As support for Israel declines precipitously in the US, hundreds of African-American and African pastors and Christian leaders are arriving in Israel this week for a mission inspired by the slain US civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.
King planned to bring thousands of pilgrims to Israel and Jordan in 1967, but that trip was postponed because of the Six Day War and the political implications of such a trip. He said he would look into coming the next year, but was assassinated in April 1968.
“There were no mass pilgrimages” back then, says Pastor Dumisani Washington, a pro-Israel activist, at a press conference in Jerusalem. “We as Black Americans recognize that Black Americans were about to start something that no one else was doing.”
The “Unfinished Business Pilgrimage” will expand to thousands of participants next year, say organizers, to mark 60 years since King’s planned visit.
“We felt a burden in our heart,” Washington continues. “We see the rising antisemitism on the right and on the left.”
There is a “mountain of support rising from the Black church,” says Pastor Michael A. Stevens, Sr.
The leaders of the pilgrimage present gifts to victims of the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, massacre, including freed hostage Elkana Bohbot; Hila Abir, whose brother Lotan was murdered at the Nova music festival; and Daniel Lischinsky, whose son Yaron was murdered alongside his fiancée Sarah Milgrim at an Israeli embassy event in Washington, DC.
Ther rest of the participants arrive tomorrow, and will visit biblical sites across the country, as well as the site of the Nova massacre.
Steven says that Jewish and Black Americans had a tradition of coming together to “establish what was right, and to set the tone for the nation and for the world.”
“If anyone should stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters, it ought to be African-Americans, it ought to be Africans,” he continues.
Though rates of antisemitism have risen among people of color, Stevens tells The Times of Israel, “I still think we are the lowest-hanging fruit to educate and to learn.” He says, “The African-American Church is still the most influential institution in all of America, in fact, at least in the Black community.”
Stevens says one of the objectives of the mission is to spread awareness that “we cannot have antisemitism in our culture, period.”
At the same time, he says that Israel could improve its approach to Black America: “I believe Israel could be more attentive to the fact that a lot of the loss of lives that we see looks like us. Whether it’s in Gaza, whether it’s Ethiopians and racism.”
Reverend Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis. Jr. is on this delegation representing the Black Press of America and Spill the Honey as a present-day fulfillment of the dream and prior plan of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr in 1967 to lead a 5000 Black Clergy Pilgrimage to Israel.
