A growing number of college students nationwide are staging encampments to protest their universities’ investments in Israeli entities in light of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has reportedly killed more than 34,000 Palestinians.

The protests have sparked mass arrests and suspensions, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students—including some from Barnard, the all-women’s college located across the street from Columbia’s campus, which has a partnership with the university—were arrested last week after occupying the upper Manhattan campus.

Central to protesters’ demands are for the universities to divest from companies that fund corporations closely connected to Israel’s military operations and for administrators to allow pro-Palestinian protesters to demonstrate without threats of disciplinary action.

Many of the protests have sprung up the past few days after the groups National Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestinian Youth Movement put out a call this weekend “to take back the university and force the administration to divest, for the people of Gaza.”

The encampments appear to be largely peaceful, with demonstrators seen attending teach-ins and chanting in solidarity. But some participants have nonetheless faced serious encounters with law enforcement, including the arrest of more than 40 students at Yale this morning, a university spokesperson confirmed to Mother Jones.

Here’s a running list of where we have seen students setting up encampments across the country in addition to Columbia and their demands.

New York University

A few miles south of Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, students at New York University began camping outside the university’s Stern School of Business at 6 a.m. on Monday, according to the NYU Palestine Solidarity Coalition. The group is demanding NYU “divest from all corporations aiding in the genocide and fear tactics generating manufactured consent in academic spheres,” shut down its Tel Aviv campus, and remove the New York Police Department from the New York City campus. 

On Monday night, the NYPD arrested 120 participants at the NYU encampment after a letter from university officials requested police “clear the area and…take action to remove the protesters.” A police spokesperson told Mother Jones on Tuesday that 116 of those arrested were released with summonses for trespassing; another four face charges of resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration and were also released.

Video of the plaza posted to social media on Tuesday morning showed the plaza blocked off with barriers. 

More arrests as police in riot gear move into the plaza. pic.twitter.com/mYYvh1hBWk

— Gwynne Hogan (@GwynneFitz) April 23, 2024

NYU Spokesperson John Beckman said in a statement Monday night that while officials initially let the encampment stand, aiming to “avoid any escalation or violence,” in the early afternoon they “witnessed disorderly, disruptive, and antagonizing behavior that has interfered with the safety and security of our community,” which they attributed to protesters who they believe were not affiliated with NYU. Beckman said that after protesters refused to leave and officials learned of “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents,” administrators contacted the NYPD. But on Tuesday, professors and students who were at the Monday protest told Mother Jones NYU’s characterization of the protest was not accurate, alleging that it was mostly peaceful and that officials lied to justify bringing in police.

The New School

Less than a mile from NYU’s campus, students at the New School set up an encampment on Sunday, when the school was hosting an event for newly admitted students, according to an Instagram post from the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The group is demanding divestment from corporations involved in Israel’s war on Gaza, protection from retaliation for pro-Palestinian protesters, and “a full academic boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions.” In a statement Sunday, the New School called the encampment “unauthorized.” The university’s president announced an official would meet with students on Monday to discuss “divesting from certain holdings within the university’s endowment” and that the Board of Trustees would meet with students “in the near future to consider the students’ request for financial transparency of the university’s investments.” A New School spokesperson didn’t respond to additional questions. On Tuesday, student organizers said they were no longer negotiating with administrators. 

Emerson College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Tufts University

In Boston, students at Emerson College, MIT, and Tufts set up encampments on Sunday night, the Boston Globe reported. The groups are demanding the schools disclose and divest from investments in Israel, stop punishing student organizers, and support a ceasefire in Palestine. “We were definitely inspired by what’s going on at Columbia,” Owen Buxton, an Emerson College student, told the Globe. “They put out the call for universities across the country, and we answered.” An Emerson spokesperson told Mother Jones that “a small number of protesters actually stayed in the alley [overnight], much fewer than the number when the protest was initiated.” A spokesperson for Tufts said that, as of early Monday afternoon, there were about a half-dozen tents set up and a similar number of protesters, and that classes were proceeding as usual. “Regarding the students’ demands, our position on this has been clear and consistent for several years: We do not support the BDS movement,” added Patrick Collins, Tufts’ executive director of media relations. Representatives for MIT and the Boston Police Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Yale University

