After Hamas atrocities, MLK’s embrace of Israel and disdain for antisemitism confronts liberals
January 15, 2024
Just 10 days before his assassination, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at a podium with war raging between Israelis and Arabs in the Middle East and strife evident in urban American communities between blacks and Jewish shopkeepers. Without equivocation, he embraced Israel and condemned antisemitism in all its forms.
“We cannot substitute one tyranny for another, and for the black man to be struggling for justice and then turn around and be anti-Semitic is not only a very irrational course but it is a very immoral course. And wherever we have seen anti-Semitism we have condemned it with all of our might,” King declared in a question-and-answer session in March 1968 at the Rabbinical Assembly.
He added for good measure: “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”