Writings by Baraka have appeared in
Black Agenda Report,
Common Dreams,
Dissident Voice,
Pambazuka News,
CounterPunch, and other media outlets.
Foreign policy Israel Baraka has been a vehement
critic of Israel. In October 2014, Baraka traveled to the
Palestinian territories as a member of the African Heritage Delegation organized by the Interfaith Peace-Builders group. After its visit, the delegation issued six "findings and demands" signed by the sixteen members, including Baraka: specifically, they called the expansion of
Israeli settlements "ethnic cleansing and 21st century colonialism"; called for an end to
U.S. aid to Israel;
accused Israel of apartheid; and praised the "
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions" (B.D.S.) movement as "an essential tool in the struggle for Palestinian liberation." After the visit, Baraka wrote that "a negotiated, relatively 'peaceful' resolution of
the conflict is impossible" because "the Israeli state has no interest in a negotiated settlement with Palestinians." He accused Israel of carrying out what he termed a "brutal occupation and illegal theft of Palestinian land," adding: Baraka also questioned news stories about the
June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, which Israel blamed on
Hamas members and which led to Israeli air strikes in the
Gaza Strip against Hamas. One month after the kidnappings, which he called a "false flag operation," Baraka indicated in an interview his belief that "the kids were supposed to be kidnapped but they weren't supposed to be murdered. That was an accident. But nevertheless it gave Israel the pretext that they were setting up for, and that was the opportunity to basically attack Hamas in order to destroy the
unity government." In March 2015, Baraka condemned Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu's comments on the day of the
2015 Israeli elections. Netanyahu had warned supporters in a video posted to his
Facebook page that his government was in danger because "Arab voters are coming out in droves to the polls." Baraka called Netanyahu's words a "racist rant" that exposed "the brutal and immoral reality of the Israeli colonial project" and the "illusion" of a
two-state solution.
Syria and Iraq Speaking in 2014 on
U.S. involvement in Iraq, Baraka characterized U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East over the previous 20 years as "disastrous" and said that "what has occurred in Iraq was predictable." In a 2014 interview on Kevin Barrett's
Truth Jihad Radio, Baraka stated his belief that the U.S. had a part in creating the "boogeyman" of
ISIS "to basically garner significant public support for an argument that says that this monster, these evil forces—that, by the way, we helped to create—we are the only ones that can go in and slay this monster." In the interview, he suggested that control of natural resources, such as the proposed
Qatar-Turkey and
Iran-Iraq-Syria natural gas pipelines, is one of the underlying reasons for U.S. and Turkish interests in the region: Baraka rejected the U.S. position that
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the
2014 Syrian presidential election are
illegitimate. He characterised Syria's opposition as "Salafi-Wahhabi fundamentalists who reject representative democracy and support the imposition of sharia law in Syria". In a 2014 article, he wrote that the idea of Assad's illegitimacy had been "carefully cultivated by Western state propagandists and dutifully disseminated by their auxiliaries in the corporate media." In 2019 Baraka travelled to Syria to participate in the Third International Trade Union Forum, presided over by President Assad and sponsored by the regime.
Ukraine After the
2014 Odesa clashes, which resulted in the deaths of 42 pro-Russian and six pro-Ukrainian protestors, Baraka wrote that he was "outraged by the murder of people defending their rights to self-determination at the hands of U.S.-supported thugs in
Odesa." He criticized Western media coverage of the event for "undermining anything coming from
Russia Today. That's where you see the story being advanced that there is a possibility that this story is a little more complicated than people realize." Baraka also claimed that observers from the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe were "sent in basically as spies who showed up on the scene to quote-unquote 'monitor'."
Nigeria Baraka has criticized calls for Western military action against the
jihadist rebel group Boko Haram, arguing that "a purely military response will only exacerbate an insurgency whose roots lie in the complex socio-historical conditions and internal contradictions of Northeast Nigeria." In May 2014, a month after Boko Haram
kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the northern Nigerian town of
Chibok, he expressed skepticism about the official version of events and the number of victims, saying that "even if there was a kidnapping, there's some people who are suggesting that the numbers are in fact inflated." Baraka also stated that while he was "outraged" by the kidnapping, he was also suspicious of U.S. humanitarian concerns in the region: "U.S. policymakers don't give a damn about the schoolgirls in Nigeria because their real objective is to use the threat of Boko Haram in the northern part of the country to justify the real goal of occupying the oil fields in the south and to block the Chinese in Nigeria."
Je suis Charlie movement In a January 2015 essay, Baraka described the
Republican march in
Paris in reaction to the
Charlie Hebdo shooting as a "white power march," and the
Je suis Charlie movement in general as an "arrogant rallying cry for white supremacy". Baraka's "Je suis Charlie" article was republished in January 2016 in an anthology about the
November 2015 Paris attacks, titled
ANOTHER French False Flag? Bloody Tracks from Paris to San Bernardino. This was controversial because the editor, Kevin Barrett, is widely considered a denier of the Holocaust and the 9/11 attacks, although Baraka said he was unaware of this and disassociated himself from Barrett's views. In an article titled "No 'Je Suis Charleston'?" Baraka contended that a collective response similar to "Je suis Charlie" was absent after the
Charleston church shooting at the
Emanuel AME Church, and criticized Obama for not calling suspect
Dylann Roof a terrorist. As a longtime opponent of the death penalty, Baraka has also criticized the
Department of Justice's decision to seek the death penalty for Roof, saying that it "should be seen as no more than another tactical move by the state as part of the last phase of the counterinsurgency launched against the black liberation movement. ... By appealing to African Americans, the group in the country most consistently opposed to the death penalty, state propagandists saw this as a perfect opportunity to undermine opposition to capital punishment and facilitate the process of psychological incorporation."
Reception Writing for
Politico, Christopher Hooks claimed Baraka "has a long history of fringe statements and beliefs." == Critique of public individuals ==