"They have these torture facilities, sometimes right next to school. The kids can hear the people being tortured in Gaza. These kinds of guys are screaming out because Hamas is torturing them. Where's BLM? Where are they when these types of human rights abuses happen on a daily basis?"
In this episode, I sit down with Pastor Dumisani Washington, founder and CEO of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel and the author of “Zionism and the Black Church.”
"These rallies are just slogans, hashtags, and a complete demonization of Israel, which is why we're seeing attacks on Jewish people—on Jewish neighborhoods," says Pastor Washington.
How did Black Lives Matter become anti-Israel? What is the origin of the terms “Palestine” and “Palestinian”? And how was the Soviet Union involved in creating the Palestinian national movement?
"The PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] is a creation of the KGB," says Pastor Washington. "One of the KGB agents that defected explained that the liberation movements—many of them were crafted there, not for the help of people who may even have been legitimately struggling, but for the purpose of exploiting those people."
Pastor Washington believes that anti-Israel protesters are, knowingly or not, doing PR for terrorists, promoting a version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is not only false, but a cover for Hamas.
Watch the clip:
"You're not concerned about the honor killings. You're not concerned about the fact that gays get thrown off the rooftops in Gaza. You're not concerned that the people of Gaza have regularly protested Hamas to their peril," says Pastor Washington.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (36 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1130DumisaniWashington
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek: Dumisani Washington, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Dumisani Washington: Thank you, Jan. Thanks for having me. Great to be with you today.
Mr. Jekielek: We've been talking for some time about these mass protests and rallies that have been happening on university campuses. Today as we're filming, there's a pro-Israel rally happening here in Washington DC which you're here for. I appreciate you taking a moment to speak with me.
Mr. Washington: Sure, thanks for having me.
Mr. Jekielek: You are not surprised at this whole thing that's happening on our campuses right now, but a lot of people are. This is something you've been following for some time. What's going on?
Mr. Washington: There's so much to unpack, Jan. Again, I appreciate you reaching out and having the conversation. Yes, I would imagine it would be surprising, especially now for people who don't know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are not familiar with what's going on in the region, but they see this explosion of activity here in the States, on the campuses, and on the streets.
As a matter of fact, the street protests have unfortunately become very violent. There was a Jewish gentleman who was killed a few days ago in the LA area. Those protests are an extension of what has been going on on the campuses for years, for a very long time. Those protests are done under the guise of justice and under the guise of Palestinian human rights, but it's not really advocating for human rights.
It is a hatred for Israel and a hatred for the Jewish people. For those who don't understand it, they're caught up with it as some sort of social justice thing. Somehow, if you are on the side of right, if you're against police brutality, if you're against racism, and any of these things that any thinking person would be against, then you are necessarily anti-Israel.
Because Israel has been demonized for decades as a totalitarian police state and apartheid state—any pejorative you could think of has been affixed to Israel. For many different reasons that propaganda goes back decades as well, but by now it has so fomented that you are seeing the culmination of a lot of work and a lot of disinformation where Israel is concerned.
Mr. Jekielek: As you said, there's a lot to unpack here. Before we go there, I'd love to understand your background. You're with The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. You've been doing this for a while, but how did that all come about?
Mr. Washington: I am a pastor and I'm also a professional musician by trade. I came up in the church with a strong, spiritual Zionist ethos. I wrote a book called Zionism in the Black Church, where I explained my background. I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas in the late sixties during the segregated south, and grew up in California because my family moved to San Francisco in around 1968. I didn't grow up in the segregated south. I grew up in California, but very much in this Black church tradition.
There's a great deal of spiritual Zionism within a traditional black church, meaning songs and sermons. There are a lot of parallels between the children of Israel and African-Americans. Harriet Tubman, one of the most notable abolitionists, was called Moses. The Negro spirituals from centuries back were almost always set in this whole redemption narrative, for example, “Go down Moses,” and “Joshua at the Battle of Jericho.” This was nothing new. Even the literary voice, Booker T. Washington, wrote a piece that was dubbed, The Black National Anthem. Even though it has been politicized today, it was very much of a cultural heritage thing for black Americans. That's how I was raised and this was my reality.
