NEW YORK (JTA)—The co-author of the Black lives Matter platform passage accusing Israel of “genocide” defended the term, saying Israel’s actions fit in its wider definition.
Ben Ndugga-Kabuye co-authored the statement along with Rachel Gilmer, the former board member of a Zionist youth group. Ndugga-Kabuye says he understands why Jewish groups disagree with the statement, but is perplexed that it has received so much attention.
He compares it with the accusations of genocide that black activists have leveled at the United States and called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of many international conflicts U.S. black activists feel connected to.
“The way we look at it is, we take strong stances,” Ndugga-Kabuye, a New York City organizer for the Black Alliance for Just immigration, says. “The demand we’re making is we’re against the U.S. continuing funding and military aid to the government of Israel. These are all things that are going to be in debate.”
The platform, released August 2 by The Movement for Black lives coalition, is largely a statement of the goals of a movement that coalesced around police violence directed against black people in the United States, mass incarceration of African Americans and other domestic issues.
But it also calls for ending U.S. military aid to Israel and accuses Israel of being an apartheid state. The platform includes a link to a website promoting the movement to boycott, divest and sanction israel called BDS.
“The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people” reads the “invest/Divest” section of “A Vision for Black lives.”
A string of Jewish organizations, from the Anti-Defamation league to the Reform movement and National Council of Jewish Women, has condemned the genocide and apartheid language as well as the BDS endorsement. T’ruah, a rabbis’ human rights group that opposes Israel’s West Bank occupation, also criticized the document.
Most of the organizations took pains to note that they are sympathetic to other parts of the platform, many of which jibe with liberal Jewish positions on the criminal justice system, economic justice and immigration.
“While we are deeply concerned about the ongoing violence and the human rights violations directed at both Israelis and Palestinians, we believe the terms genocide and apartheid are inaccurate and inappropriate to describe the situation,” NCJW wrote in a statement. “Further, BDS is too often used to de-legitimize Israel’s right to exist.”
Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports BDS, is the rare Jewish group that endorsed the platform in its entirety.
Ndugga-Kabuye says state actions don’t need to rise to the level of the Holocaust or other historical genocides to deserve the term, which he says could connote unjust state killing of a disadvantaged group. He compares his usage of the word to We Charge Genocide, a group that opposes police violence in Chicago.
“We’re talking about a structure of violent deaths that are state sanctioned, that are without accountability, and that are ongoing,” he says. “We can say this is what’s happening in Palestine and not equate it with what’s happening in South America. it doesn’t say it’s the same number of people being killed or the [same] manner of people being killed.”
Ndugga-Kabuye says the Israeli Palestinian conflict is just one of many international issues the platform comments on—including the dangers African migrants face in crossing the Mediterranean Sea, or conflicts in Somalia, Colombia or Honduras. He says the passage on Israel is longer because “there’s a certain prominence to it, and that may require us to go a little more in detail.” But he says the statements about other conflicts, charging the United States with imperialist actions, are just as strong as the language condemning Israel.
Ben Sales