When Blacks and Irish Nationalists Were Zionist Allies

by Norman Berdichevsky (April 2018)

 

wo of the closest allies in the Jewish struggle to realize the Zionist Dream of “A Nation Once Again” (a Mantra of the Irish National Movement as well) have largely deserted their once-close ties. This is most apparent to those of us old enough to remember that British opposition to what they called “Zionist Propaganda” used the image of an unholy alliance between Jews, Blacks, the Civil Rights Movement and Irish Nationalist sympathizers in the United States, all of whom were supposedly tainted by extremist views.

 

This may come as a surprise to many younger people today, especially on the political Left end of the spectrum. For at least four decades, African-American and Jewish relations have soured and whatever platitudes may be uttered by recognized leaders of both groups, the rank and file among both groups often hold aggressive and condescending views of each other. Few remember or care to celebrate the heyday of the close, cordial and fraternal relations in the 1940s that differed from the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s when many Liberal Jewish activists were often in the forefront of that struggle, sometimes to the chagrin and open resentment of many young Blacks.

 

Prior to that time, African-Americans often took the lead among gentile support by way of public statements in favor of rescuing Jews from the Holocaust and helping to create a Jewish state. The same was true of Irish-Americans, devoutly Catholic and sympathetic to the nationalist cause.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The play starred Marlon Brando and Paul Muni during its various productions and proceeds from the play were used to purchase a ship that was renamed the SS Ben Hecht. It brought 900 Holocaust survivors to Palestine in March 1947. The Royal Navy captured the ship after it docked. Six hundred passengers were detained as illegal immigrants and sent to internment camps in Cyprus. The SS Ben Hecht later became the flagship of the Israeli Navy.

 

 

 

 

 

The Irish-Jewish Alliance was more complicated. Several thousand Jews resident in the Republic were generally free from discrimination and several Irish Jews achieved positions of considerable prestige including Lord Mayors of Dublin (Robert Briscoe in 1956 and 1961 and his son Ben Briscoe in 1988) and in Cork (Gerald Goldberg in 1977). In the United States however, Irish-Americans and Jews were often at odds in the lead-up to World War II as the former were strongly in favor of absolute American neutrality and against providing any material war assistance to Great Britain. With the end of the war, many Irish-Americans, like their compatriots in the republic, began to view Jews in a completely different light thanks to the courageous struggle for a Jewish state and open opposition to British immigration policies and pro-Arab stand.

 

 

He had also established a reputation as a lawyer devoted to radical causes and the more renowned ones involving people accused of Communist activities. Active in the National Lawyers Guild, he became its president in 1947 and served on its national board from 1948-51. His influence protected several Irish Republican Army activists involved in the smuggling of weapons from deportation.

 

 

 

These bitter grapes cannot obscure what has remained a cherished recollection for both peoples when they shared a common cause, and especially the affection of those Irish nationalists for whom the revival of their language stands as a glorious achievement, rivaled only by Hebrew.

 

 

Jewish, Irish, and African-Americans would do well to remember and cherish these facts.

 

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The Left is Seldom Right and Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language.

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