Mr. Jekielek: What does spiritual Zionism mean exactly?
Mr. Washington: Spiritual Zionism means identifying with Israel and the Jewish people based on the scriptures, everything from the Abrahamic Covenant, when God says in Genesis 12:3 to Abraham, "I'll bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you,” to identifying the children of Israel as the people who are almost always these underdogs who are having to fight because of the Amalekites and the Egyptians. There was always that ethos in the traditional black church. That is why Dr. King, a day before he was killed, said in his speech in Mississippi, "I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the Promised Land." Why are there all these allusions to Israel and these allusions to the Bible? This was a black church thing, and it was not even just in terms of church, but also in terms of culture. This was always known.
Spiritual Zionism, aside from the Jewish state of Israel, was not so much a political thing as much as it was as identifying spiritually and scripturally. For many in the black church tradition, the support for the state of Israel goes much further than that. The geopolitical reality is about Israel and its struggle against Palestinian terrorism. That fight was brought to the door of the black community in the late sixties in the embodiment of Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
The reason why it so particularly impacts the black community isn't because, as I tell people often in our lectures, the black community chose the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It showed up for us, and it came for us. When Dr. King was defending Israel's right to exist up until the time of his death, he wasn't doing it because he didn't have anything else to do.
His plate was pretty full. He had already said that the Jewish community, more than any other ethnic group, had distinguished itself in the Negro struggle for justice. Those were his words. That was true, but that wasn't the only reason why he supported Israel. He didn’t say, “The Jewish people are my friends, and therefore I blindly support Israel.” For him, it was about justice as well.
I talk about this in my book. Anybody watching this program can also go to the website, rabbinicalassembly.org, and find a meeting transcript of when Dr. King was the honored guest at the Rabbinical Assembly 10 days before he was killed. What I'm saying now, he said in that meeting. The meeting wasn't just about Israel, it was about a lot of different things. But this was almost a year after the 1967 six-day war.
Israel was being demonized as a settler colony. They had the audacity to win the war against five Arab powers. Israel kept defending itself. When Israel would win, it would get demonized in the media. Israel was one of the only nations in modern history, or if ever, that would give up land for peace even after winning the war.
Dr. King spoke soberly. He spoke in terms of morality and justice. He spoke for the vast majority of the black civil rights community when he was saying those words and defending Israel, but also sharing much concern for what we now call the Arab Palestinian people. I say that because they didn't use the word Palestinian in the late sixties. Palestine is the name of the region that the Romans gave to Judea around 135 BC. Just for context, I'm going back almost 2000 years. In the modern era, a Palestinian was known as a Jew who lived in the region, and the Arabs were called Arabs.
Yasser Arafat began to coin the term Palestinian as a weapon against Israel to say, "The Palestinians are the indigenous people who own this land, and these Jews are interlopers who came and stole it." All of that is false, but it works if you're trying to sell a social justice narrative. When you're telling the history of any nation, and let's just keep this about America for a moment, as great as a nation is, there are warts and there are flaws.
Bob Woodson was the one who said that slavery was America's original birth defect, but it's still the freest nation in the world, even with these imperfections. Unfortunately, as we know, kids on campus have been told that America is the most evil nation and the most racist nation in the world. Those things aren't true.
Who is America's closest ally? Israel. By default, Israel gets demonized in that same way. It is the only viable democracy in the Middle East, a nation of 9 million people that includes Jews and Christians and Muslims, and they all serve in the military. It is the most multi-ethnic and pluralistic society that exists outside of the United States, yet it's demonized as the one that's always oppressing and committing genocide.
