Silence That Can Kill: Where Are the Black Friends Jews Need?

This spring, when the Biden administration unveiled its long-delayed national strategy to counter anti-Semitism, there was — for a brief moment — cause for hope. Jewish leaders praised the plan. So, too, did prominent voices in the Black community.

The affirmations of support seemed more than routine platitudes. They appeared to reflect a reinvigorated bond between the Black and Jewish communities, two groups that historically locked arms in the struggle for freedom and equality. But in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel, a different picture has emerged — one of selective outrage and glaring double standards that does grave injustice to the cause of civil rights.

In the last month, as synagogues and kosher shops have once again become targets of anti-Semitic vandalism and violent attacks, condemnation from our Black allies has been conspicuously absent. The same leaders who were so eager to stand with Jewish groups in May now respond to these acts with deafening silence. Michelle Obama refuses to use her massive platform to condemn Hamas’ rape and murder of Israeli women. And when asked if Hamas is a terrorist organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center responded with stony indifference: “It is outside of our purview and expertise to comment on international events.”

This betrayal of solidarity is morally obtuse and strategically self-defeating. The struggle for civil rights has never been a zero-sum game. Its power derives from unity, not division. In 1963, five years before an assassin’s bullet stilled his mighty voice, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. famously declared, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Those prophetic words have echoed through the decades as a clarion call against moral indifference.

Yet, too often, the call to conscience that followed goes unquoted: “Injustice to any people is a threat to justice for all people,” King insisted, “and even though I live in the United States, and even though I happen to be an American Negro, I cannot stand idly by and fail to be concerned about the fate of my brothers and sisters who happen to be Jews in Soviet Russia. What happens to them, happens to me and to you and we must all be concerned.”

In that piercing elaboration, King underscored a basic truth now widely ignored: The struggle for human dignity recognizes no ethnic boundaries. From Sderot to Selma, bigotry stains the soul wherever it spills innocent blood. Civil rights leaders once grasped this. No longer, it seems. As anti-Semitism again surges, yesterday’s fiery allies respond with silence. Or, worse, tacit justification and contemptible equivocation.

This moral abdication dishonors sacred memory. When Jewish students joined sit-ins at lunch counters in 1960, they did not pause first to scrutinize the NAACP’s policy platform. They acted on the basic conviction that denying service on the basis of identity is unconscionable.

Likewise, when Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner — both viciously murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964 — traveled to Mississippi to register Black voters, they didn’t first demand that King endorse Israel or Zionism. Their solidarity derived from a shared quest to redeem America’s founding promise. And, for that, they paid the ultimate price.

This principled solidarity has evaporated today, revealing a disheartening moral timidity. Faced with unambiguous attacks on Jewish people and Jewish institutions, too many remain silent or equivocate. Even prominent Black leaders trip over themselves to offer mealy-mouthed justifications that they would instantly repudiate if the targets were mosques or Black churches. It is blind tribalism masquerading as progressive politics.

We have seen this movie before. Division and despair breed more darkness, fueling a downward spiral that ultimately consumes us all. If we abandon solidarity as a core civil rights principle, the forces of racism and anti-Semitism will be the sole winners.

That is why partnerships that build trust across communities remain essential. Black and Jewish communities still have so much to gain from reviving the coalition of conscience. These efforts should focus not on stoking grievances but on affirming shared hopes. Anti-Semitism and racism are twin poisons, flowing from the same basic impulse to scapegoat vulnerable minorities. They must be fought collectively, not selectively.

The work of reconciliation and healing starts with overcoming the current impasse. As a first step, prominent civil rights organizations — including and especially those who lent their support to the national strategy to combat antisemitism — should host joint viewings of video evidence recently recovered from Hamas terrorists in Gaza revealing the orchestrated campaign of violence against Israel. Seeing the facts firsthand and discussing them openly may begin easing tensions. From there, rebuilding broken bridges will be the harder but essential next phase.

With anti-Semitism surging at home and abroad, the time for fair weather friends has passed. In moments of crisis, real allies are conspicuous in their support and solidarity. America’s Black and Jewish communities cannot afford the luxury of isolation and separation, which will only produce more fear and violence. Common struggle made America better once before — and common struggle can make it better once more. But only if we stand united.

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