January 15, 2007, - 7:47 am
He Had a Dream . . . & It Included Israel, End to Anti-Semitism
By Debbie Schlussel
On this Martin Luther King, Jr. day, it’s important to remember that Dr. King did not just fight for the rights of Black Americans.
He was concerned about anti-Semitism and the State of Israel. As I wrote in January 2005, in “Radical Islam Wishes You a Happy MLK Day“:
King was adamantly opposed to the views of [Islamists including Imad] Hamad and ADC [American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee]. At a 1968 Harvard appearance, King rebuked a student who attacked Israel. “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism,” King said.
(Although an oft-cited “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend,” purportedly by King, may be fabricated, his Harvard quotes are well-documented, in Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools-The Left, the Jews and Israel,” Encounter, (December 1969), p. 24.)
Unfortunately, desperate extremists always try to glom on to the reputations and memories of great Americans. And the Islamist glomming continues each year with King’s memory. As I’ve written, every year the 501(c)(3)-status ADC has an essay contest in King’s name, which apparently violates laws pertaining to that tax-exempt status visa vis federal and state civil rights laws (it’s NOT open to Blacks, but only to Arabs).
And the latest is even more outrageous. Wednesday, HAMAS terrorists on trial in Chicago are invoking King’s name in their defense, as pointed out by Jihad Watch. He’s turning over in his grave:
In an emotional appeal to jurors on Wednesday, [HAMAS terrorism fundraiser Abdelhaleem] Ashqar attorney William Moffitt likened Hamas to movements around the world led by such champions of human rights as Martin Luther King Jr.
Sorry, but Martin Luther King Jr. believed in peaceful resistance to achieve equal rights for all, not violence against innocents to achieve an Islamofascist state, where only those who praise Allah are full citizens. There’s a reason why what King and his followers did was called CIVIL disobedience.
It’s hard to compare the statement of a man having a dream that one day his children would be judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin to a group of extremists who dream of the day their children will be martyrs against innocents, including children, whose philosophies and ethnicities they do judge them by.
To those who would invoke King’s name in the name of Islamic terrorism, ask them to explain King’s statement about Zionists, Jews, and anti-Semitism.
They simply can’t do it without a lot of fertilizer to make their lies grow.
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
PREVIOUS:
Radical Islam Wishes You a Happy MLK Day
I Have a Scheme: Islamists Hold Phony Martin Luther King Jr. Contest
Tags: Abdelhaleem, ADC, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Ashqar attorney, Chicago, Debbie Schlussel On, Hamas, Happy Martin Luther King, Harvard, Israel, Jr., King, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Jr., Phony Martin Luther King Jr., terrorism fundraiser, William Moffitt
MLK shoulda’ ‘splained why he had racists such as Jesse Jerkson as one of his closest aides.
Martin shoulda’ also ‘splained;
1. Martin Luther King plagiarized in college-truth!
The staff at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project discovered a lot of plagiarism in Martin Luther King’s writings and in a 1991 article in THE JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY said that “plagiarism was a general pattern evident in nearly all of his academic writings” including his doctoral dissertation.
2. Martin Luther King plagiarized his famous “I Have a Dream” speech-Disputed!
Critics have charged that King plagiarized that too by borrowing from a speech given to the Republican convention in 1952 by an African-American preacher named Archibald Carey, Jr.
Some of them say he gave Cary’s speech word-for-word.
It can probably be said that King borrowed from the idea of the speech by Carey (who was a friend of King’s), but only the last couple of paragraph’s resembled Carey’s speech and little of it is word-for-word.
Both men spun their remarks off the words of the song “My Country ‘Tis of Thee.”
King’s speech ended with:
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Carey’s speech ended with:
We, Negro Americans, sing with all loyal Americans: My country ’tis of thee, Sweet land of liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, Land of the Pilgrims’ pride From every mountainside Let freedom ring!
That’s exactly what we mean–from every mountain side, let freedom ring. Not only from the Green Mountains and White Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire; not only from the Catskills of New York; but from the Ozarks in Arkansas, from the Stone Mountain
in Georgia, from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia–let it ring not only for the minorities of the United States, but for the disinherited of all the earth–may the Republican Party, under God, from every mountainside,
LET FREEDOM RING!
3. King was under surveillance because of his ties to communist organizations-truth!
David Garrow, the author of “Bearing the Cross,” a book about Martin Luther King, says that King’s criticism of the Kennedy administration drew administration scrutiny.
There was suspicion that two of his associates, including Stanley Levinson, had disassociated from the Communist party as a cover to work with and influence King.
Despite extensive surveillance, the FBI was never able to find any direct funding or other links between King and the Communist party.
