Shared Scars: Jewish Diaspora & Slave Trade

(This is Article 6 of the seven-part series, “Bridges of Liberation: Jewish & African Paths to Freedom.” The full disclaimer regarding the author’s independent views is contained in the preceding article: Article 1: We Want You Back).

We have previously explored the unifying principle of Zionism as Pan-Africanism (Article 1), and detailed the profound Jewish moral contribution to the anti-slavery movement (Article 2). We have established Zionism as an indigenous, reactive, anti-colonial movement, fundamentally identical to Pan-African repatriation efforts (Articles 1–3). We have established that Zionism and Pan-Africanism share the principle of indigenous return (Article 1), and that this alliance must confront all forms of imperialism, including the vast legacy of Muslim/Arab colonialism (Article 4).

Introduction: Bridges of Liberation: Jewish & African Paths to Freedom

Article 1: Bridges of Liberation: We Want You Back

Article 2: Bridges of Liberation: Jewish Contributions to Anti-Slavery

Article 3: Bridges of Liberation: Exodus in African & Jewish Liberation

Article 4: Jewish Support for African Independence

Article 5: Debunking Myths of Jewish Slave Trade Role

The traumas of Jewish expulsion and African enslavement are not poetic analogies – they are identical mechanisms of forced dispersal, cultural erasure, and attempted extermination. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Middle Passage, these scars foster empathy, as seen in modern art and alliances against jihadism. As a traveler to 122 countries with expertise in international affairs and Jewish activism, including keynote speeches at genocide conferences, I compare these histories to strengthen bonds.

Historical Parallels and the Crime of Slavery

Slavery is humanity’s oldest and most universal crime. What matters today is who ended it, who kept it, and who is bringing it back in the 21st century.

Jewish diasporas (e.g., the 1492 expulsion) mirror African enslavement. Both involved millions scattered, identities suppressed—a shared “cultural erasure” that only a “Law of Return” can attempt to heal.

1. From 1444 to 2025, the chain of enslavement has never been broken. From the Portuguese raiders initiating the trans-Atlantic trade in 1444 to the Arab slave markets of Zanzibar and the ISIS cages of Sinjar, the pattern repeats: rip a people from their land, strip their name, sell their bodies, and deny their right to return.
2. Only two peoples on earth have enacted sovereign Laws of Return to reverse that sentence: Israel in 1950 and the emerging African programs in Ghana, Benin, and elsewhere.

For the Jewish people, this means physical repatriation; for the African diaspora, it champions the principle of indigenous return that Pan-Africanism shares with Zionism. The very logic Mamdani uses to deny the Jewish right to self-determination—the claim of displacement or lack of roots—was perfected by the European powers who expelled Jews and the slave traders who ripped Africans from their land.

Cultural and Artistic Links

Olaudah Equiano’s parallels, the Zong! analogies to the Holocaust, highlight shared memory. Both peoples possess a “Book of Memory” chronicling the loss of sovereignty and the subsequent persecution under foreign rule, whether it was European pogroms or the colonial subjects’ enslavement.

Modern Echoes and the Conspiracy’s Target

Jihadist threats revive these historical scars. The conspiracy of hate (as detailed in Article 4), which seeks to fracture this solidarity by inverting the historical narrative, targets the two most traumatized, scattered, and resilient peoples on earth: Jews and Black Africans.

The stakes are existential: a Jew without the IDF today is rendered defenseless—no different than a Yazidi, a Copt, an Assyrian, a Berber, or a Bahai, all minorities historically victimized by forces of conquest. The war by Hamas against Israel and Jews is almost identical to the genocide and enslavement of Yazidis by ISIS. The jihadist collaborators Mamdani tacitly supports have already executed a campaign of slaughter against these indigenous Middle Eastern and African minorities—the very outcome they wish to impose upon Israel.

