From Black Zionism to Black Nasserism: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Foundations of Black Anti-Zionist Discourse

Introduction

Black visions of liberation, political philosophies, goals, and strategies have been developing parallel to Black discourse on Zionism, Palestine, and Israel since at least the 19th century. This article uses Du Bois and the transformation of his vision of Zionism as a microcosm for the changing contours of Black thought on the movement and the Middle East as a whole.

In Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in The Middle East, Melani McAlister (2005) writes,

Religious narratives connected African Americans, by history and analogy, to various (and sometimes competing) constructions of events in the Middle East, both ancient and modern. Black Christians often narrated that connection as a spiritual tie to the slavery and suffering of the Hebrews. They also claimed the geography of the Middle East as a Christian space: for black Christians in the mid-twentieth century no less than for white travelers in the nineteenth, the River Jordan and the Nile valley, the city of Jerusalem, and the valley of Canaan were intimately familiar and emotionally resonant. (p. 86)

I aim to explore the nature and significance of Palestine in Black radical politics and imagination, specifically W.E.B. Du Bois, and how his stance on Israel shifted from Black Zionism to seeing Israel as an ally of neo-colonial powers and the enemy of the Pan-African ideals. I also center Black Orientalism as a powerful ideological ground on which Pan-Africanists build their Black Zionist ideals. Finally, using Du Bois as an example, I highlight how Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and Nasserism created a powerful shift in the Black radical discourse toward Israel.

I suggest that Black Nasserism implies the political geography created by Black radicals like Elijah Mohammad, Malcolm X, Kwame Nkrumah, and Du Bois himself. This geography places Egypt and Gamal Abdel Nasser as epicenters of global Black liberation and makes them an embodiment of the Pan-African dream of unity and liberation of all African and Afro-descendant peoples of the world. This vision is crucial for understanding the genesis of Black American criticism toward the state of Israel as a neo-colonial, Western state, which is a view still voiced and supported by the leaders of the progressive Black movements such as Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives. Many scholars, including myself, traditionally trace the Black and Palestinian solidarity movement to the Black Power era during the 1960s and 1970s. While this movement is fundamental for the history of contemporary solidarity, the original political vision of the movement was articulated by Du Bois.

Du Bois is not only significant for this study as a prolific figure of Black Zionism and Black Nasserism; he was also instrumental in creating major aspects of Black Nationalist and Pan-African discourse. Both movements, in turn, shaped the languages, strategies, and agendas of Pan-African and Pan-Arab unity and alliances, embodied in Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Method

The data for this article were gathered through archival research at the Special Collections and Archives at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, specifically the Du Bois Papers. The key concepts are Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism and are used as articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois and his writings. ‘Black Orientalism’ is used as defined by Sherman Jackson and his theory on the connections between Black Americans and Black Islam.

Du Bois and Pan-Africanism

W.E.B. Du Bois’ scholarship and activism created one of the most lasting, multidimensional, and complex impacts on Black radical political philosophies; in fact, his theoretical and practical contributions to the Pan-African movement and its ideology made him a central figure in the First Pan-African Conference in London, England, in 1900. Delegates from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Caribbean, and African Continent were present when Du Bois delivered his iconic speech, ‘Address to the Nations of the World’, in which Du Bois demanded rights and freedoms for the global Black diaspora (Appiah, 2015: 2). The conference itself and his speech would frame the discourse on Pan-Africanism, including its nature, significance, strategies, and goals for the next century. The event ensured Du Bois’ Pan-African theorizing was put into practice. The Pan-African Conference would be held four more times during the 20th century, ending with the last summit in 1945.

Black Zionism and Orientalism

In multiple ways, Black Zionism ¹ was an organic development that grew out of two major political and cultural phenomena: Black Orientalism and Black Nationalism. ² The Zionist project was significant for 19th-century Black nationalists such as Martin Delany and Wilmot Edward Blyden because they saw a powerful connection between the goals of the two phenomena from which it grew: an oppressed people fighting for land and sovereignty in their historical, ‘ancestral’ lands.

