On Feb. 10, Christians United For Israel, or CUFI, will bring to our campus Dumisani Washington, the pastor, author and founder of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel.
In July, the world media was reporting on gruesome bombings in the Gaza Strip. Instead of showing solidarity with victims of those attacks, a supposed Christian group will choose to embrace a culture of state violence
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Not even a month ago, Angela Davis was chosen as the keynote speaker for a celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr., whose legacy and ideas of international connectedness draw familiar lines between state violence occurring in the Gaza Strip and state retaliation seen in Ferguson in the wake of the killing of unarmed teenager Mike Brown.
The perspective Washington brings and the conversation that CUFI members hope to facilitate are misguided in more ways than I care to divulge. King supported the religious and personal autonomy of the democratic state of Israel. But despite his frequent references to “the promised land,” King didn’t support an illegal occupation.
The creation of the Israeli state and its recognition by the United Nations was the product of a vast Zionist movement. Their political tactics were diametrically opposed to the idea of a peaceful Jewish homeland, a concept Christian imperialists disingenuously employ.
What is most upsetting is that this is not a peace-promoting event but a way to shun the idea of justice in Palestine. It is in the name of a man’s legacy that has been co-opted by mostly white conservatives to deter support for Palestine.
In recent years, heightened security, violence and border patrolling have brought about the mass killing of many young Palestinians, including 8-year-old Seraj Ayad Abed al-A’al and eighteen-month-old Mohammed Malakiyeh, who lost their lives in a series of bombings of the Gaza Strip in July of last year.