None of those things are true, but that's the current perception. Hence, kids on college campuses are saying, "Free Palestine," not knowing what that means. They are saying "From the river to the sea," not understanding that that is a call for genocide against the Jewish people. Those things have been popularized, and this is the tragedy of where we are right now.
Mr. Jekielek: I keep thinking about this idea of projection. One of the guests on this show, James Lindsay, coined this term, the Iron Law of Woke Projection. We have a real sense of genocidal intent, when you look at what happened on October 7th, which is not even debatable. Yet, Israel is being portrayed as genocidal.
Mr. Washington: In the context of a far-Left mentality that is more Marxist in its leaning, that is anti-American in its leaning, and that is anti-democratic in its leaning, one of the first things that happens is that truth is suspended. Words don't mean anything anymore. Bayard Rustin was one of the founding members of BASIC, Black Americans to Support Israel Committee. It was founded by him along with Philip Randolph. Members included Coretta Scott King. The who's who of the black community formed this pro-Israel organization, because of the demonization that was happening about the Jewish state and the Jewish people, just like what is happening now.
One of the articles he wrote was called, “The PLO; Freedom Fighters or Terrorists?” In the opening sentences of that piece, he talks about how language has been completely distorted, how terrorists are called freedom fighters, and how a liberal democracy is called some sort of oppressive regime.
The reason I mentioned this is because that was 1975, a long time ago. You've had this indoctrination that he's addressing that was already a problem then, that has now saturated everywhere. To answer your question, why can Hamas launch a genocidal attack killing women, children, babies, and all the horrific things that people are aware of, just like ISIS does. Why can it do that, but then be hailed as freedom fighters who are fighting oppression? Because language has been turned on its head.
This has been the goal of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO, for those who don't know, is a creation of the Soviet KGB. I'm not saying that the Palestinians are not a people now, I'm just saying that the PLO was an organization formed by the KGB. We know this because one of the KGB agents that defected explained that many of the liberation movements were crafted there, not to help people who may be legitimately struggling, but for the purpose of exploiting those people.
Yasser Arafat became the chairman of the PLO in 1969, ironically, a year after Dr. King's death, which was in 1968. One of the first things that he does, Jan, is reach out to the younger members of the black civil rights movement, people like Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers. Why does he do that? He is from a conflict that is so far away from Oakland and Chicago, especially in terms of black civil rights.
If you're talking about police brutality and those types of things that are going on in those cities, why is a "Palestinian leader,” that was actually born and raised in Egypt, concerning himself with black leaders in America and South Africa as well. He was close friends with Nelson Mandela who never condemned Israel's right to exist, none of those things. Why did he single out the black American community leaders ?
Why? It was to sell his genocidal goals as a freedom movement. Again, it was going to be difficult for him to get press coverage saying, "I want to destroy Israel from the river to the sea." But if he says, "We want liberation,” if he says, "these white Jews are oppressing us the way that white people are oppressing black people in the United States,” then that resonates with people, even if they don't know the truth of what he's talking about, and even if they don't know who the Jewish people are.
They are not people of color. They're a group of ethnic people, and they come in all different colors. They're not aware of that, it just sounds familiar. Kids are saying, “Israel is an apartheid state.” They don't know what apartheid means. If you asked them where it originated, they don't know anything about South Africa. It just sounds bad to them.
But they have had enough word association, "Israel bad, Israel genocide." You know how disinformation works if you keep saying it over and over again. That's been going on for a long time, and that's what it's based on. They say, “I'm on the side of justice. I'm on the side of right.” Just after these attacks the climate person, Greta Thunberg, comes out with, “Free Palestine.” What?
We didn't know you knew anything about the Middle East conflict. Do you know what you're even talking about? No. It became part of her social justice grab bag. She pulls out her Palestinian flag and then boom. Some people were shocked. We weren't shocked because we knew she's part of that same Leftist stream. In order for you to keep your Leftist bonafides, you better come out as pro-Palestinian, even if you don't know what you're talking about.
