{"id":551,"date":"2004-01-21T15:28:29","date_gmt":"2004-01-21T23:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/01\/21\/mlk-jr-pro-zionist-and-anti-affirmative-action\/"},"modified":"2004-01-21T15:28:29","modified_gmt":"2004-01-21T23:28:29","slug":"mlk-jr-pro-zionist-and-anti-affirmative-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=551","title":{"rendered":"MLK Jr: Pro-Zionist and Anti-Affirmative Action?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was checking out The View from the Basement<\/a>, a blog that has rather mysteriously been nominated for a “best new blog” Koufax<\/a>. (The Koufaxes are for lefty blogs – View From the Basement is a centrist blog, not clearly left nor right). Unlike the Head Heeb<\/a>, I wasn’t very impressed; the blogger seems to be one of those boring “anyone who criticizes Israel is an anti-Semite” folks.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, the reason I’m posting this is the following quote, which adorns the top of her blog:<\/p>\n

You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely “anti-Zionist.” And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God’s green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews – this is God’s own truth.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/b><\/div>\n

The problem is that the quote is a fake, as Tim Wise has documented<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Though Finkelstein only recited one line from King’s supposed “letter” on Zionism, he lifted it from the larger letter, which appears to have originated with Rabbi Marc Schneier, who quotes from it in his 1999 book, “Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Jewish Community<\/i>.” Therein, one finds such over-the-top rhetoric as this:<\/p>\n

“I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God’s green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–this is God’s own truth.” The letter also was filled with grammatical errors that any halfway literate reader of King’s work should have known disqualified him from being its author, to wit: “Anti-Zionist is inherently anti Semitic, and ever will be so.” The treatise, it is claimed, was published on page 76 of the August, 1967 edition of Saturday Review<\/i>, and supposedly can also be read in the collection of King’s work entitled, This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr<\/i>. That the claimants never mention the publisher of this collection should have been a clear tip-off that it might not be genuine, and indeed it isn’t. The book doesn’t exist. As for Saturday Review<\/i>, there were four issues in August of 1967. Two of the four editions contained a page 76. One of the pages 76 contains classified ads and the other contained a review of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album<\/em>. No King letter anywhere.<\/p>\n

Yet its lack of authenticity hasn’t prevented it from having a long shelf-life. Not only does it pop up in the Schneier book, but sections of it were read by the Anti-Defamation League’s Michael Salberg in testimony before a House Subcommittee in July of 2001, and all manner of pro-Israel groups (from traditional Zionists to right-wing Likudites, to Christians who support ingathering Jews to Israel so as to prompt Jesus’ return), have used the piece on their websites.<\/p><\/div>\n

The quote does indeed pop up a lot; don’t be fooled.<\/p>\n

And hey, while you’re reading Wise on MLK, check out his essay rebutting right-wingers who misuse MLK by claiming King opposed Affirmative Action<\/a>..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was checking out The View from the Basement, a blog that has rather mysteriously been nominated for a “best new blog” Koufax. (The Koufaxes are for lefty blogs – View From the Basement is a centrist blog, not clearly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affirmative-action","category-anti-semitism","category-palestine-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}