The same caucus that celebrated the Emmett Till Antilynching Act refuses to condemn Israel's new death penalty for Palestinians.
“The Black Caucus has never – and should never – recover any vestige of dignity after putting the Democratic Party ahead of hundreds of thousands of poor and exiled Black people.” - Glen Ford
Last month, the zionist ethnostate of Israel, once again, made its wanton disregard for the humanity and people(s)-centered human rights (PCHRs) of Palestinian people known to the entire world with passage of a new law mandating the death penalty of Palestinians of the Occupied West Bank convicted of carrying out “deadly terror attacks.” By a vote of 62-47, the Israeli Knesset approved the new measure and further stipulated that the executions of Palestinians would be carried out by hanging as the default method of punishment. Passage of the new edict was celebrated by Israel’s right wing National Security Minister and zionist zealot, Itamar Ben Gvir, who not only celebrated by drinking champagne on the Knesset floor, but also by wearing a pin in the shape of a noose.
Israel National Security Minister, Itama Ben Gvir. Credit: AP Press
Concerns with the racist nature of Israel’s new law, which would only apply to Palestinians, were raised in a joint statement released by the governments of Germany, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom, which, in part, stated, “We are particularly worried about the de facto discriminatory character of the bill. The adoption of this bill would risk undermining Israel’s commitments with regards to democratic principles.” Additionally, deputy Middle East Director at Human Rights Watch, Adam Coggle, stated, “Israeli officials argue that imposing the death penalty is about security, but in reality, it entrenches discrimination and a two-tiered system of justice, both hallmarks of apartheid.” Coggle added, “The death penalty is irreversible and cruel. Combined with its severe restrictions on appeals and its 90-day execution timeline, this bill aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny.” And the Israel-based human rights group, B’Tselem, highlighted the fact that Palestinians are tried in military courts, unlike Israeli citizens, including radical Israeli settlers who have been increasingly carrying out terrorist attacks in the Occupied West Bank, who are tried in civilian courts, Palestinians are tried in military courts. This is a salient distinction as military trials of Palestinians have a, 96% conviction rate, based largely on “confessions” extracted under duress and torture during interrogations.”
This essentially amounts to an automatic death sentence for Palestinians accused of “deadly attacks” and subjected to Israel’s racist, kangaroo military courts. This scenario is eerily reminiscent of the same injustice system that Black folk are subjected to in the United States where, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, “African Americans make up 41% of people on death row and 34% of those executed, but only 13% of the population is Black.” In his most recent book, The Message, Ta-Nahesi Coates writes, “For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere.” Coates goes further in describing how Israel’s apartheid system reminded him of the Jim Crow laws of the U.S., “It’s true that ‘Jim Crow’ was the first thing that came to mind, if only because ‘Jim Crow’ is a phrase that connotes an injustice, a sorting of human beings, the awarding and stripping the rights of a population. Certainly that was some part of what I saw in Hebron, in Jerusalem, in Lydd. But it was not just the literal meaning of ‘Jim Crow,’ it was the feeling of the thing too.”
Coates’ words, which, of course, placed him in the ranks of “anti semites” by various elements of the zionist industrial complex are both veracious and relevant pertaining to Israel’s separate and unequal laws/policies for Palestinians. For if the U.S. prison industrial complex represents “The New Jim Crow,” as articulated by professor Michelle Alexander, Israel’s new lynching law can only be described as “The New Manifest Destiny” - a subjective license to enshrine slow genocide by law, one convicted Palestinain at a time, as part of a larger genocidal and ethnic cleansing pogrom that essentially sentences all Palestinians to death based on an abject adulteration of Jewish laws and values much like what Chrstian colonizers and conquistadors carried out against Indigenous peoples in the “New World.”
In 2022, Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilyncing Act into law, which made lynching a federal hate crime for the first time in U.S. history. When the bill passed the House of Representatives two years earlier, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) issued a rhapsodic press statement that, in part, stated, “Make no mistake: lynching is domestic terrorism. It is a tool that was used during the 256 years of slavery to terrorize enslaved African Americans and discourage them from rebelling.” The press statement added, “This is a vicious reminder that the past is never that far away. This is an awful part of our history, but it is our history – our American history – and it is important for us to all know and remember it, especially now that we are facing a resurgence of hate crimes in America under the presidency of Donald J. Trump.” While it cannot be refuted that successfully ratifying an antilynching bill warrants celebration, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act also serves another purpose…it exposes the CBC for what it is - a band of unprincipled hypocrites.
