Rhyus Goldman
4/23/2024
Biography Project: Angela Davis
Angela Davis Connection of Vietnam and Civil Rights Movements Towards Present Day Israel Palestine War
The connection between the Vietnam American war that took place over the course of the civil rights movement and the war that Israel is waging on Palestine in this current moment is extremely reminiscent of one another and linked by American Imperialism. Whether that be the peaceful protest met with unlawful violence from the dominating side, the United States empire aiding and complicit in the violence, or the sheer strength of one side being highly more militarized than the other. However, looking back to the war in Vietnam, there was a persistent misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict and a failure to adapt. US commanders consistently tried to force the war to conform to their operational framework, rather than truly understanding the essence of the conflict. “The war had cost the lives of more than 1.5 million Vietnamese combatants and civilians, as well as over 58,000 U.S. troops. But the war had caused another, more intangible casualty: the loss of consensus, confidence, and a sense of moral high ground in American political culture.” (SOURCE)
The war that is being fought in Palestine now could have been predicted by the United Nations actions and lack thereof in the previous seventy years. According to Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: A Primer By Joel Beinin and Lisa Hajjar, “On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab. The UN partition plan divided the country so that each state would have a majority of its own.” The West Bank and the Gaza Strip emerged as separate political entities following the 1949 armistice that delineated the boundaries of the newly established Jewish state of Israel from the remaining territories of Mandate Palestine. From 1948 to 1967 the West Bank included East Jerusalem, both being extremely important portions of land as to the geography of existence and religion, which was then divided, complicating citizenship, and established communities. Britain obtained a mandate over this land that gave way to Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In October 1973, on Yom Kippur, Egypt and Syria executed a surprise attack over land disputes that caught the Israeli forces off guard, achieving some success for the Arab nation at the time. However, this moment led to the American Empire being truly involved in this conflict by providing aid and intervention to Israel. This led to the United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, pursuing a diplomatic strategy that somewhat resolved the current events “while avoiding negotiations on more difficult issues, including the fate of the West Bank and Gaza. This strategy also positioned the United States as the sole mediator and most significant external actor in the conflict, a position it has sought to maintain ever since.” (SOURCE) This led to current debates of who has control of the land when the intention was to not have Israeli maintain control even though the government has seized it.
The Israeli government has become a mechanism of oppression to Palestinians everyday life whether through apartheid, oppression, or death and destruction. Intifada, is the shaking off of Israeli domination The first Intifada, in December 1987 was the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza starting mass uprising against the Israeli occupation, it came into fruition by mobilization of organizations and institutions that had developed under Israeli occupation. This concept tracks well with the treatment that Angela Davis endured during the late 1960s and 1970s. A poster by the Free Angela Davis Coalition made when Davis was arrested, stating “the purpose of this conspiracy is to isolate and destroy those groups struggling to turn this country from its present course of racist exploitation and war-for-profit.” (SOURCE) In 1969, Angela Davis' words spoke truth into an unseeable but sadly predictable future that “another Vietnam is (going to be) created” due to the economic system of capitalist oppression by American Imperialism. In Palestine, this is constantly felt and seen through the processes of dehumanization, explosion of people from their land, and the extermination of an ethnic group. “More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to local health officials. The latest strikes came within hours after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill to provide Israel with $26.3 billion in assistance. (April 21, 2024)” (SOURCE) The United States government continues to prove Davis right by continuing to aid Israel, the economy can only successfully produce revenue when participating in war or wartime efforts.
