Liberal Union Theological Seminary Professor Cornel West denounced the “vicious Israeli occupation of the precious Palestinians as a crime against humanity,” comparing Palestinians’ resistance against Israel to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Claiming that “any occupation” was “a moral and spiritual issue,” West asserted that “we live in a world in which Palestinian lives matter so little, just like I come from a people in the belly of the American Empire, in which Red lives matter so little, Black lives matter so little, poor people’s lives matter so little.”
West spoke at an event honoring his mentor, the late Palestinian academic Edward Said, hosted by the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., on October 1. As a self-identified “democratic socialist,” Bernie Sanders supporter, and Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter activist, it was no surprise West pushed left-wing social justice issues during his lecture and subsequent Q&A session. He decried the alleged injustices by Israelis against Palestinians, criticized the actions of the so-called “American Empire,” and branded Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson as “xenophobic,” “racist,” and “anti-Muslim.”
Discussing Said’s views, West said that after “precious Jewish brothers and sisters” fled anti-Semitic Europe to establish the Israeli state, “they land on the backs of some Arabs and they act as if these Arabs don’t exist.”
“They act as if there’s land but no people, but that’s a lie. That’s a lie,” West continued amidst applause. He attacked bystanders as “indecent” for not doing more to stop the alleged injustices perpetrated by Israelis against Palestinians.
“You’re disrespecting the folk [Palestinians] to have that kind of relative silence” regarding the conflict, West said. This silence “allows the Israeli Defense Force to do what they want in the name of self-defense.”
He blamed the Israeli “settler-colonial experiment” on the “American Empire” for attempting to “reshape the whole globe in its image and for its interests, primarily corporate interests.” The “neo-liberal epoch” had created a global “ice age” of minimal resistance by the oppressed against their oppressors, except in a few geographic “pockets” like the West Bank.
The struggle of Palestinians against Israel paralleled the Black Lives Matter movement, West later added. Responding to a question about the “important bond” between the two groups, he said the long-standing Israeli “occupation” of the Palestinian territory meant there was “strong ground for solidarity” between Palestinians and African-Americans, although there were “people that don’t want to see that solidarity.”
West, whose more recent arrests include twice during Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011 and once during a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, said his role now was to “facilitate solidarity work between Palestinian and Black freedom fighters” as a veteran activist.
He also praised the “new marvelous militancy that’s not just in Ferguson, but Baltimore, in Los Angeles, in Staten Island, more and more escalating, you know.” He said that this “militancy” was “not a fad, not a fashion, it’s a way of life, and we’re gonna be faithful unto death.”
West saved a heavy dose of vitriol for GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson. In response to a question about Carson’s recent objection to a hypothetical Islamic president, he blasted the conservative former surgeon and others who shared his views. West said that “with these right-wing Republicans, you just almost expect any kind of xenophobic statement to come out of their mouths.”
“We just have to hit it for what it is. It’s xenophobic, it’s racist, it’s anti-Muslim,” West later added. In an attempt to undermine “right-wing Republicans” like Carson, he said that there were virtually no objections when it came to “Christian fundamentalists who have little to do with the Constitution” running for president.
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