from the SNCC Digital Archives about the history of "The Middle East Crisis" statement. One of my Palestinian friends in Atlanta told me this weekend that clearly SNCC activists were ahead of the curve in America as far as understanding struggles faced by Palestinians vis-a-vis the "powerful organized Zionist movement to take over another people's home" and the disruption in the Middle East generally.
September 23, 2019
Justice Initiative
Palestine
1967 Statement on Palestine
What is considered SNCC's Palestine Statement is actually an article published in the June-July 1967 SNCC Newsletter, shortly after the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, under the title, "Third World Round Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge." It was written by Ethel Minor, who was communications director at the time, and her primary source was a pamphlet published by the Palestine Research Center, called "Do You Know? Twenty Basic Facts about the Palestine Problem." The article included illustrations by artist, Kofi Bailey.
Historian Clayborne Carson writes about the release of the statement:
"Although the press portrayed this article as an official SNCC policy statement, it was actually written to provoke discussion of the Middle East conflict by SNCC's staff and was distributed outside of the organization without the approval of many of SNCC's leaders."
James Forman, who had become the director of SNCC's newly-formed International Affairs Commission in June 1967, had apparently urged against taking a formal stand until SNCC could call a special staff meeting where staff could be educated about the issue. He was abroad when the article was published. After its release, John Wilson, who was then administrator of SNCC's National Office, called a press conference to announce that the article did not represent SNCC's official position. Soon after, other staffers called a press conference in Atlanta to release the article.
SNCC released a more formal statement in response on August 15, 1967, entitled "The Middle-East Crisis." It incorporates many of the points that were made in the June-July article, but within an added context that acknowledged the horrors of the Holocaust, the suppression of American Jewish voices that protested Zionism, and the critical support given to Zionism by the United States.
Sources
Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 266-269.
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STUDENT NONVIOLENT COORDINATING COMMITTEE
360 Nelson St. S.W.
Atlanta, Georgia 30313
Phone: 404 688 0331
August 15, 1967
The Middle East Crisis
During World War II, six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi war criminals in German concentration camps. SNCC understands this tragedy of what happened to the Jews and sympathizes with them since we black people possibly face the same fate here in the United States. Concentration camps set up for the Japanese during world War II in California are now being cleaned and fixed up for the detention of black militants--as are camps in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Oklahoma, and across the nation. We recognize Hitler's massacre of the Jews as one of the worst crimes against humanity. By the same token, we do not see how the Jewish refugees and survivors could ever use this tragedy as an excuse to imitate their Nazi oppressors--to take over Palestine, to commit some of the same atrocities against the native Arab inhabitants, and to completely dispossess the Arabs of their homes, land and livelihood.
Now, gentlemen, let us turn to the undeniable facts of the Palestine Problem which has created the continuing Middle-East crisis, the continuing Arab-Israeli conflict. These facts have been completely hushed up in the United States press and T.V. news media.
Zionism, which is a world-wide nationalistic Jewish movement, supported by the U.S. and British governments, organized and created the State of Israel by sending Jewish immigrants from Europe into Palestine which lies in the heart of the Arab world. This movement dates back to 1897, when the first Zionist congress adopted a program "to create for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law." They got their chance in 1917, at the end of World War I, when Britain took control of Palestine, and under pressure from European Zionist Jews, such as Lord Rothschild, set forth the Balfour Declaration. This was the Zionist "Public Law" which stated that the British Government was in favor of establishing a National Home for the Jewish people in Palestine, but at the same time contradicted itself and said that nothing should be done to damage the civil and religious rights of the Arabs.
In 1917, more than 90% of the Palestine population were Arabs who owned 97.5 per cent of the land. But from 1917 to 1948, the British government brought in Jewish refugees, who as their numbers increased, organized a Jewish army and Jewish terror gangs, which took over Arab property through pressures on the British rulers of Palestine and total massacres of innocent, unarmed Arab villages. This resulted in almost one million Arab refugees being thrown out of their land who, to this day, are still homeless, and living on United Nations charity.
In 1947, the American and British governments supported the Zionists in their illegal take-over of Palestine by pushing through the United Nations partition plan which was supposed to create a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine, which in fact, was not legal under the Charter of the United Nations, and was never approved by any African, Asian or Middle-Eastern country. Even under this illegal plan the Arab state was never established since the Zionists had already seized over 80% of the total land area of Palestine. All attempts by the Arab governments and other Afro-Asian governments to test the legality of this "State of Israel" and to raise the question in the United Nations, have been frustrated by the American and British pressures to keep it quiet.
Gentlemen, the facts are that Israel is and always has been the tool and foot-hold for American and British exploitation in the Middle-East and Africa. America's support of Israel, which also discriminates against dark-skinned Jews in Israel, gives added protection to the American oil companies that exploit Arab oil. As a result of the new hostilities which broke out in June, Israel now has control of the valuable Arab oil deposits in the Sinai desert.
The famous Rothschilds, who have long controlled the wealth of many European nations, were involved in the original conspiracy to create the State of Israel, and today are still among Israel's chief supporters. The Rothschilds also control much of Africa's mineral wealth.
American Jews who know that Zionism is used by the American and British exploiters and try to speak out against the Zionist movement, are suppressed and hushed-up in this country. Such was the case of Moshe Menuhin, the father of violinist Yehudi Menuhin, who attempted to expose the distortions the Zionists were making of his Jewish religion. Even such world figures as historian Arnold Toynbee and Winston Churchill have spoken out against the terror tactics and wrong doings of this Zionist, American, British conspiracy.
Gentlemen, it is clearly a question of right and wrong. In the Middle-East, America has worked with and used the powerful organized Zionist movement to take over another people's home and to replace these people with a partner who has well served America's purpose, a partner that can help the United States and other white western countries to exploit and control the nations of Africa, the Middle East and Africa!
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