Mr. Jekielek: Parts of these rallies are very clearly pro-Hamas, not just free Palestine.
Mr. Washington: There have been ISIS flags. What you are seeing on the streets has been going on at the campuses for years with the calls for genocide against the Jews that say, “Intifada, intifada, globalize the intifada.” Intifada is a violent uprising. Intifada means the buses that have been blown up in Israel. It is the type of terrorism that has been visited on the Israelis for decades. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is a call for genocide. Once again, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is the entire nation of Israel, so it's not about land. It's not.
Hamas doesn't care about settlements in the “West Bank.” Hamas slaughtered babies to send a message to Israel. In Hamas' own charter, in their own words, they are committed to two main things. Number one, the total destruction of Israel. Number two, the worldwide destruction of all Jews.
How do we have a two-state solution conversation with Hamas? They just slaughtered nearly 1,500 people. They still have another 240-plus who are held hostage, and Israel is being told by people of supposedly goodwill to cease fire. Hamas wasn't told to cease fire, but Israel was. While they're saying ceasefire, Hamas is still sending rockets from Gaza into Israel, attacking its civilian population. Any logical thinking person would say, "Okay, Hamas is a bad actor. Even if I thought they had some grievances, this is not a way to address any of those things.”
But you can see these nuanced conversations are not happening in these rallies. These rallies are just slogans, hashtags, and a complete demonization of Israel, which is why we're seeing attacks on Jewish people and neighborhoods. This has been going on for a while as well. Black Lives Matter, which is supposed to be concerned with the black community, almost immediately took up the Palestinian cause, which has nothing to do with Mike Brown, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, none of those things.
BLM of Los Angeles, during the George Floyd protest, goes to the Fairfax area of Los Angeles, which has been a Jewish enclave for a long time, and defaces five synagogues, three Yeshivas, and Jewish schools. What does that have to do with police brutality? What does that have to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? But this is what has been accepted.
For years those of us in this space, not just me, but long before me, have said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Those who held the opposite position always would push back on that. People are now seeing that it's true. Why are people supposedly supporting the Palestinians in the street threatening the lives of Jews? Why is the Jewish community here in the United States seeing the type of hatred for them as a people, regardless of their politics, regardless of how they even feel about Israel itself as a nation? Why are they being threatened?
Why are their Jewish kids barricaded in the library while Palestinian supporters are outside kicking in the door? There was something like that in 1950, Selma, Alabama. This type of mindset has been present on the campuses for a long time, but now it's everywhere.
Mr. Jekielek: It has been tolerated, obviously.
Mr. Washington: It's tolerated, and I have to go political here, because it's considered progressive in some circles. It has become a staple. To deny that is to deny reality, and I'll give an example. Picture these protests on these campuses and on these streets with them being neo-Nazis and white supremacists. You know how fast the FBI would've shut that down. Why is their violence and this type of bloodthirsty rhetoric okay?
Black Lives Matter of Chicago tweets a picture of a paraglider who slaughtered the kids at this festival that was there. Why does that get a wink and a nod? When Hamas was sending 4,000 rockets to Israel in 2021, Black Lives Matter posted its support for Hamas, but it didn't get media coverage then. But now, it's seen as progressive, because it's seen as pushing against totalitarianism or imperialism or western encroachment.
Dr. King called Israel an outpost of democracy. It's surrounded by despotism. Fast-forward to now. Now, it is seen as some sort of bad thing, that outpost of democracy means a manipulative puppet of the United States that's doing its bidding. That has actually been accepted. It is not true, but that is what has been accepted.
This is not happening on conservative Christian campuses. Nobody is calling for the death of Jews at Oral Roberts University, because if they were, this would be on the front page of the newspaper and they would be shut down. Picture a white supremacist group setting up on a campus saying, "All these Negroes should die. The south shall rise again." They wouldn't last five minutes and rightly so, you would shut them down. I'd be the first person shutting them down with you.