At Yale, police arrested more than 40 student protesters early Monday morning, according to the student groups behind the encampment set up since Friday. By Sunday night, more than 250 protesters were occupying 40 tents in front of the main library, according to the Yale Daily News, the student-run newspaper. Student organizers compared today’s arrests to the 1986 arrests of more than 70 Yale students who protested South African apartheid. In an email to students Sunday, Yale University President Peter Salovey said that while most protesters were peaceful, university police were also investigating reports of threats and harassment. More than 2,300 Yale alumni have also signed a letter demanding divestment as of Wednesday morning. A Yale spokesperson told Mother Jones on Monday that university officials spent “spent several hours in discussion with student protestors yesterday,” adding that both the university and police had warned protesters “numerous times” that they faced the possibility of arrest.

BREAKING: Organizers of the Yale divestment encampment have been informed that those at the encampment can expect arrest, likely sometime between now and early morning.

Repeat: ARRESTS ARE EXPECTED AT YALE.

The crowd of hundred of students is sitting in a circle and singing. pic.twitter.com/yjwdxi0hGF

— Thomas Birmingham (@thomasbirm) April 22, 2024

The University of Michigan

About 40 students set up an encampment at the University of Michigan on Monday morning, demanding divestment from Israeli entities, according to the student-run newspaper The Michigan Daily. In a press release, the student protesters said the university invests more than $6 million in Israeli companies and military contractors. 

A university spokesperson told Mother Jones Monday night that officials “are carefully monitoring the situation and remain prepared to appropriately address any harassment or threats against any member of our community.” The spokesperson also pointed to the school’s investment policy, which dates back to 2005 and stipulates that the school’s endowment must be shielded “from political pressures.” Instead, “our investment decisions [are based] solely on financial factors such as risk and return,” the policy states. At a Board of Regents meeting last month, officials affirmed that position, adding that they “are not moving to make any divestment of any kind.” The board also said that “the endowment has no direct investment in any Israeli company,” and that “less than 1/10 of one percent of the endowment is invested indirectly in such companies.”

Vanderbilt University

Students at Vanderbilt University have been occupying parts of the campus lawn since March 26, according to the Vanderbilt Divest Coalition. The group is demanding increased transparency about the university’s investments, for school officials to drop charges and disciplinary actions against students who have protested in support of Palestine, and the reinstatement of a canceled referendum concerning recommendations made by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, according to the student-run newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler. A university spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to questions.

California State Polytechnic University

Protesters barricaded themselves inside an academic building on the campus of Cal Poly Humboldt on Monday, prompting a response from local police and university police. “Humboldt for Palestine” claimed several students were arrested.

University of California, Berkeley 

On Monday, students launched a “Free Palestine Camp,” demanding a ceasefire, divestment of the university’s holdings from corporations that support Israel’s war on Gaza, the establishment of a Palestinian Studies Program at the university, and the end of academic collaborations with Israeli universities, including the school’s summer internship program in Israel. The student newspaper, The Daily Californian, reports that the encampment is the first at a UC campus and that a dozen tents were set up Monday, with plans for more. “Just like they did at Columbia, we will continue to be here,” Malak Afaneh, co-president of Law Students for Justice in Palestine, told the student paper. “You can arrest us, you can expel us, you can suspend us, but we will continue to be here.”

A Berkeley spokesperson told Mother Jones on Tuesday morning the university is “prioritizing students’ academic interests” and “will take the steps necessary to ensure the protest does not disrupt the university’s operations.” It added that “there are no plans to change the university’s investment policies and practices.”

University of Minnesota 

Early Tuesday morning, students set up an encampment. The group is demanding the university: divest from Israeli weapons companies and ban them from recruiting and hosting workshops on campus; boycott Israeli institutions that have supported the war; disclose the university’s investments; release a statement in support of the university’s Palestinian students; and provide “amnesty for all students, staff, and faculty disciplined or fired in the movement for Palestinian liberation.”

At 6:30 a.m., police arrested nine students, according to the organizers. Protesters also posted a video showing police removing signs and chairs from the site. A university spokesperson told Mother Jones confirmed the nine participants were arrested without incident; student organizers later said they were released. 

