“. . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely ‘anti-Zionist.’ And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God’s green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews–this is God’s own truth.

“Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so.

“Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.

http://web.archive.org/web/20031211052106/http://www.mideasttruth.com/mlk.html – August 1967

About seven additional paragraphs follow from the three quoted here.

The hitch?

The body’s a hoax, but not completely inauthentic:

However, because we do not ordinarily rely on anyone else’s research, we decided to double-check, by searching back issues of Saturday Review (Rabbi Shneier’s book had referenced the “letter” as being published in the August 1967 Saturday Review). We found no such letter in any of the August issues, nor do the page and volume numbers cited conform to those actually used by that publication. CAMERA also checked with Boston University, where Dr. King’s work is archived. The archivists, too, were unable to locate any such letter. We can only conclude that no such letter was written by Dr. King . . . Since the message of the letter (anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism) was one Martin Luther King, Jr., had indeed articulated, we can understand why the King family and the ADL did not feel the need to verify the “Letter to an anti-Zionist friend.” This episode is a reminder of the importance of verifying the authenticity and accuracy of sources, even when they appear to be solid.

http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=369&x_context=8 – 1/22/2002.

😦

The author of this blog apologizes for slingin’ it a little too fast.

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