But why is it okay to say this to the Jews, or why can I say from the river to the sea? Why is that okay? Because it is considered progressive. For people who are now seeing the level of vitriol for Jews and for Israel, one of the reasons it's taking them aback is because it's new to them. Addressing the anti-Zionism on campus now is very much like closing the barn door after all the horses are gone. They've gone to the next county. We're addressing it now, and it’s way, way too late in the game.
Mr. Jekielek: You've tried to tell people before though.
Mr. Washington: That's just me, and there were many people long before me. But yes, we have. I did an event with our Jewish friends out in South Jersey last spring. We were talking about antisemitism in the black community. We talked about things like Louis Farrakhan and Black Lives Matter, and a few other things. I made the point that the greatest source of this type of Jew hatred is actually the college campus, where this indoctrination has been happening for a long time. As much as we were talking about antisemitism in the black community, which is a worthy conversation, it's not the black community that controls Stanford, Harvard, UC Irvine, and Michigan.
Some of the most lethal types of activities where Jews are concerned are happening on progressive college campuses controlled largely by white progressives. That doesn't mean there's no antisemitism in the black community. But this systemic problem and much of what's happening in the streets right now didn't come from Howard University or Spelman College. That came from Harvard and Yale, where such anti-Zionism has been for a long time.
Mr. Washington: Do you mean because of what they feel is a lack of support for the Palestinian cause?
Mr. Jekielek: Correct.
Mr. Washington: Absolutely. This is what we call the oppression Olympics. Once you put a team together, based on how much each person is oppressed, at some point that team is going to start to crumble, because that team is going to turn on itself, meaning those who consider themselves concerned about Palestinian human rights. They have now fixed their gaze on demonizing Israel, not on Hamas, who've been the brutal rulers of Gaza since 2007. Israel removed every Jewish man, woman, and child from Gaza in 2005.
By 2007, Hamas, which is a terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the destruction of worldwide Jewry, has been in charge of launching rockets, terrorist attacks, and building tunnels. If someone calls themselves concerned about the Palestinians, but has nothing to say about how Hamas has been brutalizing those people, they're not pro-Palestine, they're anti-Israel.
It’s one thing to be against police brutality. It's another thing to just be against the police because they represent oppression, that whole thing. Those who consider themselves pro-Palestine but are actually anti-Israel, and who don't want this current administration to do anything that looks like siding with or helping Israel, that's where some of those protests are coming.
What's amazing is that this Biden administration, a continuation of the Obama administration, has given billions of dollars of funding for terrorism in the region, and it is the reason why we are here today. The Taylor Force Act was made law in 2018, which stated that no administration could knowingly fund Palestinian terrorism. From everything that we can see, it seems as though that law is not being honored. Billions of dollars have gone to the Palestinian Authority. Money has gone to UNRWA, which is the United Nations Relief Works Agency for the Palestinian refugees, which for those who know, is a coffer for Hamas which runs Gaza.
Not to mention the money that has been released in terms of sanctions relief for Iran, which is the main actor. Iran funds Hamas and funds Islamic Jihad. It works with other destabilizing forces within the region. It's the number one state sponsor of terrorism. This administration has totally empowered all of those bad actors.
When we see something like October 7th, we feel very strongly that the administration is very much involved in what happened because of the funding that goes to this terrorism. You have those who are angry with the Biden administration and feel that they've been too much of an ally of Israel. Our organization feels that the funding of the terrorism is a lot of the reason why we are in this situation today.
Mr. Jekielek: I don't know how it's going to play out, but apparently another $10 billion of sanction relief is being considered.
