By Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel in Chula Vista, California
In the shadow of Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2026, a painful fracture has emerged in San Diego’s pursuit of justice and unity. Rabbi Hanan Leberman, the dedicated spiritual leader of Tifereth Israel Synagogue, was abruptly disinvited from delivering the closing benediction at Alliance San Diego’s 38th Annual All Peoples Celebration.
The reason cited—”concerns over potential disruption related to Zionism”—was a direct strike at Rabbi Leberman’s lifelong identity. As a man who has studied, served, and raised a family in Israel, his very presence was deemed a liability. This was no minor logistical adjustment; it was a deliberate choice that erased the presence of Jewish clergy from an event meant to embody Dr. King’s “Beloved Community.” By opting for exclusion over engagement, the organizers did more than silence a rabbi—they betrayed the courageous dialogue Dr. King championed.
The outrage from San Diego’s Jewish community—spanning the Board of Rabbis and the Finest Community Coalition—is rooted in a historical truth: Dr. King was a steadfast friend to the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. To bar a rabbi for his connection to Israel is to impose a purity test that King explicitly warned against. Dr. King’s consistent stance on Israel, security, and the thin line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is reflected in the full range of his historical record:
“When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.” This 1968 statement from Cambridge, Massachusetts, aligns with the account of Professor Seymour Martin Lipset, who recalls King reacting to a student’s criticism of Zionism by saying, “Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!” King saw the right of the Jewish people to their own state as a matter of fundamental justice.
Addressing the 68th annual convention of the Rabbinical Assembly on March 25, 1968, King stated, “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist.” He further lauded the nation, saying, “I see Israel… as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, a marvelous example of what can be done.” He emphasized that this security must not be a mere concept, but a reality: “Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality.”
King’s support was consistent across his final years. In 1967, following the Six-Day War, he asserted that “the whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist.” In a September 1967 letter to the Jewish Labor Committee, he wrote, “Israel’s right to exist as a state is incontestable.” He was particularly firm on sovereignty and international rights, stating that we must protect Israel’s “right to use whatever sea lanes it needs.”
While King remained a humanitarian who called for a balanced peace, noting that “we must see what peace for the Arabs means… the kind of economic security that they so desperately need,” he never wavered on the morality of Israel’s presence. In an interview on ABC’s Issues and Answers in 1967, he declared, “Any talk of driving the Jews into the Mediterranean is… terribly immoral.” He concluded throughout his life that “Israel’s right to exist as a state in security is uncontestable.”
Critics of Israel can find a profound lesson in Dr. King’s ability to balance unwavering moral support for Israel’s existence with a deeply empathetic concern for Arab economic and social justice. King’s framework suggests that criticizing specific policies or advocating for the needs of the Arab world does not—and should not—require the delegitimization of the Jewish state. He viewed the “right to exist” not as a negotiable political point, but as an “incontestable” moral imperative. For the modern critic, this challenges the “zero-sum” mentality; it implies that one can be a champion for Palestinian welfare without resorting to the “terribly immoral” rhetoric of erasure or displacement.
Furthermore, King’s comments offer a lesson in the distinction between political disagreement and fundamental morality. By describing the threat to “drive the Jews into the Mediterranean” as an act of immorality, King was setting a boundary for civil rights discourse: any movement that seeks justice by advocating for the destruction of another people’s home fundamentally violates the principles of non-violence and human dignity.
For those who identify with King’s legacy of social justice, his stance suggests that true “peace” is a two-sided coin—it requires both the realization of Arab economic security and the absolute guarantee of Israeli physical security.
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Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California.