This led to the Zionist rhetoric, in turn, dehumanizing the Indigenous Jewish, Christian, and Muslim population of historical Palestine and reflecting the US nationalist myth that portrays the land as undeveloped, uninhibited, and stripped of progress and civilization. Du Bois, in addition to Blyden and Delany, saw Black Nationalism and American colonization of Africa as an opportunity to bring industrialization and Eurocentric notions of progress to the continent. In connecting Zionism and the Black Nationalist project, Du Bois created a vision of Palestine and Palestinians that resonated with its ideology and vision as well.

When the State of Israel was founded in 1948, Du Bois showed his support for Zionism in an article titled ‘The Ethics of the Problem of Palestine’, which was published in the Chicago Star on 8 May, not even a week before the Jewish Republic state was established on 14 May. In this article, Du Bois revisits Jewish history from 1000 BC to 1948, drawing multidimensional connections between Black and Jewish history, focusing on oppression and dispossession, and outlining the similarities between anti-Semitism and anti-Blackness. He details the history of the Jewish diaspora in Europe, emphasizing their contributions as well as affirming their authentic and independent cultural and religious autonomy. He concludes the article by criticizing the United States, Great Britain, and the United Nations (UN)—the contemporary powers to emerge at that time—for their lack of support for the Zionist cause (Du Bois, 1948: 2).

Ironically, he begins his description of Palestinian geography with multiple mistakes, incorrectly naming Damascus and Jordan as cities in the country. These errors represent a larger error in judgment that heavily relies on Zionist propaganda and an Orientalist vision of the region:

Palestine is a land largely of plateaus, mountains, and deserts sparsely inhabited, and could easily maintain millions more people than the two million it has today . . . among the Arabs there is widespread ignorance, poverty, and disease and a fanatic belief in the Mohammedan religion, which makes these people suspicious of other peoples and other religions. Their rulership is a family and clan despotism which makes effective use of democratic methods difficult. (Du Bois, 1948: 2)

Du Bois’ description of the land as vast, dry, and virtually empty echoes the settler imaginations of Western colonial pioneers. He does not recognize Palestinians as a people or Palestine as a nation, using the generalizing ethnic term ‘Arabs’, in a manner that creates a sense of detachment between the land and the people. Even though Palestine had well-developed infrastructure, culture, architecture, and economy, much of the world, including Du Bois, was convinced Palestinians were uncivilized and backward. Du Bois describes Palestine as a homogeneous Muslim or ‘Mohammedan’ population. He also identifies Islam as the key reason for the lack of progress and democracy in Palestine. Du Bois’ interpretation would have been accurate if he accounted for how the policies of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the region until 1919, thwarted the development of Palestine. Ottoman imperial practices created a complex unequal system of oppression that subjugated non-Muslim populations. These practices, however, were central to maintaining imperial control rather than an embodiment of the Islamic doctrine. This kind of Islamophobic rhetoric had a lasting impact on Black discourse about Arabs and Islam. In ‘Black Orientalism: Its Genesis, Aims, and Significance for American Islam’, Sherman Jackson identified Islam as a key reason for Black people’s anti-Arab sentiment:

Unlike Said’s ‘White’ Orientalism, the aim of Black Orientalism had nothing to do with a desire to control or dominate the Orient. Like Said’s Orientalism, however, its target was empathetically Islam. At the bottom, Black Orientalism is a reaction to the newly-developed relationship between Islam, Black Americans, and the Muslim world . . . Its ultimate aim is to challenge, if not undermine, the esteem enjoyed by Islam in the Black American community by projecting onto the Muslim world a set of images, perceptions, resentments, and stereotypes that are far more the product of black experience in the United States than they are of any direct relationship with or knowledge of Islam or the Muslim world. (Jackson, 2009: 34)