Mr. Washington: Yes, I saw that. Since Iran is the number one state sponsor of terrorism, to be considering releasing another $10 billion to Iran should give anybody pause, especially while there are still 240-plus hostages in Gaza. The people of Gaza are under the oppressive rule of Hamas, and so they are severely impacted by what's going on now, even as Israel is in Gaza attempting to eliminate Hamas. Hamas uses civilians as human shields. Israel is in a no-win situation, but they have no choice but to go after and eliminate Hamas.
The humanitarian aid that is to go in is supposed to be for the people. But here's the further complication—Hamas rules with an iron fist for every portion of food and all the materials. I'm not in any way suggesting that the people don't get what they need. Our organization has felt for a long time that there needs to be more of a systematic way of keeping Hamas from taking all of that, whether it's fuel or any of those things. Because Hamas is firmly and totally in control, there is no way to make sure that the people of Gaza get any of those goods unless you remove Hamas. Then we're right back in this quagmire. This has been what Israel has been dealing with for a long time. Iran is the main actor.
Just the other day in Sudan there was another slaughtering of Sudanese Christians by this Islamist group that seems to have connections to Hamas. Hamas is not just this group that runs Gaza. It is a part of a network that is funded by Iran. Just like our Israeli brothers and sisters were slaughtered on October 7th, for years Christians have been slaughtered in different parts of Africa and the Middle East by Islamist groups, some of them connected to Iran. With the fight that many people were introduced to on October 7th, they may not realize there has been a religious war against non-Islamists, because many Muslims are also being killed in those parts of the world if they don't have the same ideology as ISIS and all the others.
Mr. Jekielek: For Martin Luther King, it was obvious for him to support Israel. Similarly, you mentioned how for Angela Davis and the Black Panthers it was just the opposite. I want to dig into that because you also talked about how BLM seems to be the lineage of Angela Davis and the Black Panthers.
Mr. Washington: What illustrates that best is the story of Eldridge Cleaver. We've done articles on it, and we've done a video on it. There's a video entitled; “Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver became a Zionist.” He was one of the original red pills back in the 1970s. What happened?
I mentioned before that Yasser Arafat quickly reached out to the younger members of the civil rights movement, the younger lions with more of the Malcolm X mindset, which meant by any means necessary. They were really frustrated with the older guard and the whole non-violence method. Theirs was more of a radical, “Let's change this now and let's change it by force.” Eldridge Cleaver met Yasser Arafat around 1969 in Algiers, Algeria.
Why was he there? He fled the United States because of a shootout that had happened in Oakland. He was accused of killing an Oakland police officer. He was incarcerated for a little while, then was released on technicality. He connected with Fidel Castro's people at the United Nations in New York, and then went down to Cuba because Castro promised him weapons and training. "We're going to help you overthrow the American government."
He goes down there and Castro sells him a bill of goods. They were using those young black people to demonize America. They didn't care about what was going on with them anymore. They cared about what was going on with the Palestinians. When Eldridge Cleaver saw this, he got disillusioned, and then he headed off to the other communist regimes. In our video, we have him talking about his own journey.
Eldridge Cleaver: About what was going on in these communist countries, the more I understood that it wasn't just in Cuba that things had gone wrong, but things were wrong in every one of those countries.
Mr. Washington: He went to Algeria. He went to both Arabic and European communist or despotic nations, all of which were enemies of the United States and Israel, because he thought that these people were his friends. One of the many things that he experienced, Jan, was slavery. In Algeria he saw for the first time ever with his own eyes, black African slaves, and then he saw them in other countries as well.
He said, "Wait, wait, wait. How could you be our friends when you have enslaved people who look like me? What's going on here?" Slowly, but surely, he saw that as imperfect as the criminal justice system was in America, in these different nations there was no criminal justice system. They would just line people up against the wall and shoot them. If they accused them of something, they would just knock down somebody's house.
He said, "I started to miss the Oakland police." People started laughing in the audience. He said, "Don't get me wrong. I'm still against police brutality, but now I'm understanding a little bit more of what happens in the world in these communist regimes that I thought were my friends. I thought they were concerned about human rights, and what they were concerned about was demonizing the United States.”