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/m/mlk.htm
Although the FBI did conduct surveillance on Martin Luther King and two Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) associates who were former Communist party members (Stanley D. Levison and Jack O’Dell), the Bureau was unable to uncover any credible evidence of active participation or funding between the Communist party and the SCLC. As David Garrow chronicled in his exhaustive study of Martin Luther King and the SCLC:
While King continued his criticism of the [Kennedy] administration, the Kennedys were in private consternation about FBI reports that American Communist party leaders were claiming that old ally Stanley Levison was the number one advisor to Martin Luther King. In fact, the reports said, word in the party had it that Levison was writing many of King’s most important speeches. Though the FBI’s informants had no dependable information that Levison was still loyal to the party’s commands, they did know that he continued to give it modest financial support even after severing direct ties. The FBI suspected that Levison’s 1955 departure from party activity might have been a cover, and that Levison’s friendship with King might be a secret assignment undertaken at the behest of American Communists and their Soviet sponsors.
The FBI’s assertions provoked fear in [Attorney General] Robert Kennedy and his closest assistants. Within several weeks time, two courses of action were decided upon. First, electronic surveillance of Levison would be instituted to monitor both his advice to King and any telephone contacts with Soviet or Communist agents. Second, those in the Kennedy administration who had some personal acquaintance with King all would warn the civil rights leader that he ought to end his relationship with Levison immediately. King would also be warned about Jack O’Dell, the man Levison had brought in manage the SCLC’s New York office. O’Dell had been involved with the Communist party throughout the 1950s, and his public record of such associations could be used against King and SCLC.
On several occasions during the spring, Robert Kennedy and his assistants warned King about Levison and O’Dell, without being specific about the allegations. Each time the warnings were voiced to King, he listened quietly, thanked the speaker for his concern, and said that he was not one to question the motives of people in the movement, certainly not one so selfless as Stanley Levison. As King explained, how could he give credence to such vague allegations, coming from who knew where, when Levison had a proven track record of five years of honest counsel? If the administration had anything more specific to offer, King would gladly listen, but until then, he would not doubt one of his closest friends.
The FBI kept up its round-the-clock surveillance of Stanley Levison throughout the spring and summer. The wiretaps detected no contacts with Communist agents . . . Though his ties to the party were now in the past, such evidence of his final disengagement did not persuade FBI officials, who continued to suspect that Stanley Levison might be a Soviet agent exerting substantial influence on the civil rights movement through his close friendship with Martin King.
Late in October serious controversy broke when several conservative newspapers ran almost identical front-page stories detailing the Communist party ties of SCLC staff member Jack O’Dell. The FBI-planted stories reported that the thirty-nine-year-old O’Dell not only had a public record of past association with the “CP,” but in fact still served as a “concealed member” of the party’s national committee. The Bureau hoped that this exposÈ would so embarrass King that the supposed Communist mole would be purged.
After several days, King issued a statement saying that O’Dell had resigned from the SCLC. While King’s statement carefully noted that the SCLC had accepted the resignation, “pending further inquiry and clarification,” those in the know, including the FBI, were aware that O’Dell remained with SCLC as head of its New York office. The FBI reasoned that King’s deceptiveness in retaining O’Dell indicated that the civil rights leader was insensitive to the dangers of Communist subversion, as well as dishonest.
At King’s request, O’Dell prepared a private letter explaining his political past. O’Dell stated in the letter that while he had previously supported the Communist party program, “quite awhile before” joining SCLC, he had concluded that his prior belief that “democratic reformation of the South . . . required a Communist movement in the South” was incorrect and “mistaken . . . I no longer hold such a viewpoint, and neither do I have any Communist affiliation,” O’Dell told King. Satisfied with that statement, [attorney Clarence] Jones advised King that O’Dell’s supposed “interim resignation” could be set aside, and that O’Dell could remain with SCLC because he “has no present communist affiliation whatsoever.”
On the morning of June 30 [1963], the Birmingham News, relying upon information leaked by the FBI, revealed that Jack O’Dell was still on SCLC’s payroll and working in its New York office despite King’s claim that O’Dell had resigned. [Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights] Burke Marshall again pressed King to cut all ties with O’Dell and Levison. Reluctantly, King gave in and acted on the first request. He wrote to O’Dell, in a letter primarily intended for Marshall’s consumption, that the “temporary resignation” of the preceeding November now was being made permanent. Although SCLC had not discovered “any present connections with the Communist party on your part,” the continuing allegation that O’Dell was a secret member of the the CP’s national committee was a damaging one, and “in these critical times we cannot afford to risk any such impressions.”
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/mlking.asp
Thee_Bruno on January 15, 2007 at 10:50 am