Jackson Declares Zionism Is a Liberation Movement : Conciliation: Rights leader condemns anti-Semitism, calls for blacks and Jews to rebuild coalition.

Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, in a speech to a World Jewish Congress meeting Tuesday, termed Zionism a liberation movement and called for Jews and blacks to re-create their old coalition.

Blacks and Jews should work together for economic growth and peace and to prevent “scapegoating, racism, anti-Semitism, polarization and violence” in the wake of the Cold War, Jackson said to an audience attending the congress’ conference on anti-Semitism and prejudice.

In his hourlong speech, which some observers said may help heal his longstanding rift with American Jewry, Jackson said: “Racism and anti-Semitism are unscientific, emotionally destabilizing, politically divisive, economically exploitative acts of violence, arrogant assumptions and theological sins.”

Jackson’s appearance before the congress was itself controversial. It had been bitterly divided over inviting the civil rights leader, who has been accused of anti-Semitism for a series of actions ranging from referring to New York City as “Hymietown” during his 1984 presidential campaign to embracing Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat.

In his address, Jackson said that the anti-Semitism in African-American popular culture represents “shrill voices that must not be allowed to be perceived as dominant. Sometimes our methods (to stop it) spread it rather than contain it.”

Isi J. Leibler, co-chairman of the World Jewish Congress governing board, described himself as having previously had “grave reservations” over hearing Jackson. But he said afterwards that he felt “we may have seen a genuine renewal of the coalition that has so sadly disappeared over two decades.”

Edgar M. Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress, referred to Jackson’s address as “a good speech.”

Jackson said he felt he had put the “Hymietown” episode behind him, adding: “Look, we’ve got (Jean-Marie) Le Pen in France, fascists in Italy. We can’t go back over these things” in the face of such threats.

Zionism is a “liberation movement,” he said. Asked later to reconcile this with 1990 statements about Israel “occupying the birthplace of Jesus Christ,” Jackson responded that “there is a debate about occupied territories, and I hope we move toward a dialogue and away from confrontation.”

Nearly half an hour into his speech, Jackson was interrupted for the first of six times with applause when he invoked the plight of Haitians. “It was anti-Semitic and wrong in 1939 to lock the Jews out, it was racist and wrong in 1942 to lock the Japanese-Americans up and it is racist and wrong in 1992 to lock the Haitians out and leave them to languish on the seas.”

During a question and answer session after Jackson’s address, one member of the audience asked for a response to Louis Farrakhan’s characterization of Judaism as a “gutter religion” and Farrakhan’s praise of Hitler.

“Point one, those are not my positions and should not be attributed to me in any way by any formal association,” Jackson said. “Second, I do not believe any religion is a gutter religion. I have a great sense of high regard for my own religion and ecumenical religious living.”

Jackson touched on domestic American issues during his address.

“America needs a plan for reinvestment and renewal,” he said, adding that his American Investment Bank would attempt to use $500 billion in government-secured pension funds and other forms of capital to “put America back to work.”

Jackson said that “together, we can work to ease the pain of economic insecurity and with it the fears and reaction that it breeds. We can save our own lives by investing in other people.”