Jackson explores the concept of Orientalism ³ in contemporary Black political, cultural, and religious contexts to highlight how Islamophobic stereotypes affect relationships between Black and Arab communities in the United States. The Black cultural and political framework Jackson deploys to understand these relations are distinguished by the power dynamics involved in Black and Arab encounters. For example, the connections forged through not only Islam but also the prejudices the communities have toward one another. While Orientalism is a result of violent encounters between the Middle East and Western colonialism, Black Orientalism is rooted in the everyday tensions between Black and Middle Eastern communities in the United States. This understanding of Black Orientalism and its implications can be deepened and expanded when accounting for Black Orientalism in the 19th century, especially within the context of Pan-Africanism and Black Zionism. Alex Lubin traced Black Orientalism to the wider context of American Orientalism, which he believes peaked in the middle of the 20th century. In ‘Locating Palestine in Pre-1948’, Lubin, unlike Jackson, traces Black Orientalism to US imperial discourse, not simply contemporary Islamophobia within Black communities (Lubin, 2009: 18).

While both Du Bois and Jackson point to Islam as a major source of stereotypes and prejudices between Black people in the United States and the inhabitants of the Middle East, Lubin creates a much more complex picture of the character and consequences of Black Orientalism. He connects anti–Middle Eastern and Islamophobic sentiments to Black Zionism to reveal how it insinuated itself within Pan-Africanism and Black nationalism to help ‘Pan-Africanists build a case for settler colonialism in Africa’ (Lubin, 2009: 19). In essence, the logic of Zionism undergirded Black Americans’ nationalist aspirations in ways that affirm the significance, necessity, and righteousness of re-colonizing Africa. Similar to Marcus Garvey, Black nationalists of the 19th century created a narrative to validate re-settling Africa using the rhetoric of Zionism by drawing connections between “back to Africa” movement and the zionist idea of ‘return’ to the ‘promised land’.

Black Zionism Rhetoric

According to Lubin (2009), ‘the most sophisticated articulation of the territorial Zionist position was not [that of] a Jewish intellectual but . . . an African-American intellectual named Edward Wilmot Blyden’ (p. 20). Like Du Bois, Blyden was also an internationalist who penned several writings in support of the founding of the Jewish Republic, ‘Mohammedism and the Negro Race’ (1877) and ‘The Jewish Question’ (1898). Although Blyden traveled to Palestine to see and experience it, his visit did not abate his Zionism; it intensified his Zionist vision. Palestine was still under Turkish rule at the time of Blyden’s visit, and like Du Bois, he believed Islam was the main reason for its ‘desolate’, underdeveloped, and unsafe climate (Lubin, 2009: 20).

Martin Delany was another crucial Pan-African figure who used Zionism as a model for Black radical ideology. In 1843, he founded and published a newspaper called The Mystery using exclusively Black funds. The newspaper was used as a platform to articulate his and like-minded visions and strategies, purposes of Black nationalism. As he became increasingly involved in Pan-Africanism, Delany deployed an immigration narrative to persuade Black Americans to re-settle in East Africa in a place he dubbed ‘Black Israel’. In arguably his most famous book, The Condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States Politically Considered, he links Zionism and the status of the Jewish diaspora to his calls for the African diaspora to return to Africa:

Such then are the Poles in Russia, the Hungarians in Austria, the Scotch, Irish, and Welsh in the United Kingdom, and such also are the Jews, scattered throughout not only the length and breadth of Europe, but almost the habitable globe, maintaining their national characteristics, and looking forward in high hopes of seeing the day when they may return to their former national position of self-government and independence, let that be in whatever part of the habitable world it may. (Delany, 1852: 4)

Both Delany’s and Du Bois’ vision of Jewish cultural nationalism highlighted its unique set of cultural, religious, and ‘national’ characteristics that entitled them to secure political sovereignty through Zionist settler colonialism. Du Bois’ articulation of Black Orientalism, Pan-Africanism, and Black Zionism were not original given these ideological threads were used during the antebellum by intellectuals such as Blyden who used similar arguments to end slavery in the US.

