BALM — Black African Lives Matter
I am a Zionist Jew who has served Africa my entire life—beginning at age nine on the streets of my birthplace, Port Elizabeth, protesting apartheid—because Black lives have always mattered to me.
My commitment to justice was forged in fire long before I ever set foot on African soil.
My Lithuanian-Jewish ancestors knew injustice more intimately than any lecture hall ever could. They were hunted, humiliated, and finally murdered by the Lithuanian state and its collaborators—who first robbed them, then shot them in forest pits, and today still honor the murderers as “anti-Soviet heroes.” My family watched their Lithuanian neighbors turn into killers overnight, watched a government erase their names from the earth, and learned the bitter taste of powerlessness.
That is where I learned what evil looks like: when a state rewrites history to glorify genocide and criminalizes truth-tellers.
That is why, when I saw apartheid’s boot on Black South African necks, I recognized the same evil.
That is why, when I see jihadists burning churches in the Sahel and issuing convert-or-die ultimatums, I recognize the same evil.
And that is why, when I see Israel—the only state the Jewish people have ever had—stand alone against annihilationist hatred, I recognize the same fight for survival my ancestors never won.
My aunt and uncle, Esther and Hymie Barsel, paid the price for that recognition: banned, imprisoned, and tortured by the apartheid regime for their lifelong struggle as ANC and SACP leaders alongside Nelson Mandela. I pray their courage runs in my veins.
I have led the Maceva project, which—together with an international team of volunteers and Lithuanian partners—mapped and restored dozens of abandoned and desecrated Jewish cemeteries. I exposed Lithuania’s state-sponsored Holocaust distortion, the largest cover-up of Holocaust crimes in Europe, until the truth finally broke through. All of it on my own dime, without seeking acclaim—only because justice demands it.
The “white savior” objection dies here.
I am not a savior.
I am family.
And family does not ask permission to defend its own.
The original Black Lives Matter cry was righteous.
But it has been hijacked—turned into a weapon of antisemitism and a shield for the re-enslavement of Black Africa.
The hijackers are not only the keffiyeh-wearing students and celebrity activists in America who scream for Israel’s destruction while ignoring the crucifixion of Black pastors in Mozambique. They do not realize they are the “useful idiots” of a new slave trade.
They cheer for the destruction of Israel without realizing it is the only Middle Eastern bulwark against the “black-flag armies”—the ruthless jihadist coalitions like ISIS and Al-Qaeda that march under the dark banner of a global Caliphate. These are not freedom fighters; they are conquest machines that seek to erase borders, subjugate nations, and impose a totalitarian religious order.
If Israel falls, these armies will not stop at Tel Aviv; they will pour south into Africa unopposed. These protesters are effectively the loudest cheerleaders for the re-enslavement of Black Africa.
But the worst hijackers are on the continent itself: politicians, diplomats, and “Pan-African” leaders who wave the flag of liberation while quietly handing their nations over to the same jihadist networks that once ran the Arab slave trade.
South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa accuses Israel of genocide at the United Nations while his own northern borders bleed from the very jihadists he refuses to name.
The ANC drags Israel to the International Court of Justice on Hamas’s behalf while Hamas’s ideological brothers burn churches in Nigeria and Burkina Faso.
These are not mistakes. These are choices. Just as African kings once sold their own people to Arab and European slavers for guns and gold, today’s elite sell Black African futures to Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood for diplomatic applause and suitcases of cash.
They betray the very essence of Pan-Africanism—the dream of an Africa free, proud, and sovereign.
This is why the old BLM is dead.
It has become the tool of jihad—and the willing accomplice of Africa’s new slave-traders.
We need a new movement.
One that cannot be hijacked because it is built on unbreakable truth.
BALM — Black African Lives Matter
A movement that declares, without apology:
Black African lives matter—whether murdered by jihadists in the Sahel or betrayed by their own leaders in Pretoria and Ramallah.
Zionism is the original Pan-Africanism: It is the blueprint for indigenous return. They call us colonizers, but history explodes that lie. In 1799—a century before Herzl, and over a century before the British Mandate—Napoleon Bonaparte stood at the gates of Palestine and became the first modern world leader to call on Jews to “claim your political existence as a nation” and restore ancient Jerusalem. He recognized then what the hijackers deny now: You cannot colonize the land that gave you your name.
Israel is not Africa’s enemy: Israel is the only nation in history to risk its planes and rescue tens of thousands of Black Africans by air—Operation Moses (1984) and Operation Solomon (1991)—not as refugees, but as family.
Christian Zionism and African Christianity are natural allies: The Cross and the Star of David stand together against the black flag of conquest.
Every African leader who sides with Hamas or Iran is a modern-day slave trader selling Black futures for foreign gold.
BALM is the alliance the jihadists fear most: Black African Christians, African Zionists, and the State of Israel—locked in unbreakable solidarity.
No more silence while Black bodies pile up in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, and Togo.
No more tolerance for African governments that fund Hamas while their own people flee jihadist machetes.
Black African Lives Matter.
Jewish Lives Matter.
And together—under our shared humanity, under our ancestral soils, under the flags of sovereign African nations and the Star of David—we will make the jihadists, their Western cheerleaders, and their African enablers pay the price for believing Black lives are disposable.
BALM is not a slogan.
It is a battle cry.
I stand ready—as a Zionist Jew who recognizes that Zionism and Pan-Africanism are the same fire burning in two different hearths—to lead the charge.
Who will answer it?
Zionism is Pan-Africanism.
Pan-Africanism is Zionism.
BALM is the future.
Let’s build it.
Now.