There are many similarities between the United States war in Vietnam and Israel's war on Palestine. Israel, like America in the 1960s, has far superior weapons and much stronger economic position, as well as claiming to fight off a way of thought for their favor. Similar to the United States fighting off communism in Vietnam, Israel is holding claim to being the Jewish Holy Land by fighting off those who do not fit in. The major similarity of both is based in the pursuit of gaining land that is occupied by someone else already. The purpose for both sides is to make sure they have security over the area. The major difference between the United States war in Vietnam and Israel's war on Palestine, is the same thing that makes them so linked, land that it is fought on. In America's war on Vietnam, the superior weapons did not make a great difference. America did succeed in gaining proximity to Vietnam, In Aloha, Vietnam: Race and Empire in Hawai‘i’s Vietnam War by Simeon Man, the texts states, “US military training exercises and weapons testing generated a growing arsenal for the war in Vietnam,” with the construction of the fiftieth state in Hawaii. The United States was trying to limit the distance by occupying land that had been acquired previously. Yet the distance from homebase combined with “failure in Vietnam was rooted in a misunderstanding of the type of conflict and a failure to adapt. US commanders continually attempted to make the war fit their understanding of operations, not a true understanding of the conflict itself.” (SOURCE) Leading to the loss of the war, shaking the country down to its foundations and core values. However, Israel does understand the conflict, Israel has been adapting to the land the country is situated on for the past seventy six years. Since it became a country in 1948, Israel has received over 300 billion dollars in aid from the United States. This was effective for two reasons, the time that Israel has had to use that money and it being a more solid investment than the 176 billion dollars spent in an unraveling war. By the end of the Vietnam war, it was proved that the United States was not as powerful an empire that it thought it was, losing far more than they tried to gain, which shifted the social and political view of the country as a whole. Angela Davis spoke in 1969 at a Black Panther meeting about how the military effort in Vietnam was becoming relevant in everyday life back on United States land, she states, “I think that they are really preparing for this now. It's evident that the terror is becoming not just isolated instances of police brutality here and there but the terror is becoming an everyday instrument of the institutions of this country.” (SOURCE)
The “terror is becoming an everyday instrument of the institutions of this country” that Angela Davis spoke of came back largely in the United States after the war in Vietnam when looking at America’s post Vietnam recovery. It is in complete parallel when looking at its oppressive, racist, sexist systems that make up this country, completely trying to stifle social rights that would and doom any movements to failure. The post war government shined bright light on the true sentiment of the foundation of what makes up the nation, United States Imperialism. “We can't talk about protesting the genocide of the Vietnamese” Davis says in the same speech, “people without at the same time doing something to stop the genocide that is, that liberation fighters in this country are being subjected to.” In Erica Edwards, The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire “still, during the post-1968 decades of Black literary professionalization, Black women were writing, anthologizing, teaching, and organizing to keep the literature of Black feminists in circulation in ways that can only be understood as para or counterinstitutional.” These strategies that do not conform into systematic operation must be practiced and learned from those who have dedicated its or their lives to liberation, like Angela Davis who was actively acting in a counterinstitutional way in that time period and beyond. In a 2024 op-ed, Davis wrote for Hammer&Hope where she states, “Here in the United States, despite the McCarthyist strategies employed against those who call for freedom and justice for Palestine on campuses, in the entertainment industry, and elsewhere, we are in a new political moment, and we cannot — we must not — capitulate to those who represent the interests of racial capitalism and the legacies of colonialism.” (SOURCE) This is a call to action. We are in a new moment that resembles a disaster known all too well. This must be the time to recognize historical mistreatment and those elements that uphold your own relationship in systematic positionality. The true intention of where America's actions lie can be seen everywhere, only having the interest of generating the most monetary value can be achieved.
