While he was still living, Martin Luther King, spoke the truth about the anti-Israel movement among the Left. He also stated, after the Six Day War in 1967, “"Israel's right to exist as a state in security is incontestable."
Only ten days before he died, King also called Israel “one of the great outposts of democracy in the world," and he went on to say that "we must stand with all our might to protect [Israel's] right to exist, its territorial integrity."
King also frequently denounced anti-Semitism. According to him, "the segregationists and racists make no fine distinction between the Negro and the Jew." In a letter to Jewish leaders, he attacked anti-Semitism "within the Negro community, because it was wrong. I will continue to oppose it, because it is immoral and self-destructive."
Yet a writing competition organized by Carnegie Mellon’s Dietrich Center, the first place tie win in a high school writing contest went to an article written by an 11th grade Jewish high school student who implies his religion’s attachment to Jewish existence and Israel is based on racism and contradictory to the teachings of Dr. King.
The student, Jesse Lieberfeld, an 11th grader at Winchester Thurston High School ,wrote of questioning his Judaism as he sat in synagogue with his family. Bored by a musical interlude during the service, he wrote about his Judaism: “I had always accepted this solo as just another part of the program, yet now it seemed to capture the whole essence of our religion: intelligent and well-crafted on paper, yet completely oblivious to the outside world.”
He continued about his supposed epiphany about Judaism, “When I was finally given the chance to ask a question, I asked, 'I want to support Israel. But how can I when it lets its army commit so many killings?' I was met with a few angry glares from some of the older men, but the rabbi answered me. 'It is a terrible thing, isn’t it?' he said. 'But there’s nothing we can do. It’s just a fact of life.'
"I knew, of course, that the war was no simple matter and that we did not by any means commit murder for its own sake, but to portray our thousands of killings as a 'fact of life' was simply too much for me to accept. I thanked him and walked out shortly afterward. I never went back. I thought about what I could do. If nothing else, I could at least try to free myself from the burden of being saddled with a belief I could not hold with a clear conscience. I could not live the rest of my life as one of the pathetic moderates whom King had rightfully portrayed as the worst part of the problem. I did not intend to go on being one of the Self-Chosen People, identifying myself as part of a group to which I did not belong. “
So in one fell swoop, young Lieberfeld at the ripe old age of seventeen condemned Judaism, redefined the Chosen People as the Self-Chosen People (meaning self-absorbed and superior to others rather than a light unto the nations) and then accuses Israel’s army of “so many killings” while not even acknowledging the 8,000 missiles fired on Israelis on a regular basis from Gaza using civilians as shields, nor the Palestinian insistence that Israel has no right to exist at all. He furthermore suggested he preserved the ideals of Martin Luther King regarding the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
Young Lieberfeld conflated prejudice against Black America in the 1950’s with Israel's treatment of Arabs, forgetting the anti-Semitism of Hamas whose charter calls to wipe Jews from the face of the Earth.
“Wasn’t it the same excuse our own country had used to justify its abuses of African-Americans sixty years ago?”, he wrote,“In that moment, I realized how similar the two struggles were—like the white radicals of that era, we controlled the lives of another people whom we abused daily, and no one could speak out against us. It was too politically incorrect to do so. We had suffered too much, endured too many hardships, and overcome too many losses to be criticized. I realized then that I was in no way part of a ‘conflict’—the term ‘Israeli/Palestinian Conflict’ was no more accurate than calling the Civil Rights Movement the ‘Caucasian/ African-American Conflict.’
"In both cases, the expression was a blatant euphemism: it gave the impression that this was a dispute among equals and that both held an equal share of the blame. However, in both, there was clearly an oppressor and an oppressed, and I felt horrified at the realization that I was by nature on the side of the oppressors. I was grouped with the racial supremacists. I was part of a group that killed while praising its own intelligence and reason. I was part of a delusion.”
Those self-absorbed Jews who convinced this 'sensitive' adolescent to “never go back” to synagogue obviously sounded convincing to academic judges of his article who never read how Israel released over 1,000 terrorists, many with blood on their hands, for one Jewish soldier.
Are we to believe the judges were so ignorant? Whereas the letter implies the young man engaged in soul searching, he submitted pure anti-Israel propaganda and was immediately distributed by Mazen Qumsiyeh of the ISM, a known anti-Semite who was fired by Yale University for using the University email system to send out anti-Semitic emails . Qumsiyeh, a founder of Al Awda, that calls for the annihilation of Israel and for boycotts abroad , is loosely affiliated with the PFLP.
Ignoring the bllatant contradiction to Dr. King’s opinion that American blacks should support Israel and that anti-Zionism was a disguised form of anti-Semitism (per Dr. King’s wife), the Carnegie Mellon judges sought to award this young man’s ignorance a tie for first place.
Or is there more to this than it seems?
The award winning article is, in fact , a first-rate example of the propaganda rhetoric used by the International Solidarity Movement . The news of the award has been making its way around ISM propaganda lists. Was this boy recruited by the ISM to lend his name to the letter?
And the judges at Carnegie Mellon who chose it as a tie for first place? An investigation shows that Professor Jim Daniels in the English department headed the competition of judges on an article about Martin Luther King. He decided that “race” was to be the central theme. Jews and Palestinians are not separate races, but apparently Daniels, a poet, thinks they are. That such an article might spew forth from the pen of an immature adolescent with no knowledge or history on Martin Luther King might be possible. But knowledgeable academics would not award such a document a first place prize were it not their goal to convey a political (and anti-Semitic) message at the same time.
Who were the other judges in the English department, I asked the President’s Office? Carnegie-Mellon isn’t telling.
But then we also learn that Jesse’s dad, one Daniel Lieberfeld is an anti-Israel activist professor and ex-pat Israeli at Duquesne University tries to convince American Jews not to support a Jewish state, comparing Israel and the former apartheid South Africa. Daniel Lieberfeld may not have written the article for his son, but he likely told him what distortions to say and use to be picked up by anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic blogs like Mondoweiss with the headline “ Today in Pittsburgh, Jesse Lieberfeld, 17, will deliver a hammer blow to American Jewish support for Israel”.
Daniel Lieberfeld showed that bashing Israel can be a family affair if you know how to manipulate the Media,, especially comparing persecution of black people to Israel’s self-defense. Lieberfeld has even signed a petition asking for international protection for the Palestinians - as they were busy blowing up Israeli civilians on buses during the height of the Intifada.
It said, “We feel it is our duty to support the call for the immediate provision of an international force to protect the Palestinian people in its struggle for the exercise of its right to self-determination and freedom, and to put an end to the military occupation of its land.” The Petition was signed by a Who’s Who List of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist ex-pat Israeli academics who routinely promote the Palestinian :Revolution” against Israel; that is, self-hating Jews who are against a Jewish national homeland in favor of the Arabs taking it over.
That Carnegie-Mellon could play right into the anti-Israel propaganda crowd doesn’t say much for its English faculty or College President, who also sponsored the competition in honor of Dr. King.