In ‘The Ethics of the Problem of Palestine’, Du Bois (1948) elaborates on the linkage between Zionist and Pan-African idea of ‘return’, in a manner that imagines Africa and Israel as respective Black and Jewish ‘homelands’:

Finally, after a bitter fight, there arose with increasing voice, a demand on the part of the Jews themselves that they should go back to Zion and re-found the state which they had lost. This Zionism met opposition from many thoughtful Jews. They said this would increase anti-Jewish attitudes rather than decrease them. But the situation ceased to be academic. There began to be a growing feeling that certain Jews could only escape persecution by migrating to a homeland. (Du Bois, 1948: 6)

Du Bois takes a curious route to state his case. Instead of attempting to refute the Jewish academics’ arguments against the establishment of the State of Israel, he appeals to the pathos of his readers and makes it a matter of a collective Jewish ‘feeling’ and simply a sole solution for survival. His impassioned argument in support of the Jewish Republic moves him toward a virtually inevitable Eurocentric, colonizing discourse of civilizing and enlightening of the unenlightened, backward ‘Arabs’:

. . . It was no longer a mere question of religion and culture. It was a question of young and forward-thinking Jews bringing a new civilization into an old land and building up that land out of the ignorance, disease, and poverty into which it had fallen; and by new democratic methods to build a new and peculiarly fateful modern state. (Du Bois, 1948: 6)

Du Bois’ quote is an example of how Western colonial beliefs are internalized by intellectuals and then deployed to validate imperial colonial rule. These beliefs correlate with the US doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’ which was created in the mid-18th century to proclaim the supposed inevitability of the continued territorial expansion of the boundaries of the United States westward to the Pacific and beyond. Rudyard Kipling 1899 articulated this view again in The White Man’s Burden, which urged new democratic nations to join other Western colonial powers in spreading progress and democracy (Kipling, 1929: 83). Du Bois recreates this binary in his construction of Jewish settlers as representing democracy, civilization, progress, and new beginnings, while the Indigenous populations of Palestine represented ignorance, deprivation, and even ‘disease’. He presents Israel as a sort of cure for the Palestinian predicament and professes its inevitability, once again echoing the colonial and imperial discourse of the United States and Western colonial powers.

Contrasting Black and Jewish Re-Settling

Another important but rarely discussed Du Bois piece affirming support for Israel that was published in November 1948 titled ‘America’s Responsibility to Israel’ is an impassioned speech he delivered at the American Jewish Congress in New York in celebration of the advancement, history, and triumph of the Zionist movement. He opens his remarks by contrasting Jewish and Black history on the re-settling of Africa and Palestine, castigating the former:

A small band of largely unlettered Negroes, without capital or tools, was dumped on the fever coast of Africa where they had to fight even for land to live on; and then for a century to use all their energy to avoid absorption by England, France, and Germany, finally to fall in sheer exhaustion into the hand of American capital and armed force. (Du Bois, 1948)

This quote suggests Du Bois transcended his prior arguments pointing to the similarities between Black and Jewish diasporic experience in the United States by developing a complex understanding of Black and Jewish history. He complicates this history by exploring the similarities and dissimilarities between the Black and Jewish diaspora, highlighting the significance of solidarity and ‘philanthropy’ on behalf of American Jews (Du Bois, 1948).