There was extreme outrage due to the war in Vietnam from students, to artists, to scholars, because of the atrocities happening in Vietnam. Musicians released anti-Vietnam war music, such as Joni Mitchell’s The Fiddle and the Drum (1969) and John Lennon's Imagine (1971). Martin Luther King Jr. publicly morally opposed the war in 1967, and Angela Davis at a Black Panther Party speech on November 12, 1969, stated, “We have to talk about what's happening in Vietnam as being a symptom of something that's happening all over the world or something that's happening in this country. And in order for the anti-war movement to be effective it has to link up with the struggle for black and brown liberation in this country with the struggle of exploited white workers.” (SOURCE) Davis then further breaks down the systems of American imperialism in that same speech that has allowed for the bloody situation in apartheid Palestine today. She states that “this whole economy in this country is a war economy,” and it is propagated by the more weapons that America can produce. Davis follows up with, “what happens if the war in Vietnam ceases how is the economy going to stand unless another Vietnam is created.” Davis ends that portion with where the new Vietnam could be, wondering if it could be abroad or in the United States. In Aloha, Vietnam: Race and Empire in Hawai‘i’s Vietnam War by Simeon Man, the texts states, “On the surface, though, it would seem that the Vietnam War reaffirmed Hawai‘i’s national purpose as a bastion of US military power in the Pacific.” Davis continues by saying that “if the United States pulled the troops in Vietnam, although the violence wouldn't stop because it would transform into some other operation, America would be defeated by Vietnam.” Louis Menand, a New Yorker writer gives perspective to the failure that the United States endured in Vietnam, saying “historians argue about whether a given battle was a success or a failure, but, over-all, the military mission was catastrophic on many levels. The average age of American G.I.s in Vietnam was about twenty-two. By 1971, thousands of them were on opium or heroin, and more than three hundred incidents of fragging—officers wounded or killed by their own troops—were reported. Half a million Vietnam veterans would suffer from P.T.S.D., a higher proportion than for the Second World War.” (SOURCE) Angela Davis stated, “5000 miles away without fighting an armed war at home that just can't be done particularly when it's the most unpopular war in this nation's history and repression is coming home it's coming home to roost.” It is imperative to look at the stark similarities of Davis’ words and the new Vietnam that she was foreseeing of Israel's extreme war tactics on the Palestinian people and in comparison, to what that United States aimed to accomplish in Vietnam. It becomes clear that not only the “whole economy in this country is a war economy,” but the economy thrives off the exploitation of those who are easiest to be exploited. This can be seen by governamental infringements on one's personhood, inhumane labor practices caused by the corporations that's best interest is in thriving in America's economy, and the destruction and displacement of groups of people for more advantageous and lucrative for others.
In August of 1970, Davis became the third woman ever placed on the FBI's Top 10 Most Wanted Fugitives list for crimes that she did not commit. She was on the run for the next two months before she was put in prison. President Richard Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis." Davis was eventually set free one year and four months later, after 200 local committees in the United States, 67 in foreign countries, and John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped through art towards the campaign with the song "Angela". In an interview from jail in 1972, the reporter asked Angela Davis if the time of the Black Panthers passed? Angela Davis responded clearly, “The Black Panthers still exist and the Black Panthers are still extremely active in the Oakland Community and all over the Country, I’m not sure if you are aware of what's happening now in the Black Panther party and the kinds of things that members of that party are doing now.” The reporter follows up by asking her to tell him. Davis responds, “First of all, if you're going to talk about a revolutionary situation you have to have people who are physically able wage revolution, physically able to organize, and physically able to do all that is done.” The reporter asks, “How do you get there, do you get there by confrontation, violence?” Violence and confrontation being a negative stereotype and trope used when having conversations about the Black Panther party. Angela Davis laughs through her words and says “Oh that's the question you're asking? That's the other thing, when you talk about revolution most people think violence, without realizing that the real content of any kind of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles and goals that you're striving for, not in the way you reach them. On the other hand, because of the way this society is organized, because of the violence that exists on the surface everywhere you have to expect that there is going to be such an explosion you have to expect things like that as reactions.” (SOURCE)
In that same interview she shares her experience of living in Los Angeles and being constantly stopped by police for no reason but her skin color. Davis, born in 1944, follows up by sharing her experience of growing up in Birmingham, Alabama and her friends being killed by bombs that were placed by racist incited by a local governmental official. Davis describes the emotion, that at all times you could possibly be attacked. This was propagated by the man in control of the city government promoting racial violence, which was of course expressed through shooting and bombing. Davis’ mother and a mother of Davis’ friend found dismembered body parts all over when going to a church that had been bombed. After that, she described that all the men in her neighborhood organized themselves into a nightly armed patrol so something like that wouldn't happen again. She ended the interview by claiming, “That is why when somebody asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person asking that question has no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.”