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A post shared by UMN DIVEST Coalition (@divestumn)

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Students set up an encampment on Monday, according to a video posted on social media by organizers. The student newspaper, Niner Times, reports that protesters removed their tents Monday night at the direction of school security officials, but that they plan to continue camping out until the Board of Trustees meeting on April 25. A photo published by the paper shows a poster listing protesters demands: that the university disclose the extent of its investments in Israel and divest from them; and that the university acknowledge “the displacement and genocide of the Palestinian people.” Earlier this month, the student paper reported that the administration denounced a resolution passed by the Student Government Association and supported by more than 700 people demanding the university divest funds from Israel. The administration pointed to a law passed last year requiring that University of North Carolina’s constituent schools “remain neutral, as an institution, on the political controversies of the day.” A spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions Tuesday morning.

Brown University 

Students set up an encampment early Wednesday morning, organizers said in an Instagram post. They’re demanding the university divest its financial holdings and “from all companies profiting from the genocide in Gaza and the broader Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory,” as well as dropped charges for 41 students who were arrested during a December sit-in. A university spokesperson said the encampment violates university police and participants “have been informed they will face conduct proceedings,” but added that they have not seen any incidents of “violence, harassment and intimidation.” 

University of Pittsburgh

On Tuesday, students protesters started their encampment, and said they plan to stay put until Friday. Protesters held a Passover Seder at the encampment Tuesday night, according to the student newspaper, The Pitt News, which reported that the protesters are also calling for divestment. Police have been at the scene and moved the encampment from one location to another on campus, but did not make any arrests, the paper reported. A university spokesperson could not immediately be reached Wednesday morning. 

A group of 30 students hold a Passover Seder within the pro-Palestine encampment on Tuesday evening. pic.twitter.com/49E537z2L2

— The Pitt News (@ThePittNews) April 24, 2024

University of Rochester 

Students at the upstate New York school set up tents on their quad on Tuesday, according to organizers. They are demanding the university issue a statement in support of a permanent ceasefire and an “end all academic ties to Israel.” On Wednesday, organizers said there were more than 60 students participating and that university officials had threatened to clamp down on protests. A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday.

University of Southern California 

Early Wednesday morning, students set up their encampment in the middle of the Los Angeles campus. Organizers say they want the university to enact a “complete academic boycott of Israel”; call for a ceasefire; provide amnesty to students, faculty and staff who have been disciplined for pro-Palestinian activism; end policing on campus; and “cease expansion” of the campus and “provide reparations, and support housing for low-income” residents around USC’s campus. Protesters said university officials ordered campus police to remove signs hanging from trees on Wednesday morning. A university representative did not immediately respond to questions.The school has already been embroiled in controversy after officials canceled a commencement speech earlier this month, which critics—including the speaker—attributed to Islamophobia. University officials said the decision was about safety and said “this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech.”

This is a developing story. Check back for updates. If you know of an encampment or college protest we missed—email me and let me know: jmcshane@motherjones.com.

The first day of the first criminal trial of a former US president. Can it get more extraordinary than that? “He keeps setting new Guinness Records in terms of unprecedented history,” Mother Jones’ own David Corn explained in a new video outside a Manhattan courtroom where Donald Trump’s trial kicked off this morning.

Which case is this again? Good question. This one alleges that Trump falsified business records related to the hush-money scandal involving Stormy Daniels. As David explained in a curtain-raiser, the trial, though salacious in nature, is a very fitting symbol for Trump’s political rise and should be taken seriously.

“He is a creature of this trashy, celebrity, tabloid culture,” Corn says. “And that’s all going to be on display here in the next couple of weeks.”

Trump pleaded not guilty to the 34 felony counts last month. Less than a day before Monday’s trial was set to begin, the former president attacked the presiding judge again on his social media platform, Truth Social, calling today’s proceedings a “Fake Biden Trial.” As my colleague Julianne McShane recounted, Judge Juan Merchan already hit Trump with a gag order for similar statements about potential trial witnesses last month. The gag order was then extended in April.

With four indictments, 88 counts, and a seemingly endless stream of social media posts, it might be easy to write off the Stormy Daniels trial as celebrity fodder. But don’t forget this is truly—and you’ll hear this word a lot—unprecedented.

