(Two quotes I received in an email from Henry Benjamin Winkler, who publishes an email-newsletter titled “The Hebrew Wink”.)
Dr. King on Israel’s Security:
10 days before his assassination, at the annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly [*], Dr. King said:
“The response of some of the so-called young militants does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color-consumed and they see a kind of mystique in blackness or in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course…. Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect her right to exist, its territorial integrity and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.”
Source: I. L. Kenen, Israel’s Defense Line, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY: 1981, p. 266 [1]
Dr. King on Anti-Zionism:
When approached by a student who attacked Zionism, Dr. King responded: “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”
Source: Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools—The Left, the Jews and Israel,” Encounter, (December 1969), p. 24 [2]
[personal note: I like the quote; not the title of the article it comes from]
Related posts:
https://rabbielimallon.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/5-16-11-rabbis-and-freedom-riders/
and
https://rabbielimallon.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/2-24-11-jewish-social-conscience/
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[*] The Rabbinical Assembly is the membership organization for rabbis associated with the Conservative/Masorti branch of Judaism.
[1] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/kingsecurity.html
[2] http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Quote/king.html
In all fairness, after posting the above quotations, a friend sent me a link to an article that questions the validity of the quotes and their sources. For those who want to examine it:
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-apologists-and-martin-luther-king-jr-hoax/4955
My own response to this was that while I respected the reasoning involved, I didn’t see where the authors applied the same rigor to questioning the validity of statements made against Israel as they did to statements made in Israel’s favor.
Another article about MLK and Israel from “Jewish Ideas Daily”:
http://www.jidaily.com/91ec3?utm_source=Jewish+Ideas+Daily+Insider&utm_campaign=414f4cf084-Insider&utm_medium=email
Rabbi Eli Mallon, M.Ed., LCSW 
4 comments
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01/23/2013 at 1:03 pm
Philip Bentley
Dr. King not only supported Israel but Soviet Jewry. Abraham Joshua Heschel was his close friend. For more see Susannah Heschel’s article at http://peaceworkmagazine.info/node/393
01/23/2013 at 1:05 pm
rabbielimallon
Thanks for this information. There seems to be great interest — and some debate — about what Dr. King’s feelings and relationship with the Jewish community and Israel were. I never felt or heard of any negative aspects of it, but it’s still good to gather facts. Thanks again.
01/25/2013 at 4:45 pm
rabbielimallon
(Received from Rabbi Charles P. Rabinowitz via LinkedIn group, “The Rabbis’ Network”): Dr. King was a friend of my father’s. Dad always said that he was a lifelong friend of the Jews, and so was his father (Rev. Martin Luther King, Sr.).
01/24/2013 at 5:03 pm
Ben Winkler, Editor The Hebrew Wink
In response to the complaint of your correspondent who cited Electronic Intifada as a rebuttal to The Hebrew Wink’s quotes of Dr. Martin Luther King, let’s put this in context.
Martin Luther King, Jr. advocated and used non-violence. Intifada, by definition and practice, uses violence.
In the first intifada (of 1987) 16 Israeli civilians and 11 soldiers were killed by Palestinian Arabs; more than 1,400 Israeli civilians and 1,700 Israeli soldiers were injured. Approximately 1,100 Palestinians were killed. (see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/intifada.html.)
Denial of civil rights and segregation of African Americans were injustices. On the other hand, Jews or Arabs would claim injustice if the other side gains sovereignty over the Jewish homeland. Dr. King came down squarely on the side of the Jews. Neither Electronic Intifada, nor your correspondent, nor anyone I can recall has ever cited Dr. King favoring the Arabs in this conflict.
I put in The Hebrew Wink the two quotes from Dr. King because I was able to cite the sources. I had known about inaccuracies concerning quotes and sources attributed to Dr. King, so it was important that readers could go to these sources.
Let’s look at Electronic Intifada’s headline: “Israel’s apologists and the Martin Luther King Jr. hoax”, dated January 18, 2004. The implication is that either a letter written by Dr. King with these quotes is a hoax, or the quotes themselves are hoaxes, and that “Israel’s apologists” are the hoaxers. But, almost 2 years earlier than the Electronic Intifada article, The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) published an article, ‘Hoax: Martin Luther King’s “Letter to an anti-Zionist Friend.”‘ (see: http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=370&x_context=7). Why would an Israel “apologist” expose a letter containing Dr. King’s favorable view of Israel and Jews as a hoax? Yet, there is no evidence that the quotes themselves are hoaxes.
The first point made in the Electronic Intifada article is that, since Dr. King was not an “informed commentator on Middle Eastern affairs or on the ideological facets of Zionism,” either he did not say or he should not have said anything about the Middle East. It doesn’t take long for one perusing Electronic Intifada to find a number of contributors who are not “authorities” and are not “informed commentators” giving commentary.
But, neither I nor any of Dr. King’s supporters claim that he was “an authority” in Middle East affairs. I cited Dr. King because he is recognized as a moralist. And Dr. King was not “uninformed.”
The first quote in our Hebrew Wink article was an address to the Rabbinical Assembly. Electronic Intifada doesn’t dispute this, only disparages it.
The 2nd quote (in the Hebrew Wink article) is treated by Electronic Intifada as a hoax, because it was not found in published form, as early citings of it claimed. But I never claimed it was published. The citing I gave claims it was spoken — and spoken in response to a detractor of Zionism. Electronic Intifada spent a considerable amount of space repeating CAMERA’s refutation of a hoax letter.
That Dr. King’s defense of Zionism was heard, cited, and/or endorsed by John Lewis, Seymour Martin Lipset, and the King family gives credibility to the contemporary claim that he said this. Where is Electronic Intifada’s (or your correspondence’s) evidence that Dr. King did not speak these words?
Electronic Intifada (and by implication your correspondent who cites them), claims a search for accuracy, but at every turn disparages Dr. King and his defense of Zionism, while they themselves expose their moral inferiority by naming this website after a lethal form of violence.
Martin Luther King, Jr. used non-violence to fight for the unjustly underprivileged, not the morally underprivileged.
Thank you, Rabbi Eli, for bringing this to our attention.