In Erica Edwards, The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire she writes, “The memoirs and autobiographies of Black feminists of the post-civil-rights era, such as Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, and Paule Marshall, read as a catalogue of the unprotection that was the context for Black women’s writing, studying, defending, building, and organizing. At the same time as literature served as a record of state violence and Black women’s resistance, Black women’s writing bore a self-conscious relationship to the state’s affirmative relationship to racial, gender, and sexual difference.” For Davis, being a living example of her work, looking towards her life's exertions of expressions throughout her entire archive, specifically what she was expressing during the United States war on Vietnam and Israel's occupation of Palestine, because of the distinct similarities, it is necessary to try to make sense of these overwhelming global concerns of sovereignty. Davis continues to push the narratives that put her in the spotlight as a radical. She continues to express that reform is not the answer and it is actually the causation of keeping the system of American Imperialism ever growing. In the same speech from 1969 she says, “there has continually been the sentiment against the American imperialist aggressive policies throughout this world. Because we have been forced to see that the enemy is American imperialism.”
Both the United States war in Vietnam and the war Israel is waging against Palestine are inextricably linked to American Imperialism. However, looking at Angela Davis, the impact of the work she and her peers have contributed towards the destruction and dismembering of the systematic American Imperialism has allowed for Palestinian liberation to forever be fought for. The death and destruction that America aimed and succeeded in doing in Vietnam has set a blueprint for Israel to achieve and surpass in Palestine, both powered by American Imperialism and lust for land. Davis is a political activist, and she has been a member of The Communist Party USA, L.A. SNCC, Black Panther Political Party, Black Panther Party, Socialist German Students’ Union, Black Women’s Health Project, and others too. It is imperative to Davis’ career to continue to drive towards civil rights. Davis has called for the United States to stop sending aid to Israel and for a permanent cease-fire. She speaks to the youth and questions why no matter what side of the political spectrum you are on, it is still a vote for Zionism. The public still lives with the domestic terror that Davis profoundly warned us about due to the fallout from the Vietnam war, which is enforced by American Imperialism every day. The public sees the terror enforced by American Imperialism everyday across the globe. Angela Davis states, “if you're going to talk about a revolutionary situation you have to have people who are physically able wage revolution, physically able to organize, and physically able to do all that is done”. Given the systems of racism and oppression that continue through American Imperialism and similar forms of history repeating itself, the youth today must look to Davis’ inspiration to unite and continue to resist opposition for everyone they can, and especially for those who physically cannot.
References
"Angela Davis on Palestinians in Gaza." Hammer and Hope. https://hammerandhope.org/article/angela-davis-palestinians-gaza.
"Vietnam War Protests." History.com. https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/vietnam-war-protests.
"Police Take a Women's Liberation Protester into Custody at the House of Representatives." Digital Collections. University of Washington Libraries. https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/protests/id/322.
"Angela Davis Interview from Jail." Alexander Street, https://video-alexanderstreet-com.ccl.idm.oclc.org/watch/angela-davis-interview-from-jail/details.
"Palestine-Israel Primer." Middle East Research and Information Project. https://merip.org/palestine-israel-primer/.
"Israel Strike in Rafah Kills 13; Gaza Death Toll Surpass 34,000." Politico Europe. https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-strike-rafah-kill-13-gaza-death-toll-surpass-34000/.
Aloha, Vietnam: Race and Empire in Hawai‘i’s Vietnam War: Simeon Man: 2015
The Other Side of Terror: Black Women and the Culture of US Empire: Erica Edwards (2022)
Author Louis Menand. "What Went Wrong in Vietnam." The New Yorker, February 26, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/26/what-went-wrong-in-vietna
Jenna McMurtry, Anushe Engineer and Siena Swift, "Rethinking ‘The Eye of the Storm’: Angela Davis at Pomona." The Student Life, October 29, 2021. https://tsl.news/angela-davis-at-pomona/.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. Angela Davis: 2015 https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/45065373-freedom-is-a-constant-struggle.
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