Where MLK Really Stood on Israel and the Palestinians

On Martin Luther King Day this past January, as on every anniversary of the great civil-rights leader’s birthday, the ghost of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was summoned to take a stand on the subject of Israel and the Palestinians.

This year, the conjurer was Michelle Alexander, a newly-minted New York Times columnist, author of The New Jim Crow, and visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary. Her January 19 column, entitled “Time to Break the Silence about Palestine,” was featured more prominently than usual, appearing on page one of the Sunday Review section, and it produced a new spike of interest in the topic.

“Of course,” Alexander stipulated, “there will be those who say that we can’t know for sure what King would do or think regarding Israel-Palestine today. That is true. . . . Today, we can only speculate about where King would stand.”