‘Ali Belts Zionism’ — the story of Muhammad Ali’s support for the Palestinians
As with the ‘Santa Clausification’ of Martin Luther King over the years, so the Santa Clausification of Muhammad Ali has served to elide from his life and legacy, almost completely, the man’s radical consciousness and the positions he took based upon it.
We are all familiar, of course, with Ali’s stand in opposition to the US imperialist War in Vietnam, and of how he sacrificed the prime years of his boxing career in taking this stand. He became a worldwide symbol of defiance against the injustice perpetuated by his government abroad and a champion of the black liberation struggle at home.
In words that will ring powerfully forever, this is what he said at the time:
I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.
If I thought the war [in Vietnam] was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years!
Less known when it comes to Muhammad Ali is his stance in solidarity with the Palestinians throughout most of his adult life. Given the hiijacking of his legacy in the name of liberalism in the run-up to and in the wake of his passing back in 2016, this is no surprise. But given Israel’s prolonged slaughter of the Palestinians in our time, highlighting it now belongs in the category of historical truth.
It was in 1974 that the fighter known as The Greatest, as part of a tour of the Middle East, visited two Palestinian refugee camps in southern Lebanon. Bear in mind that by this point his exile from the ring over his refusal to be drafted for Vietnam was over and he’d reprised his ring career. It meant that such a visit was not undertaken with personal gain but with personal conscience and consciousness in mind. The irony is that the likes of the Clintons, both of whom attended Ali’s 2016 funeral service, would have been among the first to excoriate any high profile black American athlete who would dare embark on such a visit today. It would result in a veritable firestorm of criticism being levelled at said athlete back home, and doubtless damage to his or her career in various ways too.
Muhammad Ali in 1974 was not someone who was minded to care about what the US liberal establishment thought of him, however. He was after different game than this kind of acceptance or approval. His entire being was consumed with the cause of international brotherhood between black and brown people at home and abroad. In this his wordview had converged with his old friend and mentor Malcolm X, whom Ali had come to recognise had been right when it came to his split from the ideological confines of The Nation back in the early 1960s.
“Turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life,” Ali later recounted. “I wish I’d been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry, that he was right about so many things. He was a visionary — ahead of us all.”
Ali was not here merely peddling platitudes when it came to Malcolm being “ahead of us all.” Precisely a decade before Ali voiced his support for the Palestinian liberation struggle on a visit to southern Lebanon in 1974, Malcolm had done the very same during a visit to Gaza in ’64. In a speech he gave in Cairo after his visit, Malcolm announced that “The problem that exists in Palestine is not a religious problem. It is a question of colonialism. It is a question of a people who are being deprived of their homeland.”
Ali’s own stance on Palestine during his own visit ten years later was chronicled by the New York-based Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). This is did in an article titled ‘Ali Belts Zionism’. In the article it is revealed that at a press conference in Beirut, Ali declared that “the United States is the stronghold of Zionism and imperialism.” In the same article the reader is informed that Ali stated during his visit to the two refugee camps that “I declare support for the Palestinian struggle to liberate their homeland and oust the Zionist invaders.”
Fast forward to 1985, and during Israel’s occupation of southern Lebanon, Ali flew over to Tel Aviv to try and effect the release 700 Shiite Muslim captives who’d been transferred from southern Lebanon to a detention facility within Israel. He met with various senior officials within the Israeli government at that time, but was unsuccessful in his efforts to obtain the prisoners’ release.
Three years later, in 1988, the heavyweight champ attended a pro-Palestine rally in Chicago. This was in the context of the First Intifada, then raging across the Occupied Territories, and which lasted until 1993.
Taking in hand such a prolonged and principled stand in support of a colonised and oppressed people, it is impossible to deny that in many ways Muhammad Ali shone even brighter outside the ring than inside it. Here was a champion who utilised his fame and fortune in the service of causes greater than self or self-advancement.
Where is his like today? This is the question that begs.
End.
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