Statement of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Alliance of Greater R.I. on The Movement for Black Lives anti-Israel platform

The Community Relations Council of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island (CRC) has had a strong relationship with the African-American community. Together, we have worked hand-in-hand on issues of social justice and discrimination. This includes programs and civil rights dialogue as well as working to reduce poverty.

Recently, however, the Movement for Black Lives’ policy platform includes statements that the CRC finds disturbing and troubling as it relates to the general and Jewish communities.

The CRC finds the policy platform’s reference to the State of Israel committing “genocide” and as “an apartheid state” repellent and deplorable. Likewise, the CRC rejects the platform’s notion of equating the experiences and challenges of African-Americans to Palestinians suffering under the Hamas terrorist regime. This language wrongly and harmfully brings together the urgent need to address the systemic racism faced by people of color in the United States with another challenging, but completely different, set of moral and political questions within the context of the Middle East conflict.

The CRC strongly condemns the platform’s provisions demonizing Israel and promoting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Ultimately this and other statements do little to advance peace between Israelis and Palestinians. At the same time, rather than bringing the Jewish community closer to the African-American community, such statements have the power to do the opposite. This, we feel, is sad, and a more than likely unintended consequence of the platform.

The troubling statements in the platform are likely the result of misinformation provided by those representing anti-Israel and anti-Zionist agendas. These incendiary terms are not only inaccurate, but serve to incite and divide rather than to unite us  around our shared values and priorities.

We urge the Movement for Black Lives to reevaluate their platform’s antagonistic tone and remove blatant falsehoods and mischaracterizations of the world’s only Jewish state.

Finally, we will not allow the platform’s distressing terminology to detract from the CRC and the Jewish community’s unequivocal commitment to the pursuit of equality, civil rights and racial justice. The CRC will continue to work with the African-American community to address systemic racism that exists in the United States and move our world toward a place of equal power, access, opportunities, and treatment for all people.

Our Jewish values demand it, and our world requires it.