“As a person who supports Israel I was glad to see that there
were no signs and conversation about Gaza at all,” said St. Louis-area rabbi
Ari Kaiman after participating in a clergy-led protest outside
the Ferguson Police
Department on 13 October.
It was the final day of the “weekend of resistance” — four days
of direct actions organized by Ferguson protesters who asked people of
conscience from around the country to join them in St. Louis to demand justice
for Michael Brown,
the unarmed Black teenager gunned down by white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
Kaiman was right to worry and he is not alone. Israel’s apologists are
desperate to neutralize the growing bond between Palestinians
and African Americans spurred by the uprising in the small Missouri town
in the northern outskirts of St. Louis.
But they are failing
miserably.
advocacy has traditionally been excluded from progressive and social justice
circles in the United States, incredible displays of mutual solidarity between
Ferguson and Palestine have been featured regularly in the streets of St. Louis
and beyond since Brown’s grisly slaying on 9 August. And the “weekend of
resistance” was no exception.