These comments are merely a preface, a framework for his main argument, criticizing Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ralph Bunche’s role in the creation of the state of Israel. Ralph Bunche deserves special attention in this article for several reasons, such as his direct history of involvement with Palestine/Israel, his knowledge of the region and its politics, and finally, a bright example of one of the first Black intellectuals to speak up about the plight of Palestinians. A diplomat, politician, Civil Rights Movement activist, and political science scholar, he was the first Black American to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. He received this honor for negotiating a ceasefire in the wake of the growing Middle East crisis that was brewing in the aftermath of the creation of the state of Israel. Bunche was closely involved with the UN, the organization that created the Jewish Republic, from the very beginning. He participated in the conference that created the organization and its charter in 1945 and was a part of the US delegation to the first UN General Assembly a year later. More importantly, Bunche led the Special Committee on Palestine, then the UN Palestine Commission in 1947. This sub-organization designed the Partition Plan, later known as Resolution 181 (Lyman, 2004: 24).

Du Bois contends that despite Bunche’s efforts, he did not do Israel justice; so he issues an apology to Israel:

His chance to take a just stand and play a great role for freedom might easily have cost him his career . . . perhaps, then, it was a counsel of perfection to have hoped that Ralph Bunche would have stood fast for justice, freedom, and the good faith of his nation and his race-perhaps. I wish he had stood firm against the vacillation, compromise, and betrayal of our Department of State. Since he did not, whatever the pressure and motives were, I ask forgiveness from you for him, in the name of fifteen million American Negroes. (Du Bois, 1948: 7)

The fact that Du Bois castigated Bunche, who as a UN diplomat he had previously praised, speaks to how invested he was in his unconditional support for the Jewish republic. Du Bois understood the potential effect of Bunche’s involvement in Palestine/Israel on Black and Jewish relationships in the United States. Despite Du Bois’ sense of disappointment in Bunche, he still provided Black Americans with a diplomatic bridge to the pro-Israeli American Jewish community.

Du Bois and Jewish History and Experience

Du Bois’ Zionism was a complex ideological and political stance that stemmed from some of his own powerful belief systems, Pan-Africanism, and Black Internationalism. There is also the important element of a political calculus evident in Du Bois’ effort to create and solidify an allegiance with Zionist groups in the United States. In this allyship there is a purely humanistic element support the ‘Jewish Homeland’. His cosmopolitanism and erudition brought him in close contact with the Jewish diaspora not only in the United States but also in Western Europe, specifically Germany, and Poland. His acute awareness of anti-Semitism and its global nature can only be outweighed by his witnessing the rise of Nazism during World War II.

In ‘W. E. B. Du Bois and Jews: A Lifetime of Opposing Anti-Semitism’, Benjamin Sevitch explores the history of Du Bois’ criticism and opposition to global anti-Jewish sentiments and movements, highlighting him as a champion of the cause:

Throughout the last century, many well-known African Americans consistently decried anti-Semitism of any origin, among them A. Philip Randolph, Roy Wilkins, Whitney Young, Bayard Rustin, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But no black voice was heard more often, more eloquently, and for a longer period than W. E. B. Du Bois in his denunciation of anti-Semitism and his praise of Jewish people in general. (Sevitch, 2002: 323)

Some scholars such as Lenora E. Berson and to a lesser extent Robert G. Weisbord and Arthur Stein contend that early in his career, Du Bois displayed anti-Semitic attitudes. Sevitch (2002) dismisses these and virtually all other comments and writings that were interpreted as anti-Semitic because Du Bois’ support of Zionism was rooted in his admiration of the Jewish diaspora. Stevitch’s dismissal of Du Bois’ anti-Semitism is objective since he draws a direct connection between his support toward Zionism and his support of the global Jewish diaspora. This kind of logic has been applied to a substantial number of Jewish intellectuals and scholars who are critical of Israel, such as Noam Chomsky and Judith Butler. Du Bois’ support for Jewish people, however, is an important example of how many Black figures such as Martin Luther King and Paul Robeson came to support the early-mid-20th-century Zionist movement.