Glen Ford explored the hypocrisy of the CBC when it comes to lynching laws in 2018, “In June of 2014, just months before Mike Brown was shot down by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, the Congressional Black Caucus voted, 32 to 8, to continue the Pentagon’s infamous 1033 program, which funnels billions of dollars in battle-grade weapons and gear to local police departments.” Ford used this example to demonstrate the CBC’s aversion to holding U.S. law enforcement for its indiscriminate lynchings of Black people, “The elected ranks of the Democratic Party have no stomach for a real anti-lynching law, one that would corral the main body of lynchers: the men and women in blue, who kill a Black person every 28 hours.” Yet the CBC’s silence on Israel’s lynching law makes the points Ford raised eight years ago even more lucid.
You would think that the CBC would be among the first caucuses in the federal government to decry Israel’s new lynching bill, especially, as Coates noted, it absolutely triggers an ignominious epoch of U.S. history - an epoch the CBC members love to cite when it comes to scoring cheap political points against the Republicans, though less vociferous when the Jim Crow is instituted by the Democrats (i.e. welfare “reform” under President Clinton and the 1994 Biden/Clinton Crime Bill). The CBC and its members have said nothing about Israel’s new lynching law, and it’s no mystery as to why this is the case. It’s because the CBC is less the “conscience of the Congress” and really nothing more than a bunch of cooniferous bootlickers who allow their strings to be pulled by pro-genocide, zionist alabaster puppet masters. We shouldn’t be surprised, as CBC members have been tap dancing and bending the knee to the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for decades.
Last year in article for The Nation entitled, The Congressional Black Caucus’s Silent Partnership with AIPAC, which was written more than a year after the International Court of Justice declared that Israel was committing acts of genocide, journalist Anthony Conwright wrote, “Yet to this day, the Congressional Black Caucus—the long-standing corps of lawmakers dedicated to safeguarding civil rights (and known as “the conscience of Congress”)—has not issued a formal declaration condemning Israel; it hasn’t even produced a statement calling for a ceasefire.” Conwright did not hesitate to name why this was the case, “The CBC’s silence isn’t accidental: More than half of its current 61 members have been endorsed or funded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful US lobbying arm for Israel’s agenda. In the 2023–24 election cycle alone, AIPAC endorsed 26 of the caucus’s members, raising $4.6 million for them and another $3.5 million for Black Democratic candidates.” He goes on to accuse the CBC of, “selling their birthright for a mess of pottage,” yet we just need to name CBC’s silence on Israel’s new lynching law what it is with a much simpler term - selling out.
In the current election cycle, the CBC has only doubled down in its Uncle Tomism/Aunt Thomasineing as AIPAC recently released a promotional video featuring House (Kneegro) Minority Leader Hakeem “AIPAC Shakur” Jeffries (D-NY) and Representative Shontel Brown (D-OH) in which it names that it is the “top fundraiser for Black Caucus Members.” In the video Jeffries is smiling, jiving and gesticulating his hands as he enthusiastically says, “I appreciate the relationship I’ve had with AIPAC from the very beginning of my congressional journey.” He almost makes it seem like the 52.7% of the Black people in his district had less to do with his electoral success than a pro-genocide Political Action Committee that has become so unpopular that even the likes of Cory Booker, AIPAC’s favorite kneegroe in the U.S. Senate, recently declared that he would stop accepting donations from them. For many Democrats AIPAC has become a political and electoral albatross, but for the CBC, the exemplars of the Black Misleadership Class, it remains their Big Boss Man and their overseer on the DNC plantation they live on. Because while Conwright makes myriad true statements in his piece, the title of it is slightly misleading as the CBC doen’t have a silent partnership with AIPAC as proven by its silence on Israel’s new lynching law, which is far more audible.
At one point in the press statement on passage of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, the CBC notes, “Now there is the National Memorial for Peace and Justice to document the known history of lynching and the many reasons why Black people were lynched…” The irony of naming the memorial would be delicious if the CBC’s contradictions weren’t so bitter as Brian Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, names that he was, in part, inspired and informed by the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe, located in Berlin, Germany, while designing the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. And whereas Stevenson successfully linked the same ideology for the barbaric and systemic slaughter of Jews during the Holocaust to that which led the lynchings of Black people in the U.S., the CBC’s silence on Israel’s lynching law attempts to erase this nexus and for the worst reason - because they have been purchased by AIPAC like political slaves for prices that are less than when our ancestors were slaves.
It’s time for the Black masses of the U.S. to heed the sage words of Glen Ford, as it’s more clear than ever that the CBC cannot and will never, “recover any vestige of dignity.” They must not be allowed to be seen as representing us, especially when the majority of Black “Americans” believe that Israel should face sanctions for it’s genocide. This is further proof that the CBC is more Blackface zionism than the face of Black people in “America.”
No Compromise
No Retreat
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
Kwesi Pratt Jr. is General Secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana.
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