Malcolm X in Gaza and "Zionist Logic"
Malcolm X, Minister and human rights activist
Days after walking through the refugee camps of Gaza, Malcolm X set down his analysis of Zionism as a new form of colonialism.
In September 1964, during his months-long journey through Africa and the Middle East, Malcolm X spent two days in the Gaza Strip, then under Egyptian administration. He visited the Khan Younis refugee camp and a hospital, met the poet Harun Hashem Rashid — who recounted how he narrowly survived the 1956 Khan Younis massacre — and held a press conference at the Palestinian Legislative Council building in Gaza City. In Cairo he met with members of the newly founded Palestine Liberation Organization.
Weeks later, on 17 September 1964, The Egyptian Gazette published his essay “Zionist Logic,” in which he argued that the “present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history” and described Zionism as “a new form of colonialism,” camouflaged by philanthropy and backed by Western capital. The essay is among the earliest and most influential articulations of the connection between the Black freedom struggle in the United States and the Palestinian struggle.