SAN DIEGO — Dumisani Washington, founder of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel (IBSI), shared breakfast Friday with an intimate group of rabbis and Black ministers. He stressed that there has been a natural alliance between the two peoples since the biblical time of King Solomon of Israel when Queen Sheba of Ethiopia paid him a royal visit.
“There is a prophetic call on Africa and her descendants to usher the nations to Zion,” Washington declared in the first of five weekend appearances in San Diego County
Washington’s itinerary continued Friday night with a Shabbat evening speech at Hillel at San Diego State University; on Saturday evening with a scheduled Havdalah service at Temple Emanu-El, and will conclude on Sunday with an appearance at the House of Israel and Hall of Nations in the afternoon and with a speech to StandWithUs on Sunday night.
At the breakfast held at Temple Emanu-El in the Del Cerro neighborhood, Washington noted that Jews have stood side by side with Blacks in America. He referenced the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, in which African-Americans allied with Jews. He also spoke about the partnership to build in the early 1900s more than 5,000 schools and shops in the segregated South that was inspired by Booker T. Washington and financed by Julius Rosenwald, the part owner and leader of Sears, Roebuck & Company.
In contrast to Black-Jewish amity, Dumisani Washington said, Arab Muslims have historically enslaved millions of Africans, a practice that still goes on today. The Palestinian Liberation Organization and its political rival, Hamas, have cynically cozied up to Black leaders to portray themselves as interested in civil rights, but “they couldn’t have cared less; they just wanted other people to think that they did,” Washington declared. “They needed Black leaders standing next to them … waving a Palestinian flag … to gain credibility” in world opinion.
These organizations and their allies and offshoots have fostered Jew-hatred in Europe and on U.S. college campuses, Washington said. He said the nation of Qatar is one Palestinian ally that finances anti-Israel, Middle Eastern Studies programs on college campuses. Even if those programs were to be abolished today, he said, professors and their students would remain, meaning two generations of Jew-haters.
Washington called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood which has been branded by Egypt, the United Arb Emirates, Bahrain, and other moderate Muslim countries as a terrorist organization. Yet, he said, the U.S. government has continued to tolerate CAIR’s existence.
Further, Students for Justice in Palestine, established in 2006, now has chapters throughout the United States. Washington said the chapters have links to Hamas, a terrorist organization, and should have been shut down through legal action when they sprung up. Instead, Israel advocacy groups sought to counter them with the formation of pro-Israel chapters on campus, which was a big mistake, according to Washington. Yes, donors alarmed by SJP’s anti-Israel disruptions donate money, which in turn finances student trips to Israel, but that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem, Washington said.
He said Jew-hatred will continue on campuses for the foreseeable future but added that meetings such as Friday’s breakfast that brought together rabbis and Black ministers, who then can talk to members of their congregations, gives him hope. Breaking bread together is a proven way to promote understanding, he added.
Rabbi Devorah Marcus of Temple Emanu-El expressed appreciation to Washington and to the organizer of the event, Barrett Holman Leak, for providing “healing.” She explained that since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas led a transborder raid that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 hostages, “I’ve been so shut down because I spent my whole life in interfaith solidarity work and I can count on one hand the colleagues and people who I felt were friends who called me on October 7 and 8 to see just as a human being if I was okay.
“I can count on every appendage I have and strands of hair on my head the number of people who didn’t call, and some people I still haven’t heard from … I think I speak for most Jewish clergy that we were like wounded animals, and we licked our wounds in a cave because that was our retreat.”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World