Chloe Valdary: Christian, black and a rising star of pro-Israel activism

Growing up in New Orleans, Chloe Valdary kept kosher, studied the Jewish Bible and celebrated Jewish holidays with festive meals. In recent years she has become an outspoken pro-Israel campus activist, contributing regularly to the Jewish press, and speaking and posting widely about the merits of the Jewish state on social media.

But the senior at the University of New Orleans is not Jewish. She is Christian — a member of the “>piece in which she accused pro-Palestinian activists of misappropriating the rhetoric of the black civil rights movement. In the piece, titled “To the “>letter by the Black Americans to Support Israel Committee, backing Israel’s right to exist.)

Her outspoken support for Israel in the name of civil rights not only cuts against the arguments of Students for Justice in Palestine and other critics of Israel, but also against the drift of much black civil rights rhetoric over the past few decades.

While a number of early civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., were supportive of Israel, subsequent black leaders — particularly starting with the black power movement in the late 1960s — often have been sharply critical of the Jewish state. Black power leader Stokely Carmichael “>endorsed the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and “>recorded “>spoke at an event organized by The Alumni Community, a New York-area alumni group for Birthright Israel, which is less ideologically oriented. And not all of her fans consider themselves conservative.

“She’s a champion on campus of a Zionism that doesn’t apologize and also comes from a deep place of humanism,” said Rabbi Menachem Creditor of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, Calif., who describes himself as a “progressive Zionist.” “Her rejection of the demonization of Israel is not based on being a talking head on the right or the left. It’s based on being a very articulate and thoughtful leader on campus.”

Although her views on Israel tend to be aligned with more right-leaning pro-Israel groups, Valdary maintains that her opinions are based on liberal ideals. She argues that Israel’s sovereignty over Arab citizens “speaks to the concept of indigenous people” — the Jewish people, according to Valdary — thus is a liberal value. This places her at odds with a number of Israel critics, as well as black leaders such as Carmichael and Angela Davis, who have argued that the Palestinians are indigenous while Jewish-Israelis are colonizing interlopers.

Valdary says that “Israeli society, like any other society, has issues with discrimination, but in terms of systematic discrimination, like apartheid in Africa or Jim Crow, that does not exist in Israeli society.” She says that she opposes a two-state solution, favoring a “Jewish one-state solution” in which all citizens in Israel and its territories can vote, but “the culture, the personality” of Israel is Jewish.

Valdary’s political views, and her invocation of civil rights history and rhetoric in the cause of Zionism, has made her a controversial figure and a lightning rod for criticism. Some of the criticism has been racially derogatory, as when blogger Richard Silverstein posted an article of Valdary’s on Facebook with the “>Valdary “>said, “This is a perfect example of where the Israel lobby is heading, of where Zionism itself is heading, is that a right-wing evangelical has been recruited to attack Jewish intellectuals and to tell them that they are bad Jews.” (Valdary does not consider herself an evangelical or right wing.)

Blumenethal added, “I find it peculiar that someone with no credentials is so outspoken, so heavily promoted on this issue.”

In a