Blacks and Jews: From Afro-Zionism to Anti-Zionism

By ERIC J. SUNDQUIST

In a culture steeped in ethnic friction and contested identities, the idea that the relationship between African-Americans and Jews was once thought special — indeed, critical to the cause of civil rights — seems strange. By the 1990s the belief of earlier Jewish and black leaders that they were each other's strongest allies had long since bred charges of exploitation and betrayal. Animosity between the two groups had become so normal that it was hardly a surprise when