In 1936, Du Bois embarked on a trip around the world with a stop in Germany. He was carefully evaluating the rise of the Nazi party but was unequivocally critical of its treatment of Jewish people. The trip became an important landmark for him intellectually, a moment in which he started seeing complex parallels between the Jewish experience in Europe and the Black experience in the Jim Crow South in the United States. In his book, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, Du Bois (2011) wrote, ‘We may be expelled from the United States as the Jew is being expelled from Germany’ (p. 306). Although he is reluctant to compare the experience of the Black and Jewish diaspora in the United States, Du Bois continues to write about the connections between the diaspora’s experiences in Europe and the US South.

Du Bois’ most impassioned proclamation of unity and solidarity with the Jewish diaspora is found in his 1952 speech ‘The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto’. The address was delivered to a hotel in New York City at an event called ‘Tribute to the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters’. Du Bois revisits his entire experience in Europe, first as a student at the University of Berlin in 1893. He creates a detailed narrative exposing the anti-Semitic practices he witnessed in Europe and how they expanded his views on race and racial discrimination. The ‘Jewish Problem’, as Du Bois calls it, manifests in different ways in different parts of Europe, from hotel segregation to prejudice and unfriendliness.

The pinnacle of his speech comes with the visceral experience in Warsaw in 1949, which he contrasts with his experiences of anti-Black violence in the United States:

I have seen something of a human upheaval in this world: the scream and shots of a race riot in Atlanta; the marching of the Ku Klux Klan; the threat of courts and police; the neglect and destruction of human habitation; but nothing in my wildest imagination was equal to what I saw in Warsaw in 1949. I would have said before seeing it that it was impossible for a civilized nation with deep religious convictions and outstanding religious institutions; with literature and art; to treat fellow human beings as Warsaw had been treated. There had been complete, planned, and utter destruction. Some streets had been so obliterated that only by using photographs of the past could they tell where the street was. And no one mentioned the total of the dead, the sum of destruction, the story of crippled and insane, the widows and orphans. (Du Bois, 1952: 14)

Du Bois’ Black experience narrative is defined by extreme violence and suffering, so his audience can easily make the connection to anti-Blackness and anti-Semitism. To stir the audience’s imagination, he names some of the major examples of anti-Black oppression in US history, from police brutality to the Ku Klux Klan. In a poetic turn of phrasing, he uses this racial nightmare to emphasize the plight of the Jewish diaspora in Warsaw. The pogroms and systemic anti-Semitism in the region seem to hint that it is merely a microcosm of the status of Jewish people in Europe, but Du Bois presents it as global systemic oppression. Du Bois’ speech to a predominantly Jewish audience is crafted carefully and strategically to position himself as a firsthand witness of Jewish suffering as well as an informed, if not irreplaceable, ally.

Besides bearing invaluable witness to the depths of the Jewish experience and asserting himself as an ally, the speech is significant in that Du Bois uses it to re-articulate his understanding of race:

The result of these three visits, and particularly of my view of the Warsaw ghetto, was not so much clearer understanding of the Jewish problem in the world as it was a real and more complete understanding of the Negro problem. In the first place, the problem of slavery, emancipation, and caste in the United States was no longer in my mind a separate and unique thing as I had so long conceived it. It was not even solely a matter of color and physical and racial characteristics, which was particularly a hard thing for me to learn since for a lifetime the color line had been a real and efficient cause of misery. It was not merely a matter of religion. I had seen religions of many kinds—I had sat in the Shinto temples of Japan, in the Baptist churches of Georgia, in the Catholic cathedral of Cologne, and Westminster Abbey. No, the race problem in which I was interested cut across lines of color and physique and belief and status and was a matter of cultural patterns, perverted teaching, and human hate and prejudice, which reached all sorts of people and caused endless evil to all men. (Du Bois, 1952: 15)

