NPR: For Left, Palestinian Cause Similar to Black Lives Matter Movement

National Public Radio (NPR), a taxpayer-funded national news outlet, reported Friday that left-wing Americans are rallying to the Palestinian cause, and against Israel, because they see it “as a power struggle, akin to the movement for Black lives.”

There is no significant racial difference between Palestinians and Israelis. Many Jews have deep roots in Arab countries. Black people in the region tend to be Jewish — namely, Ethiopian Jews, whose community was brought to Israel in recent decades.

On Saturday night, Israel will even be represented at the Eurovision song contest finals by a black Jewish woman, Eden Alene.

But to the American left, for whom “intersectionality” — solidarity across causes — is paramount, Palestinians are “black lives.”

As NPR’s Asma Khalid notes in “How The Gaza Violence Marked A Shift In The American Political Debate Over Israel“:

Young activists see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a power struggle, akin to the movement for Black lives.

…

Progressives in Congress and on the street often compare the Palestinian cause to fights for racial justice in America.

…

That comparison is the result of years of intentional efforts at creating Black-Palestinian solidarity. After the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black teenager in Florida, Ahmad Abuznaid co-founded a group called Dream Defenders that organizes Black and brown communities.

“In 2012, on our first march — we were marching to Sanford, Fla., where Trayvon was killed. And on that march, I was wearing a kaffiyeh, the Palestinian scarf that many rightly identify with the Palestinian struggle, and we had conversations about state-sanctioned violence,” Abuznaid said.

This week, Ethiopian Jews in Israel appealed directly to the Black Lives Matter movement to pressure Palestinian terrorists to free Avera Mengistu, a young, mentally ill black Israeli who has been held captive since 2014.

There has been little response.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new e-book, The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it). His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.