But the crisis facing American democracy is much older and deeper than Trump and it is, indeed, a relic of a very different time in US history.

In a new video companion for Mother Jones, based on my forthcoming book Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It, digital producer Sam Van Pykeren explores how the US political system was created to restrain democracy, not protect it. The founders essentially placed a ticking time bomb at the heart of our political system—and this could be the year it explodes.

As I explain in my book, it all dates back to the birth of American democracy, when the Founding Fathers created political institutions within a system that concentrated power in the hands of an elite, propertied, white male minority. More than 200 years later, the series of compromises the founders made have increasingly vested the majority of political power in the hands of a minority of the population—a reactionary conservative white minority that is seeking to entrench and hold onto power through a wide variety of anti-democratic means.

You can pre-order Minority Rule here, and find the exclusive Mother Jones excerpt here.

Top image: Mother Jones illustration; Joshua Sukoff/Unsplash; Ian Hutchinson/Unsplash; Roya Ann Miller/Unsplash

One such choice is the cover of the Beatles’ iconic song “Blackbird”, from the White Album, as the record’s second track. Trust Beyoncé to reissue a song so redolent with Black history: The song was written about the Black Liberation struggle of the American civil rights movement. Watch:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“I was sitting around my acoustic guitar, and I’d heard about the civil rights troubles that were happening in the sixties in Alabama, Mississippi, Little Rock in particular,” McCartney told GQ in 2018. “And I just thought it’d be really good if I could write something that, if it ever reached any of the people going through those problems, it might kind of give them a little bit of hope.” The name, “Blackbird”, was a play on British slang, “bird” meaning “girl.”

In particular, McCartney was inspired by the Little Rock Nine, a group of Black students who enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957, after Brown v. The Board of Education heralded the start of school desegregation. On the eve of the teenagers’ first day of school, the Arkansas governor, Orval Faubus, sent in the state’s national guard to stop them, sparking a standoff and legal battle that lasted weeks. Eventually President Eisenhower federalized the National Guard and sent troops to protect the teenagers.

Incredible to meet two of the Little Rock Nine–pioneers of the civil rights movement and inspiration for Blackbird. pic.twitter.com/QrnOQnqrFX

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) May 1, 2016

Now, Beyoncé has made me think about the incredibly brave little Black girls desegregating the American South: Ruby Bridges, Elizabeth Eckford, and many, many others, who faced hell. That’s who this song was written for, which adds even more significance to Beyoncé’s choice to feature the voices of four Black women on her version of this song—Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts. It’s kind of perfect.

Let’s take a trip back, shall we?

This week, four years ago, Trump was in the throes of dangerous denial as his extravagant mishandling of the COVID crisis plunged the nation into almost hourly panic attacks. There were already about 18,000 reported cases in the United States, and more than 260 deaths.

Trigger warning on this one: On March 21, 2020, Trump tweeted, “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” which was as untrue then as it is now. Two days later—four years ago today, on Day 63 of the crisis—it was reported that an Arizona man died after intentionally ingesting chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank cleaner. Trump told a press briefing, “Parts of our country are very lightly affected.” Just a few days later, the country he ran, and wants to run again, reported more coronavirus cases than any other country.

These are just a handful of the nightmarish details drawn from March 2020, four years ago. The president’s vanity and lack of preparedness in those first 100 days of the pandemic allowed the virus to metastasize into the supersized public health crisis he’s now asking voters to forget. This period was also a showcase of his very worst traits in office: his reliance on spin and bluster, his aversion to taking responsibility (“No, I don’t take responsibility at all,” he said on March 13, 2020), and his magical thinking. He indulged in desperate blame shifting, bunk science, and mixed messaging—the antithesis of good public health leadership.

At the time, Mother Jones took on the enormous reporting task of meticulously cataloguing, sometimes hour by hour, the missteps, miscalculations, and cruelties of Trump’s response to the disaster unfolding on his watch. The resulting timeline makes for enraging reading, to say the least.

I also started to compile video clips of the absurdities and outrages. And the resulting video is both a time capsule of horrors and a teleporter for any voter who might be doubting whether they are better off than they were four years ago this month.

“We are looking at Nazism part two,” said NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson, in an exclusive interview with Mother Jones’ Garrison Hayes last Thursday. “We need to be very careful.”