Du Bois’ new framework for understanding anti-Black racism transcends race as a concept rooted in phenotype or ‘color and physique’ to one that cuts across race in different cultural settings as ethnic and religious discrimination. This new articulation creates a strong connection between racism and anti-Semitism but also creates a new and important dimension to the ‘Negro problem’ which postulates that Black and Jewish liberation are intertwined. This new frame is important for understanding Du Bois’ support for the Zionist movement, which he saw as a new avenue for calling attention to systemic global injustice and oppression. Du Bois was not alone in his stance, viewing Pan-Africanism, anti-racism, and freedom as intertwined with the dreams of a Jewish republic. His vision is a bright example of where Black radical thought was in relationship to Zionism at the time of the creation of Israel. Paul Robeson famously proclaimed that he would sacrifice his life fighting for the Israeli army. James Baldwin was dreaming of escaping American racism in Israel working on a kibbutz. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke favorably of the Jewish republic. Stokely Carmichael’s first march in New York City was a march in celebration of the creation of Israel. These intellectuals eventually changed their opinion of the country, its nature, and the power dynamic it embodied at various times of their careers. W.E.B. Du Bois changed his outlook earlier than the aforementioned icons. More importantly, there are parallels between how Du Bois and other Pan-Africanists, Black nationalists, and Black radicals arrived at re-envisioning Israel. A major element of this equation is Gamal Abdel Nasser and his rise to power in Egypt.

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Nasser’s impact on Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, anti-colonialism, and the Third World Movement cannot be overestimated. He supported anti-colonial wars in Africa and the Middle East financially, militarily, and politically as well as helped organize and attended the Bandung conference of 1955. This conference, held in Bandung, Indonesia, stirred the imaginations of Black radicals such as Richard Wright, who attended the conference, and of course, Du Bois himself, who was denied the privilege of attending by the US government. Egypt is influential in several ways: first, as a location of Pan-African liberation movements’ iconography, mythology, and pride, and second as an epicenter of Black radicalism. The latter phenomenon is a direct result of Nasser’s legacy, who offered political and financial assistance to Pan-African and Pan-Arab struggles and orchestrated connections between like-minded world figures.

It was Malcolm X (who started his political career as a Nation of Islam member), not Du Bois, who recognized the power and revolutionary potential of Nasser’s Pan-African and Pan-Arab leadership at its very early stage to center him on the map of Black radical and internationalist geography. But the event that truly centered Nasser as a global anti-colonial leader and voice of the oppressed was the Suez Canal crisis of 1956, when Israel, the United Kingdom, and France attempted to seize the canal. It was during this crisis that Du Bois proclaimed his admiration for Nasser, ushering in a new era of Black radical ideas, deeply impacted by Nasserism.

In ‘Islamism and Its African American Muslim Critics’, Edward Curtis (2009) highlights the importance of Nasser, who ‘. . . emerged as a powerful symbol of victory in this third-world struggle against imperialism and inspired admiration among many African Americans’ (p. 51). Focusing on the Nation of Islam, Curtis carefully examines the burgeoning influence of Nasser, highlighting the Egyptian leader as a key figure who shaped Black Muslim political imagination and discourse in the mid-20th century. Nasser’s impact on Black political thought was cemented during his visit to Harlem, New York, in the 1960s and his relationships with Elijah Muhammad (leader of the Nation of Islam) and Malcolm X. The Nation of Islam members hung Abdel Nasser’s picture in their homes affirming his global leadership for Black liberation (Curtis, 2009: 51).

Nasser and Nasserism also influenced the radical rhetoric of the Black Power Movement, especially organizations such as the iconic Black Panther Party and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Originally a Civil Rights Movement organization, SNCC made the transition to a Black Power group after the publication of the (in)famous 1967 Newsletter article ‘Third World Round-Up: The Palestine Problem: Test Your Knowledge’. In addition to the article critiquing Israel and its connections to the South African apartheid, it featured a cartoon with Gamal Abdel Nasser (Fischbach, 2018). The aftermath of the pro-Palestinian newsletter created an additional spark for the radicalization of Black students beyond SNCC membership. The backlash against the newsletter motivated Black radicals to think about and formulate a more radical political identity that ushered in the era of Black Power.

