The Rise of Part-time Antisemitism Blurs Traditional Definitions: Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2020 ______________________________________________________Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood?
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
The Hollywood Reporter, July 14, 2020
Recent incidents of anti-Semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation. Given the New Woke-fulness in Hollywood and the sports world, we expected more passionate public outrage. What we got was a shrug of meh-rage.
When reading the dark squishy entrails of popular culture, meh-rage in the face of sustained prejudice is an indisputable sign of the coming Apatholypse: apathy to all forms of social justice. After all, if it’s OK to discriminate against one group of people by hauling out cultural stereotypes without much pushback, it must be OK to do the same to others. Illogic begets illogic.
Ice Cube’s June 10 daylong series of tweets, which involved some creepy symbols and images, in general implied that Jews were responsible for the oppression of blacks. NFL player DeSean Jackson tweeted out several anti-Semitic messages, including a quote he incorrectly thought was from Hitler (not your go-to guy for why-can’t-we-all-get-along quotes) stating that Jews had a plan to “extort America” and achieve “world domination.” Isn’t that SPECTRE’s job in James Bond movies?
These statements would be laughed at by anyone with a middle-school grasp of reason, but then former NBA player Stephen Jackson, a self-proclaimed activist, undid whatever progress his previous advocacy may have achieved by agreeing with DeSean Jackson on social media. Then he went on to talk about the Rothschilds owning all the banks and his support for the notorious homophobe and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. That is the kind of dehumanizing characterization of a people that causes the police abuses that killed his friend, George Floyd.
June continued to bust out all over with anti-Semitism when performer Chelsea Handler, herself Jewish, posted videos of Farrakhan to her 3.9 million followers. That means almost 4 million people received a subliminal message that even some Jews think being anti-Jewish is justified.
That same month, President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign also has been criticized for exploiting anti-Jewish biases, even though Trump’s son-in-law and campaign honcho Jared Kushner is Jewish and his daughter Ivanka converted to Judaism before they married. Playing on the same Rothschild’s trope, they issued a letter accusing three billionaires of Jewish descent of using their fortunes to “rig the November election.” This is the kind of “very fine people on both sides” Trump has employed throughout his political career — pandering to hate groups that has emboldened racists who feel like they’ve gotten the presidential OK to attack people they don’t like. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s Slam Dunk Against anti-Semitism
Rabbi Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman
JNS, July 24, 2020
Who ranks with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? In our view, nobody. But former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is certainly up there on the list of African-American—and American—greats. This is why his op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter denouncing the unanswered surge in anti-Semitic rhetoric and libel from African-American athletes and entertainers is so important.
Among the purveyors of hate: Ice Cube, responsible for a day-long Twitter marathon using anti-Semitic images and symbols to condemn Jews, and not just Israel. He refuses to apologize for “telling the truth.” This is the same Big Lie that Ice Cube’s apparent new hero, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, used to portray himself as the supreme “truth-teller.”
NFL player DeSean Jackson also tweeted anti-Semitic messages, including a quote he incorrectly attributed to Hitler that Jews had a plan to “extort America” and achieve “world domination.” Why did the wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles choose to quote this faux Hitler? “Because Hitler’s heart was in the right place,” he said. In his own voice, Jackson also claimed the Rothschilds owned all banks. He subsequently apologized, and after a therapy session with NFL great Julian Edelman of the New England Patriots has agreed to certain Holocaust memorials and may even go to Auschwitz with a Holocaust survivor. Fine, if sincere.
Performer Chelsea Handler, who is white and Jewish, chimed in earlier this summer with a testimonial video to Farrakhan’s greatness that she shared with her 3.9 million followers. She also apologized—too little, too late.
Just this week, Madonna didn’t let her embrace of Kabballah get in the way of using her Instagram account to channel Farrakhan’s speech to more than 700,000 online followers.
Unlike Madonna, prominent media personality Nick Cannon did own up after he posted a YouTube interview with rapper “Professor Griff,” chock full of anti-Semitism. Griff’s greatest hits about Jews from the 1980s include that: “If the Palestinians took up arms, went into Israel and killed all the Jews, it’d be alright”; “I think that’s why they call it ‘jewelry,’ because the Jews in South Africa, they run that thing”; Jews are responsible for “the majority of the wickedness that goes on across the globe”; and “Jews finance these experiments on AIDS with black people in South Africa.” When Griff claimed that “white Jews” are not “real Jews,” Cannon contributed: “The Semitic people are black people.” Initially, he, too, refused to apologize, but to his credit asked to speak with the Simon Wiesenthal Center about some of the details of Jewish history. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Can Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
WSJ, July 12, 2020
I once opened a speech by confessing to a crowd of Jews that I used to hate them. It was 2006 and I was a young native of Somalia who’d been elected to the Dutch Parliament. The American Jewish Committee was giving me its Moral Courage Award. I felt honored and humbled, but a little dishonest if I didn’t own up to my anti-Semitic past. So I told them how I’d learned to blame the Jews for everything.
Fast-forward to 2019. A freshman congresswoman from Minnesota has been infuriating the Jewish community and discomfiting the Democratic leadership with her expressions of anti-Semitism. Like me, Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia and exposed at an early age to Muslim anti-Semitism.
