1970 black American visionary statement explains Middle East bloodbath

In a momentous statement released on the anniversary of last summer’s attack on Gaza, over 1,000 black activists, artists, scholars and political prisoners signed a thoughtfully written document of “solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and commitment to the liberation of Palestine’s land and people”. 

The signatories drew historical connections between the plight of the black and Palestinian movements, described years of joint struggle, and highlighted the urgency of their continuing, contemporary struggles against racism and oppression. But to those of us aware of generations of mutual bonds, this statement comes as no surprise. It is time to revisit and, indeed, implement a visionary statement made four and a half decades ago by the black movement.

In 1970, the Committee of Black Americans for Truth About the Middle East issued an extraordinary, powerful appeal published at the time in The New York Times.  It condemned the bloodbath in Jordan and America's support for King Hussein's slaughter of Palestinian refugees and freedom fighters. It sharply criticised American imperialism aided by Zionists and Arab dictatorships.

Through language and terminology that may, at times, seem anachronistic, this visionary statement clarified the links between forms of oppression and the connections among oppressed nations worldwide. It offered a sharp and accurate political analysis of events unfolding in the Middle East. Almost five decades later the spot-on analysis still explains current imperialist strategies and identifies the ongoing attempt to enlist anyone “in the service of imperialism … to hold back the Middle East revolution”.

Today such means still serve the US to circumvent revolutionary sentiments in the region, as it ignores the heavy toll in lives, the destruction of communities and of ancient civilisations.

US role in Black September

The Black September bloodbath in Jordan leading up to the 1970 statement of the black movement resulted in thousands of dead and wounded Palestinians and was enabled, as the statement observes by “the encouragement, armaments and financial aid of the United States government”. Similarly, Israel’s decades of brutality were and are enabled by the intervention, armaments, and financial aid of Western governments and first and foremost the United States, to the tune of $3 billion a year in military and other aid.

The US-led invasion of Iraq on false pretences has left the cradle of civilisation shattered into three weak states, with a death toll of over 750,000. Syria, where a covert CIA mission to arm Syrian rebels went awry, is fast imploding onto its people. All sides are now in agreement that the American effort to topple the Assad regime by aiding so-called moderate fighters has gone badly wrong and pushed the country into a civil war that has already left millions dead or displaced.

Thoughtful study of today’s bloodbaths shows much in common with those cited by the 1970 statement: US involvement in the Korean War; US aid to France and to the terrorist Secret Army in Algeria, designed to put down the Algerian Revolution; the opposition to anti-colonial, independence movements in Morocco, Tunisia, Indonesia and elsewhere. All followed from an aggressive American drive to ensure free exploitation, supported by allies such as Israel, identified by the black movement as “the outpost of American imperialism in the Middle East”.

“The Palestinian Revolution,” the 1970 statement says, “is the vanguard of the Arab Revolution and is part of the anti-colonial revolution.”  Due to its “alliance with imperialism, Israel opposes that anti-colonial revolution and especially revolutionary change in the Middle East”. Accordingly, both Israel and the US, as well as mainstream world media, criminalise Palestinian resistance as terrorism, ignoring decades and centuries of anti-Palestinian and anti-black violence which underpin the respective regimes of Israel and the US.

Both Israel and other USA allies - the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia - welcomed and even aided the military coup in Egypt, averting the threat posed by the will of the people to military dictatorships and to imperialist interests. To safeguard these interests, the imperialist US-backed project underwrites and overlooks practices of severe oppression and racism in Israel, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

Money-power connections

The 1970 statement also divined some of the specifics of the money-power connection, quoting Gottlieb Hammer - chief Zionist fundraiser in the US - who said, "when the blood flows, the money flows".

Today, the US (and its allies), while allegedly battling the Islamic State group (IS), is indirectly financing them and perpetuating the war. Senior political sources in the region have stated that key allies in the US-led war on IS - the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq and the Turkish military intelligence organisation - are covertly financing IS. Nafeez Ahmed reported that “US and British oil companies are heavily invested in the murky geopolitical triangle sustaining IS’ black-market oil sales” raking in as much as “$3 million a day in cash by re-selling oil obtained from IS at well below market prices”.  

These oil profits provide IS with funding for its operations, generate giant gains for American oil corporations, enable the US continued exploitation of Middle East resources on the pretext of a “war on terror” and secure markets for its multi-billion arms deals. Such forms of interconnected profiteering are all too familiar to African-Americans, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans, Latin Americans and others. 

The expanding imperialist project has also expanded the trail of blood throughout the Middle East, in the midst of a transformative revolution. As profits pile up in the bank accounts of Western governments, corporations and their allies, millions of refugees are abandoning their homes to search for safety and livelihoods.

Real democracy and prosperity in the Middle East requires a US exit. US foreign policy must undergo fundamental transformation, ending US entitlement to and virtual ownership of the region’s resources and removing US power over the region’s peoples.

- Ghada Ageel is a visiting professor at the University of Alberta Political Science Department (Edmonton, Canada), an independent scholar, and active in the Faculty4Palestine - Alberta. Her new book “Apartheid in Palestine: Hard Laws and Harder Experiences” is forthcoming with the University of Alberta Press - Canada. 

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye. 

Photo: As profits pile up in the bank accounts of Western governments, corporations and their allies, millions of refugees are abandoning their homes to search for safety and livelihoods. Pictured, Syrians refugees get on buses hired by Greek Government, at Port of Piraeus in Athens, Greece on 31 August, 2015. (AA)