Suez

Although it is often overlooked and downplayed, Du Bois originally introduced Nasser’s ideologies to Black America in ways that intertwined with Black liberation. It was in Du Bois’ poetry where syncretism, radical thought, and activism occurred. Poetry was an important tool with which Du Bois crafted, articulated, and perfected his Pan-African ideas. His poem ‘Suez’ in Mainstream in 1956 was understandably an important landmark in the history of his relationship with Zionism, Israel, and their connection to his understanding of racism and global oppression.

There is a struggle between two different iconographies and visions of Egypt, one rooted in Afrocentrism and Pan-Africanism and one rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition. The latter is defined by the Biblical stories of Exodus and Jewish suffering under Pharaoh that captivated the imaginations of Black Americans. Pharaoh, representing the slave master, the Klansman, and the racist politician, stirred the imaginations of Black people seeking to free themselves from oppression since their enslavement. This appeal is reflected in volumes of Black art and resistance culture: from Black spirituals to Martin Luther King’s speeches. Du Bois, however, presents a different vision of Egypt, embodied in Nasser. ‘Young Israel’, newly created only 8 years prior, cannot justify its military involvement in the Suez crisis. He refuses to frame Israel’s actions as a righteous battle for justice and freedom against their oppressor. He positions Nasser as the figure bearing the truth about the neo-colonial nature of the conflict.

The poem becomes a terrifying prophecy, predicting the return of the British and French colonial rule in Egypt, and the volatile senseless violence Western domination brings to the region.

Another version of the poem included the line ‘Negro’s land’ rather than ‘the dark man’s land’. Arguably, Du Bois made the change to ‘dark man’ to incorporate the Arab populations in Egypt and Nassir’s Arab identity itself. Du Bois’ poem makes it very clear that Israel’s alliance with Western colonial powers, France and Britain, is problematic.

At the end of the poem, Du Bois engages Nasser again to accentuate the nature and source of his power and significance. He creates a juxtaposition between the West or the ‘white world’, and Abdel Nasser, who in turn represents the power and anger of Black people and the Black world. Arguably, Israel, the ally of the Western powers and neo-colonialism, also belongs to the ‘white world’ and is thus a nemesis to Abdul Nasser and oppressed ‘dark’ peoples all over the world.

Conclusion

Du Bois and his vision and understanding of the dimensions of this discourse are invaluable because it is a microcosm of Black thought on the matter going back to the mid-late 19th century. As this article demonstrates, prominent Black nationalists of that era, such as Edward Wilmot Blyden and Martin Delany, saw Zionism as an example for growing their own successful immigration movement. Their writings on the matter informed Du Bois’ understanding of the movement, which helped shape his Pan-African thought to align with Zionism to seek allyship among the global Jewish diaspora. To an extent, the parallels between Zionism, Pan-Africanism, and Black nationalism were strengthened by Black Orientalism and Islamophobia, as discussed above. The major landmark that transformed Du Bois’ thinking, thus shifting Black discourse on Zionism, was the Suez Canal crisis of 1956 and the rise of Gamal Abdel Nasser as a Pan-African symbol, a power to resist Western neo-colonial domination and ensure the liberation of the global Black diaspora.

Du Bois’ understanding of Israel articulated in his poem ‘Suez’ became the pillar of Black anti-Zionist discourse popularized and maintained by radicals such as Malcolm X and the Black Power Movement. This in turn inspired Black feminists such as Alice Walker and June Jordan to continue to support the Palestinians in the 1980s and 1990s and rise again in the words and manifestos of the Black Lives Matter movement today. Despite this, the connections between Black America and Palestine/Israel remain an underexamined topic. More research about Black discourse on Zionism and Palestine before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 is needed for a better understanding of how sociopolitical and cultural contexts influence its articulation over time.