"Ill-Considered Flirtations"

Black leaders clash on how to deal with Jews and Arabs

Many American Jews were angered and alarmed by the spectacle of the Rev. Jesse Jackson embracing Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat, and of the Rev. Joseph Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference joining Arafat in a chorus of We Shall Overcome. But to those who interpreted these odd scenes as a sign of black antiSemitism, a contradicting voice sounded last week. Said Vernon E. Jordan Jr., head of the National Urban League, in a widely publicized speech to a Catholic audience in Kansas City: "Black-Jewish relations should not be endangered by ill-considered flirtations with terrorist groups devoted to the extermination of Israel. The black civil rights movement has nothing in common with groups whose claim to legitimacy is compromised by coldblooded murder of innocent civilians and schoolchildren."

Nor was Jordan alone in trying to change the direction of recent arguments about black-Jewish relations, a problem that surfaced after the resignation of U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young following secret contact with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Benjamin L. Hooks, executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, sent a statement last week to the N.A.A.C.P.'s 1,700 U.S. branches urging that "our historic close working relationships with the American Jewish community" be maintained and strengthened.

Moreover, some N.A.A.C.P. members joined a black delegation to Israel led by Labor Leaders William Pollard and Bayard Rustin. Though the visit had been scheduled before black-Jewish tensions became inflamed, Rustin said he wanted "to make clear to the Israelis that there are great numbers of black people who want the United States to give Israel whatever support it needs." Israeli Premier Menachem Begin, who had refused to see Jackson or Lowery, received the Pollard-Rustin delegation warmly.

Jackson was hardly fazed by the criticism. Continuing to defend the P.L.O. as "a government in exile," he met Jordan in Chicago, and Jordan said afterward that "we agreed to disagree without being disagreeable." Others on Jackson's side were less cordial. The Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker, a onetime aide to Martin Luther King Jr., charged that Jordan had succumbed to "the plantation syndrome." The Rev. William Augustus Jones, president of the Progessive National Baptist Convention, sneered that the Jordan-Hooks statements proved that the Urban League and N.A.A.C.P. operate under "financial constraints imposed... by their white members and supporters." The implication that Jordan and Hooks had been subverted by Jewish donations was oddly timed, because it became clear last week that some black organizations are getting Arab cash. Jackson's PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) acknowledged receiving an $8,000 contribution from a group that is called the Association of Arab-American University Graduates.

How serious is the split in the black leadership? That leadership has never been monolithic, and it has always been debatable how many constituents any particular black leader represents. In the present dispute, Jordan and Hooks, whose two organizations have hundreds of thousands of supporters, would seem to speak for many more than Jackson and Lowery. PUSH and S.C.L.C. are both smaller and more narrowly financed. PUSH indeed lad its payroll frozen by an Illinois judge ast week in response to a suit filed by a New York City public relations firm to which PUSH owes $16,000; Jackson dis missed the action as "a case of a Jewish firm trying to punish us for the stand I've taken."

In any case, the dispute seems to be among black leaders far more than among their followers. Interviews by TIME correspondents with scores of blacks across the country demonstrate a widespread belief that the whole subject of black anger against Jews has been vastly exaggerated. Says Mary Treadwell, executive director of Pride, Inc., a black self-help group in Washington, D.C.: "Most of the mom-and-pop grocery stores here these days are owned by Asians, and the competition for job training and political benefits is with Hispanics. For the average guy in the street, black anti-Semitism is something he reads about in the papers, not something he feels." While many blacks do favor negotiations with the P.L.O., it is scarcely an important consideration for them. Says one black Chicago businessman: "Most of the blacks I come in contact with didn't know we [blacks and Jews] were supposed to be mad at each other until our so-called leaders told us."

The outlook thus is for black-Jewish tensions to calm down, but enough tension will remain to ensure that the old black-Jewish coalition will probably never regain the strength it had in the 1960s.

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