Paducah Sun · 13 January 1976

CP-1976-012

Equation Of Zionism With Racism Shocked Cleaver

By Eldridge Cleaver

Transcribed from the clipping

“Two aspects of the recent U.N. resolution labeling Zionism as racist both shocked and surprised me. Shocked because of all the people in the world, the Jews have not only suffered particularly from racist persecution, they have done more than any other people in history to expose and condemn racism. Generations of Jewish social scientists and scholars have labored long and hard in every field of knowledge, from anthropology to psychology, to lay bare and refute all claims of racial inferiority and superiority. To condemn the Jewish survival doctrine of Zionism as racism is a travesty upon the truth… I have the deepest sympathy for the Palestinian people in their search for justice, but I see no net gain for freedom and human dignity in the world if power blocs, because of their ability to underwrite sagging economies for a season, are able to ram through the U.N. resolutions repugnant to human reason and historical fact. I believe that the time has come to reexamine the credentials of all the members of the General Assembly. Why should all these little so-called countries with minuscule populations have a vote equal in weight to that of the United States? The so-called hardline adopted at the U.N. by Ambassador Moynihan seems too soft to me… It may seem paradoxical that I write these words from a prison cell in California. I am certainly not a stranger to racism — I have personally experienced it in the ghettoes and prison yards of America.”

Context added by this archive

A guest column written from a prison cell in California by a founder of the Black Panther Party, six years after a party official had declared in the party paper that Jewishness, Zionism and racism were identical. The column also carries a sweeping charge against Arabs as a people, which is printed here as the paper printed it. Two months later a professor in Honolulu answered it by name.

Cite this item

"Equation Of Zionism With Racism Shocked Cleaver," Paducah Sun, 13 January 1976. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1976-012. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1976-012

Elsewhere in the archive

• Arabs Watchful in Holy Land As Shepherds 1937 Yrs. AgoPaducah Sun · 23 December 1937 · the same newspaper
• Proposed Partition Of Palestine Is Bitterly Opposed By PeoplePaducah Sun · 23 December 1937 · the same newspaper
• Zionism and RacismHonolulu Star-Bulletin · 12 March 1976 · the same year
• Plight of four schoolgirls illustrates frustration of West Bank occupationBellingham Herald · 17 March 1976 · the same year
• Arabs Killed In Rioting In IsraelEffingham Daily News · 30 March 1976 · the same year