and those warnings resonate today as the threat of a U.S. war on Iran looms. A Washington Reportarticle by Sara Powell, published in November 2002, described a civil rights protest at Freedom Plaza on Sept. 13, 2002. Americans wanted “to stop terror, not to spread it,” Jackson told the crowd, and the U.S. should “lead the world, not rule it.” He said significant portions of the American public want “negotiation over confrontation,” and “minds over missiles.”
In an article published the following year in the May 2003 Washington Report, Pat Twair wrote: In a last-ditch effort to challenge the Bush administration’s push to war, a crowd of 10,000 to 50,000 demonstrators braved the heaviest storm since 1952 in downtown Los Angeles on March 15. Wearing a yellow raincoat, the Rev. Jesse Jackson vowed that President George W. Bush will face war crime charges if he starts a war on Iraq. “Give us a sense of sanity in high places,” Jackson shouted. “We need a coherent foreign policy that is committed to one set of rules. We must not look at the family of nations with contempt.” Jackson noted that the people in Bush’s administration didn’t fight for democracy in Selma, South Africa or Angola. Why then, he asked, are they so eager to install democracy in Iraq? “When the bombs fall, the U.S. will lose its moral authority,” he warned.
Not everyone appreciated Jackson’s views on U.S. foreign policy. As noted in a Washington Reportarticle, published in November 1983, a group called Jews Against Jackson, started by Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League, ran full-page ads claiming Jackson was “a danger to American Jews,” illustrated with a photo showing Jackson embracing PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) was also not a Jackson fan and tried to discredit his presidential campaigns. In a Washington Report article titled “The Secret Section in Israel’s U.S. Lobby That Stifles American Debate,” published in July 1992, author Gregory Slabodkin, who was an opposition researcher for AIPAC in 1900 and 1991 wrote, “The largest file that AIPAC keeps on any single person is that of District of Columbia ‘Shadow Senator’ Jesse Jackson.”In an article by Washington Report cofounder Richard H. Curtiss titled, “Who Suffers When Criticism of Israel Is Equated With Anti-Semitism?” published in the May 1990 issue, Curtiss describes a familiar tactic waged today: Jackson was the target of a smear campaign that all American Blacks, and most whites, recognize as unfair. His “Hymietown” remark was made in private and at the height of a campaign in which he was being harassed at every appearance by noisy, organized Jewish hecklers.
In fact, he is being smeared because he traveled to the Middle East to meet Yasser Arafat. There Jackson embraced not only the Palestinian leader, but the two-state solution to provide Israel with security and the Palestinians with self-determination. Some American Jews, more than half of whom now also support the two-state solution, apparently cannot forgive him for being the first to be right. In routinely referring to him as “anti-Semitic,” they are repeating slurs every bit as serious as his own one-time slur six years ago against New York’s Jews.
For decades many Americans have urged negotiations instead of bombs in the Middle East. They’ve been called anti-Semitic and that is the end of discussion. Rev. Jesse Jackson helped open the doors of American politics and society to everyone and championed equal rights at home and abroad—including in Israel and Palestine. “It’s hard to imagine a world without Jesse Jackson,” Washington Report’s “Other Voices” editor Janet McMahon remarked yesterday.
We’ve spent the last weeks boxing up nearly 44 years of photos and clippings to make room for the Washington Report’s upcoming office renovation and contraction (we are helping the Museum of the Palestinian’s expansion). We have files documenting Rev. Jackson’s important work for peace, justice, human rights and making a seat at the table for Arab and Muslim American voters. In fact, we have nearly 45 years of priceless records gathered by our non-profit organization, the American Educational Trust. We are seeking help from universities, embassies or institutions to scan and organize this unique collection. This collection should be accessible online for future researchers, not locked in file cabinets. Please help us tell the stories corporate media ignores. Please email your suggestions to [email protected] or donate online to help us fund this project. Together we can all make a difference.
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