The rallying cry “From the River to the Sea”—which for many terrorist organizations like Hamas is an explicit call for the elimination of the State of Israel and the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the entire territory—means a very clear process of elimination. As Hamas minister Fathi Hammad declared, the goal is for Jews to “have no place among us anywhere in the world.” This identical logic was broadcast by Haj Amin al-Husseini from Berlin in 1944 when he urged the “final solution” of the Jewish question in Palestine and beyond. Anyone calling for the destruction of Israel is deliberately or inadvertently calling for the total extermination of all Jews, worldwide. To suggest otherwise is a profound display of ignorance or a brainless refusal to acknowledge historical facts and ideological reality in the Middle East.

Crucially, this vulnerability is not confined to the Middle East. Recent, documented attacks against Jews in cities like Amsterdam, Paris, Washington D.C., and London demonstrate that Western authorities often lack either the will or the capability to protect Jewish communities from targeted political violence. With Muslim populations in these cities frequently seen ganging up on Jewish citizens, the local police and justice systems are perceived as insufficient bulwarks. This undeniable reality leaves the world’s Jewish population facing a singular conclusion: Israel and the IDF are the only ultimate bulwarks of protection we possess. Without the sovereign Jewish state, Jews everywhere are left under an intolerable and undefended existential threat.

The Betrayal in Real Time: Alignment, Not Oversight

The recent rescue of a Yazidi woman, Fawzia Amin Sido, from captivity in Gaza—held by a Hamas-affiliated family that purchased her from ISIS—exposes this conspiracy’s true nature. No major Muslim organization, no campus “anti-colonial” coalition, and none of the loudest congressional critics of Israel—Zohran Mamdani, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib—have issued a single statement about this discovery of slavery in Gaza or the open slave markets of Libya and Mauritania. This targeted silence suggests a distinct lack of concern for the slavery of minorities in Arabia or Africa, revealing a political priority rooted in anti-Jewish and anti-Israel fanaticism. The same voices demanding the abolition of Israel have never once condemned the active, ongoing enslavement of Black Africans under regimes that still regard it as halal.

The betrayal by Mamdani and Omar is a crucial vector in this attack. While they rage against Israeli defensive operations, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF)—an ISIS affiliate—continue their slaughter of Black African Christians in the Congo and Uganda. Al-Shabaab bombs markets, and Boko Haram still holds Chibok girls. Their selective outrage is not ignorance. It is collaboration with the very forces that keep the slave chain intact.

Legacy: Healing Through Alliance and Collective Defense

Shared scars do more than unite against conquest; they forge a collective resilience that proves the necessity of alliance. The profound trauma of forced dispersal and cultural erasure is not merely a historical parallel; it is a shared crucible that demands collective defense today.

The current geopolitical front reveals a chilling truth: the Black African Christian war is fundamentally the same existential conflict that Israel is fighting. The forces arrayed against us—the conspiracy of hate—seek to twist the narrative, making the descendants of the Inquisition and the Middle Passage adversaries. This betrayal results in the calculated silence on Black African graves, setting up Black activists as unwitting internal enemies of their own kin in Africa. Slavery, conquest, and jihad have not disappeared, and the world’s indifference to the enslavement of minorities in North Africa mirrors its indifference to the threats against the Jewish state.

Survival now demands three uncompromising actions:

1. Exposing the Arrayed Forces: We must collectively expose the anti-Western and jihadist pipeline that targets both the Jewish state and vulnerable African communities. This means naming the pipeline without euphemism: funding and ideology flow from Doha and Tehran through Western universities, congressional offices, and into the jihadist militias currently enslaving and butchering Black Africans.
2. Delivering Truthful Facts: We must ensure the international public receives the truthful facts about this shared struggle, affirming the indigenous and anti-colonial nature of Zionism and Pan-Africanism. This includes speaking the facts others refuse to utter: that slavery is not a historical relic—it is a living industry in 2025.
3. Standing for Survival: We must stand unequivocally for our own right to survival and self-determination, recognizing that the “Law of Return” is the indispensable healing mechanism against cultural erasure for both peoples. We must defend, without apology, the only two successful Laws of Return in human history—Israel’s and the African versions—because their abolition would complete the original crime of dispersal and erasure.

The forces that scattered us have not disappeared. They have merely updated their slogans. Recognition of that single truth is the only bridge that matters.