In 1968, Martin Luther King was murdered in Memphis Tennessee.
40 years after his untimely death by an assassin’s bullet, the name Martin Luther King retains great prestige on the progressive side of politics – not only in the USA but throughout the world.
This prestige has grown since his passing. Reverence for King is now ‘mainstream’. In the early 1980s, John McCain voted in Congress against declaring an official ‘Martin Luther King’ anniversay day. Fast forward to 2007 and McCain is eating humble pie for this. There are few votes, these days, in being anti-King.
It’s some consolation to those of us who admire him that at least the great man’s words live on. His most famous phrases have entered the popular lexicon. Today, when a politician, poet or song-writer says “I have a dream!”, the reference to King is implicit.
King was murdered when I was still in short pants and I never had a chance to hear him speak in the flesh. But film footage from the time is very moving. King shone through as a man of courage, decency and wisdom. He was a real force when alive!
When I learnt, a few years ago, that Martin Luther King had criticized anti-Zionists and branded opposition to Zionism ‘anti-Semitism’. It came as a surprise and disappointment.
The document in questio is Martin Luther King’s ‘Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend‘:
“. . . 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.
“Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so.
“Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.
“The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested–DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.
“How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfilment of God’s promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.
This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.
“And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism.
“The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just ‘anti-Zionist’!
“My friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate antisemitism. I know you feel, as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice, and discrimination. But I know you have been misled–as others have been–into thinking you can be ‘anti-Zionist’ and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share.
Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–make no mistake about it.”
– From M.L. King Jr., “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend,” Saturday Review_XLVII (Aug. 1967), p. 76. Reprinted in M.L. King Jr., “This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By the time I read those words (c. 2002), my own views about Zionism were firming up and my opposition to this ideology was deepening.
Having studied the topic more carefully – and read more widely – than before, I’d increasingly come to regard Zionism as a separatist and supremacist movement. That should be anathema to anyone concerned about civil rights, peaceful co-existence and equality.
But here it was, in black and white. Martin Luther King had endorsed Zionism!
It seemed odd – but then again, just after the 1967 war, many people in the west were besotted with the image of ‘plucky little Israel’ standing up to teeming millions of hostile, unforgiving, ‘anti-Semitic’ Arab neighbors. That was the general view presented by the western mass media and most of the people around me. So, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that King had also been taken in by an inverted view of history, which saw the dispossessed as villains and the conquerors as victims.
I recall wondering if King would have continued to hold that same view had he lived beyond 1968 and seen how the expanded State of Israel behaved from then on? I wondered if he’d have persisted with the same warped notion of ‘anti-Semitism’, promoting the interests of (largely non-Semitic) Jewsih immigrants over the rights of the (mainly Semitic) native Palestinians of all religions.
Overall, I found King’s words disappointing. I did think he should have known better than join a partisan debate on the side of the powerful. King’s letter was a reminder to me that even great leaders get things wrong – sometimes pouncing on topics in a simplistic or misleading way when the subject matter demands deeper insight.
Wise to Check
As it turned out, I was in for another surprise.
A few months after first reading Dr King’s letter to an Anti-Zionist, I became aware that the authenticity of the letter was in dispute. To the few who followed the topic, the truth soon because clear. The letter was, in fact, a hoax.
It seems an over-enthusiastic rabbi simply made it up in the late 1960s, citing bogus references.
January 2003 is a crucial month in this saga. On January 20th, Andrew Bostom published an article entitled Dr. King: Anti-Zionism Is Anti-Semitism in Front Page Magazine. He quoted the ever-more famous pro-Zionist remarks by Dr King, praised King’s strong support for Israel and encouraged others to follow Dr King’s lead.
But around the same time, the pack of cards collapsed. The Jewish anti-racist activist Tim Wise cried foul in ZMag.
See Fraud Fit For A King: Israel, Zionism, And The Misuse Of Mlk and weep!
Dr King’s famous anti-Zionist letter had been invented!
Specialist Zionist media swung into action.. Camera published this clarification. The article bears the date January 2002, but I haven’t been able to find Bostom’s article in the 2002 Wayback archives for this website. Has that article been backdated to make it appear that the retraction preceded exposure?
The shifting position of Zionist propagandists regarding MLK’s alleged ‘statements’ and ’beliefs’ about Israel is discussed in Israel’s apologists and the Martin Luther King Jr. hoax by Fadi Kiblawi & Will Youmans in The Electronic Intifada.
What emerges is not flattering to the Zionist cause.
This King Hoax was scarcely a ‘one-off’ aberration. This is more than the prank of a single over-enthusiastic rabbi in the late 1960s, whose falsified evidence no-one bothered to check. There are signs of a pattern of deception. Different players in the Zionist movement engaged in deliberate, successive misrepresentations of MLK’s views on Zionism over decades. It’s still going on today.
While the more thoughtful Zionist sources now base claims of Dr King’s pro-Zionism on less blatantly fraudulent foundations than before, plenty of other Zionist websites still run the famous hoax letter quotation, without qualification. Unless newcomers to this issue do some digging, they may still be suckered by the original fraud – let alone more recent variations on the theme.
Hoax-debunker Tim Wise summed it up sagaciously (emphasis added):
“even with my cynic’s credentials established, the one thing I never expected anyone to do would be to just make up a quote from King; a quote that he simply never said, and claim that it came from a letter that he never wrote, and was published in a collection of his essays that never existed. Frankly, this level of deception is something special.“