Some of the members of my 2006 AJC audience have asked me to explain and respond to Ms. Omar’s comments, including her equivocal apologies. Their main question is whether it is possible for Ms. Omar to unlearn her evident hatred of Jews—and if so, how to help.
In my experience it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to unlearn hate without coming to terms with how you learned to hate. Most Americans are familiar with the classic Western flavors of anti-Semitism: the Christian, European, white-supremacist and Communist types. But little attention has been paid to the special case of Muslim anti-Semitism. That is a pity because today it is anti-Semitism’s most zealous, most potent and most underestimated form.
I never heard the term “anti-Semitism” until I moved to the Netherlands in my 20s. But I had firsthand familiarity with its Muslim variety. As a child in Somalia, I was a passive consumer of anti-Semitism. Things would break, conflicts would arise, shortages would occur—and adults would blame it all on the Jews.
When I was a little girl, my mom often lost her temper with my brother, with the grocer or with a neighbor. She would scream or curse under her breath “Yahud!” followed by a description of the hostility, ignominy or despicable behavior of the subject of her wrath. It wasn’t just my mother; grown-ups around me exclaimed “Yahud!” the way Americans use the F-word. I was made to understand that Jews—Yahud—were all bad. No one took any trouble to build a rational framework around the idea—hardly necessary, since there were no Jews around. But it set the necessary foundation for the next phase of my development.
At 15 I became an Islamist by joining the Muslim Brotherhood. I began attending religious and civil-society events, where I received an education in the depth and breadth of Jewish villainy. This was done in two ways. … [To read the full article, please click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The Rise of Part-time Antisemitism Blurs Traditional Definitions
Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld
Jerusalem Post, July 15, 2020
There is much debate about whether some people are antisemitic. While many write about antisemitism, very few who do so understand its current complexities. One of the issues many observers have to come to grips with is that much of contemporary Jew-hatred can best be called part-time antisemitism. These are people who commit antisemitic acts or make such statements intermittently. On other occasions, some may even make positive remarks about Jews and/or Israel.
Until the Second World War, antisemitism had a limited number of core motifs. These recurred over the centuries. Gradually there were also new mutations of these motifs, while occasionally a new motif appeared. Since the Holocaust, further new expressions of hatred have emerged.
One of these is Holocaust inversion: “Israel behaves toward the Palestinians like the Nazis did toward the Jews.” Yet one can also consider this a mutation of an almost 2,000-year-old core motif: “Jews are absolute evil.” In our days, being a Nazi is often considered the greatest evil in Western society.
There are other changes in expressions of antisemitism taking place. These are often related to general culture. Living in post-modern societies means that many themes have fragmented.
That is also the case with antisemitism. This makes the analysis of contemporary antisemitism far more difficult than that of historic antisemitism. Even the widely accepted antisemitism definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) covers only part of what Jew- or Israel-haters say or do.
The foremost antisemite in the United States is probably Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. He has called Judaism a “gutter religion” and a “religion of Satan.” Farrakhan has also used the word “termite” to describe certain Jews. He has called Hitler a “great man.” Farrakhan joined students in Tehran in 2018 shouting “Death to Israel,” and “Death to America.”
Nevertheless, Farrakhan has on occasions said that he doesn’t attack all Jews. He, albeit marginally, doesn’t qualify as a full-time antisemite.
One cannot describe former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a full-time antisemite either. He regularly states that antisemitism is vile and may not even hold any of the anti-Jewish prejudices that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) used in its global survey. It is, however, clear that he is a part-time antisemite.
Corbyn called the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, which want to commit genocide against the Jews, his “friends” and “brothers”; shared a platform with the leading Dutch Jewish antisemite; gave money to an organization run by a Holocaust-denier; went to meetings where Israel was compared to Nazi Germany; and was occasionally was involved in an antisemitic act. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
Former NYPD Commissioner Warns: American Jews In Grave Danger: David Sidman, Breaking Israel News, July 16, 2020 — Jewish communities in the United States should follow the example of their counterparts in Europe and place security measures in place in synagogues, Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said in an interview. Kelly added “we are in a dangerous place in history.”
Avi Abelow, Israel Unwired, July 26, 2020 –– In reaction to a Twitter rant of antisemitic messages by an influential British rapper, prominent Jewish activists active on social media have implemented a 48 hour Twitter “walkout” to say enough is enough.
Ben Shapiro: Anti-Semitism is ‘Last Hatred Allowed’ in the US: WIN, July 10, 2020 — Popular right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro said the lack of left-wing reaction to DeSean Jackson’s anti-Semitic tweets showed that anti-Semitism is the last hatred still allowed in American.
Canadian Far-right Politician Calls for Removal of Jews from Canada: Zachary Keyser, Jerusalem Post, July 14, 2020 –– Far-right white nationalist Canadian politician Travis Patron – leader of the Canadian Nationalist Party (CNP) – shared antisemitic rhetoric and conspiracy theories involving Jews to the political party’s official social media channels on Saturday – personally labeling the religious group a “parasitic tribe.”
The Anti-Semitism We Didn’t See: Jamele Hill, The Atlantic, July 13, 2020 — Like DeSean Jackson, the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver who is being condemned for posting a fake Adolf Hitler quote on his Instagram feed last week, I too have had an ill-advised Hitler moment.