Watch the video excerpt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As President Biden was preparing for his State of the Union address last week to Congress, the NAACP unveiled a first-of-its-kind “Black Policy Agenda,” and invited Garrison to sit down with Johnson at the organization’s Washington, DC, headquarters for a wide-ranging discussion. The plan demands Congress and the Biden administration combat widespread attempts to restrict voting rights, while safeguarding labor rights, and pushing for criminal justice reform.

When asked by Garrison how the NAACP plans to tackle voter apathy, Johnson lamented the generally low turnout in American elections and emphasized the importance of intensifying efforts to mobilize voters. “We call [it] a high turnout election when about 60 percent of the eligible voters participate.” Johnson said. “We have a volunteer recruitment program. Our target is to recruit 300,000 volunteers to talk to their neighbor. They say, ‘Hey, are you ready to vote?'”

He added: “Our goal is to try to educate voters and get them to the polls, not tell them how to vote but get them there.”

But Johnson made it clear that he believes Americans are staring down the threat of authoritarianism if one side—that is, Trump’s—wins.

In the interview, Johnson called Trump “an individual that opens the door of racism.” As a result of his presidency, Johnson argued, “white supremacy has emboldened itself, because they see a leader that would say, ‘it’s okay to attack people.'” He warned that Trump, along with unregulated social media platforms, made it easy for extremist movements to “recruit, radicalize, and then people carry out harm to others.”

“That’s fascism,” he said. “It’s not about candidate A versus candidate B. It’s not about this political party versus that political party. It’s about whether or not we have a democracy or we have fascism. Period. Full stop.”

We’ll be releasing more clips from Garrison’s longer interview later this week.

In a speech at the party’s spring meeting, West Virginia Committeewoman Beth Bloch formally nominated Trump for the post, saying, “In a world where qualifications are often measured by titles and years of experience, we’re reminded of a powerful truth: God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called. Lara Trump is the embodiment of this truth.” Given her new job, and her recent CPAC speech, where she insisted that in the United States, people succeed on “merit and merit alone,” we thought it might be a good time to revisit Trump’s qualifications for the top RNC post.

 

 

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Lara Trump became a popular surrogate for candidate Trump during the 2016 campaign. In 2020, she helped conduct outreach to LGBT and other minority groups to try to counter the perception that the former president was hostile to them. Lara embraced the job, and the woman who once baked “boob” cakes now says her young children recite the Pledge of Allegiance before going to bed—with her encouragement, of course. Her elevation came after months of pressure from the MAGA grassroots for former Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to step down. The simmering discontent with McDaniel’s leadership over reports of the committee’s lavish spending and lackluster performance galvanized during a November debate when GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy called for her to resign. “We’ve become a party of losers at the end of the day,” Ramaswamy said. “Since Ronna McDaniel took over as chairwoman of the RNC in 2017, we have lost 2018, 2020, 2022, no red wave, that never came.”

Last month, former President Trump decided it was time for McDaniel to go. He announced his desire to put his co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, in charge of day-to-day operations at the RNC “so it will become a fighting machine for 2024.” And to replace McDaniel? He endorsed his own daughter-in-law. “Lara is an extremely talented communicator and is dedicated to all that MAGA stands for,” he said. “She has told me she wants to accept this challenge and would be GREAT!”

Duss contends that Biden is on the “wrong course” in Yemen. He was particularly unimpressed when Biden a few days ago acknowledged the US attacks were not stopping the Houthis but would continue. Duss told me:

I heard that answer, and it chilled me a bit. It’s kind of a similar approach Israel took to Gaza for years and years. They called it “mowing the lawn.” We know we’re not going to stop those rocket attacks. We’re going to maybe pause them. We’re going to degrade their abilities by bombing them every once in a while. But the problem just ultimately gets worse and worse. And at some point it explodes in ways you cannot predict.

Duss notes that the first step toward addressing the intensifying military conflict in the region—including this limited (for now) fighting in Yemen—is the obvious one: a ceasefire in Gaza.

