Malcolm X_ A Life of Reinvention - Manning Marable [236]
Malcolm also attended a press conference featuring Ahmed al-Shukairy, the first president of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. After the conference, the two men met privately. This meeting became the context for Malcolm’s controversial essay in the Egyptian Gazette, “Zionist Logic,” in which he denounced Israeli Zionism as a “new form of colonialism,” designed to “deceive the African masses into submitting willingly into their ‘divine’ authority and guidance.” Malcolm noted that the Israeli government had made a series of “benevolent” overtures to African states, “with friendly offers of economic aid, and other tempting gifts that they dangle in front of the newly independent African nations, whose economies are experiencing great difficulties.” This combination of U.S. imperialism and Israeli interference in Africans’ affairs constituted “Zionist dollarism,” which had led to the military occupation of Arab Palestine, an act of aggression for which there existed “no intelligent or legal basis in history—not even in their own religion.”
Malcolm’s newfound hostility toward Israel can be explained not only by his obligations to Nasser but also by the shifting currents of one particular African state. In the 1950s, under the anticommunist influence of Pan-Africanist George Padmore, newly independent Ghana had been hostile to the Soviet Union and friendly toward Israel. Padmore died in 1959, and by 1962 Ghana was seriously considering becoming a Soviet client state on the model of Cuba. Trade between Egypt, a Soviet ally, and Ghana nearly doubled between 1961 and 1962, and Nkrumah displayed solidarity with Nasser by announcing his own plan for the establishment of a “separate state for Arab refugees from Palestine.” Malcolm’s anti-Israeli thesis reflected the political interests of both these allies.
This calculated view reflected the broader balancing act he performed throughout his time in the Middle East. Egypt’s secular government stood forcefully at odds with religious groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been implicated in a 1954 plot to kill Nasser and subsequently banned from the country. Malcolm, indebted to both sides, could not afford to take positions that might offend either. During his stay in Cairo, his Islamic studies were directed by Sheikh Muhammad Surur al-Sabban, the secretary-general of the Muslim World League. This group was financed by the Saudi government and it reflected conservative political views, so Malcolm had to exercise considerable tact and political discretion. Simultaneously, he was also corresponding with Dr. Said Ramadan, the son-in-law of Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. Expelled from Egypt, Ramadan had also founded the World Islamic League, and in 1961 established the Islamic Center in Switzerland. Throughout their correspondence, Malcolm pressed Ramadan about race and Islam. At one point Ramadan appealed to him: “How could a man of your spirit, intellect, and worldwide outlook fail to see in Islam . . . a message that confirms . . . the ethnological oneness and equality of all races, thus striking at the very root of racial discrimination?” Malcolm responded that regardless of Islam’s universality, he was obligated to struggle on behalf of African Americans. “As a black American,” he explained, “I do feel that my first responsibility is to my twenty-two million fellow black Americans.” The cordial dialogue displays Malcolm’s deepening interest in the Muslim Brotherhood’s faith-based politics—an interest that he knew he had to keep from Nasserʹs government.
On September 16, Malcolm returned to Al-Azhar University, where he was given a certificate establishing