From Yasser Arafat he also learned the whole PLO thing, which is, “This struggle is parallel. Just like you're struggling here in the United States, this is again what the Jews are doing to us in our land.” So, he started talking against the Zionists, saying, “Zionists are our enemies. We stand against the watchdogs of imperialism,” that whole thing.
But as he got red-pilled, not only did he see that what was being told to him was wrong, he understood even further the very close relationship between the Jewish and black community, with Israel being a democracy that is doing great good. He came back after seven years of this odyssey as a staunch Zionist.
He was writing articles. He was condemning the UN for condemning Israel. It was a complete change. He started reaching out to his former colleagues on the far-Left. He didn't die until the 1980s and he spent much of that time telling the people what he had learned. Many people didn't get to experience it the way he did, to be on one side and then completely go to the other side.
Eldridge Cleaver was that kind of person. You would try to show him the city, and he would leave your tour group and go off down the highways and the byways and talk to the people himself. That was just the kind of person that he was. While in Cuba, he talked to Cubans and he stopped talking to Fidel Castro's minions. He talked to people who said, "It's terrible here. If I could leave, I would."
He started seeing that everywhere. In every communist country that he went to, he saw the same oppression. He said, "This is not what people are making it out to be." This is what's going on today. These young people are being sold this thing, which includes anti-Zionism, because they're being deceived.
Elridge Cleaver is an example of what happens when someone sees the truth. One of the things our organization does is to give the full story. Here's what is really going on. Who is Hamas? Who is the Palestinian authority? Who is Fatah? Who is Mahmoud Abbas? Who was Yasser Arafat? Why is Khaled Mashal, the leader of Hamas, worth $6 billion at last count? What is actually going on?
We talked about BLM. BLM was formed with the mindset of the pre-red-pilled Eldridge Cleaver. They are giving a version of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that is not only false, but is also simply a cover for Hamas. It is a cover. You are doing PR for terrorists because you're not concerned about honor killings. You're not concerned about the fact that gays get thrown off rooftops in Gaza. You're not concerned.
The people of Gaza have regularly protested Hamas to their peril. Jan, as you know, this is a totalitarian regime. You don't get to make signs and march and say, “We want peace. We want justice.” No. They do it knowing they're going to be incarcerated, tortured, or killed. That's the level of bravery that is there. People in Gaza get on rickety boats and sail on the Mediterranean, trying to get somewhere in Europe so that they can be free.
Where was BLM when these people were being arrested and tortured? They have these torture facilities sometimes right next to a school. The kids can hear the people being tortured in Gaza. These guys are screaming out because Hamas is torturing them. Where is BLM? Where are they when these types of human rights abuses are happening on a daily basis?
They have that mindset like Eldridge Cleaver had, until he got red-pilled and realized that the PLO is not the friend of black people. Maybe they're not the friends of the Palestinian people. Maybe they are just terrorists. Maybe they're just trying to destroy Israel and they're using us as pawns in this game.
Mr. Jekielek: This has been an absolutely fascinating discussion Dumisani. Thank you. Any final thoughts as we finish?
Mr. Washington: Again, thank you for having the conversation. It is important and timely. Those of us in this Israel space also do Africa work. We are aware of these issues, but we recognize that the vast majority of people aren't. People have busy lives. It's important for them to have access to information that's beyond the boilerplate, beyond the hashtag, so that they can actually do a deeper dive. Thank you for giving us this opportunity, and hopefully people will go further and find out more for themselves.
Mr. Jekielek: Dumisani Washington, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Mr. Washington: Thank you, Jan. Thank you for having me.
Mr. Jekielek: Thank you all for joining Dumisani Washington and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.
🔴 WATCH the full episode (36 minutes) on Epoch Times: https://ept.ms/S1130DumisaniWashington
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