See the rest of my chat with Duss here:

That’s one thing my colleague Dan Schulman explains in his new book, The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America. The book tells the Gilded Age saga of a collection of German-Jewish financial dynasties—including the families who founded Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers—who profoundly influenced the 20th century. At the heart of the story is Jacob Schiff, a renowned financier and philanthropist who rivaled J.P. Morgan as the leading investment banker of that era. Though Schiff is not well remembered today, his legacy can be found in many aspects of modern life, including in the thriving Jewish community that his philanthropy helped to nurture.

There was also a tragic aspect of the story of Schiff and his allies, who would become leading characters in antisemitic conspiracy theories that persist to this day.

I recently got to chat with Schulman about some of the ways Schiff’s legacy persists today, and he filled me in on something that I found particularly interesting: Henry Ford’s obsession with German-Jewish bankers, which contributed to the automaker’s methodical, years-long dissemination of antisemitic propaganda via his weekly newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. Over seven years, “this paper relentlessly attacked Jews—it blamed Jews not only for wars and financial panics but things like wrecking American baseball,” Schulman notes. Schiff and his partners in the investment bank of Kuhn Loeb were frequent targets.

Now, here’s where things take a turn. The Dearborn Independent collected its anti-Jewish writings into four volumes titled The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. Millions of copies were published throughout the world, including in Germany. And when a New York Times reporter visited an up-and-coming politician named Adolf Hitler in 1922, he noticed a portrait of Ford on the wall of Hitler’s office and a stack of copies of The International Jew. “Hitler and the Nazis were distributing millions of copies,” Schulman tells me. “In a very real way, Henry Ford was a Nazi muse.” It’s through the Indepedent‘s attacks on Schiff and other Jews that Ford not only helped to plant the seeds of modern antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power but also influenced Germany’s genocidal leader. With antisemitism once again surging, it’s more important than ever to understand the origins and history of this hatred and bigotry.

Schulman’s book is on physical and digital shelves and is the perfect story for our moment.

King’s statement that Israel is a beacon of democracy, which he repeated several times, including during a 1968 speech at the Rabbinical Assembly, ten days before he was assassinated, have been prominently discussed in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7. Just last week, actor Amy Schumer shared King’s 1967 rendition of that sentiment on her X account. “The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world” King says in the widely shared video.

Schumer received a swift rebuke from King’s daughter, Bernice, who tweeted that while her father was ardently against antisemitism, “I am certain he would call for Israel’s bombing of Palestinians to cease, for hostages to be released and for us to work for true peace, which includes justice.”

But let’s cut through the noise: We don’t have to imagine what King thought about Israel’s relationship with the Palestinian people. He spoke for himself. King was, indeed, clear in his defense of the Jewish homeland. But in addition to those oft-quoted positions, I found a transcript from a rare 1967 TV interview where his nuance and understanding of the complexity of the crisis was on full display, unflattened by social media one-upmanship.

Watch:

NEW video from @garrison_hayes: There's a dubious tradition of using MLK's words to justify anything. But we don't have to guess what he thought about the Israel-Palestine conflict. He can speak for himself: pic.twitter.com/zippJkS988

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 9, 2023

In the summer of 1967, King was planning a monumental trip to Israel, intending to preach at the Mount of Olives and pray with thousands in Jerusalem and Galilee. This would be his “Moses moment,” leading Black people to the Promised Land.

But just before his planned arrival, Israel launched the Six-Day War against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, gaining territory but killing thousands. Israel would lay claim to the entirety of Jerusalem and seize control of the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and the Sinai peninsula; eventually returning Sinai to Egypt after a peace treaty was signed in 1979. 

As Martin Kramer reveals in his book, The War on Error, this series of unfortunately-timed events would lead King to come under pressure to take a public stance on the Six-Day War; he would, on June 18, 1967.  On ABC Sunday’s “Issues and Answers”, King said it would “probably be necessary” for Israel to “give up” the territory it had “conquered” to allay “the bitterness of the Arabs.” Here’s the full quote:

… I think for the ultimate peace and security of the situation it will probably be necessary for Israel to give up this conquered territory because to hold on to it will only exacerbate the tensions and deepen the bitterness of the Arabs.

This powerful insight reveals King’s belief in what was key to achieving peace in the Middle East. While the enduring question of what King would think or say will continue to be the subject of present-day debates, in this instance, we can let the civil rights leader speak for himself.