Black Hebrew Israelites rally at Barclays Center on Nov. 9, 2022, as Kyrie Irving returned to the Nets' court following a suspension for promoting anti-Semitism. Charles Wenzelberg / New York Po
At a Hanukkah celebration last month, President Biden stated: “Today we must all say clearly and forcefully: Anti-Semitism and all forms of hate and violence in this country have no safe harbor in America.”
But simply saying it, no matter how forcefully, does not appear to carry much weight against the increasingly evident support among many black Americans for ideas and voices espousing violence toward Jews. Black and Hispanic youth report higher rates of anti-Semitic views than among white youth on the alt-right.
Unfortunately, much of the pushback so far treats the problem of anti-Semitism like an issue for classroom discussion, curable by tackling ignorance and rudeness. This approach doesn’t appear especially effective against the loose slurry of ideas borrowed from sources like the Nation of Islam and Black Hebrew Israelites, tinged by both far-left villainizing of privilege and far-right fears of “replacement” by minorities.
Last week, when Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt sat down with prominent hip-hop radio DJs, he began with a careful defense of Jews spending time protecting Jews when blacks are also in need of defense. He responded to questions about the distinctions between public and private speech and about how to distinguish a benign “punchline” from an inciting “punch.”
Kyrie Irving received an eight-game suspension for promoting the anti-Semitic film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” Getty Images
‘Deep apologies’
Scrolling through the more than 11,600 comments below the interview video, a theme emerges that suggests this conciliatory conversation didn’t land: that anti-Semitism is justified.
A few weeks ago, Brooklyn Nets point guard Kyrie Irving (inset) returned to the basketball court after his eight-game suspension for promoting the anti-Semitic film “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America”— and initially refusing to denounce anti-Semitism. Before his NBA reinstatement, Irving gave a 21-minute interview in which he spoke about how the controversy affected him: the discomfort he and his family have felt, how he loves all people, and finally, how he didn’t realize that it wasn’t safe to criticize certain groups. The “deep apologies” that he did offer focused on how thoroughly he was misunderstood, saying that he didn’t “stand for anything close to hate speech or anti-Semitism or anything that is ‘anti,’ going against the human race.”
But Irving’s trespass did not consist in accidentally comporting himself like an anti-Semite. It involved tacitly promoting ideologies that call for violence and harassment specifically against Jews — such as have already been gaining in the US.
In fact, Irving has neither apologized for any unintended incitement nor even acknowledged the phenomenon of growing animosity and violence toward Jews — especially among American blacks. If he had actually wanted to defuse the hold of these ideologies on some of his fans, he might have tried saying something like this:
On Irving’s reinstatement day, scores of Black Hebrew Israelites shouted “Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up. We have good news: We are the real Jews.” Twitter / @OGAride
There is no truth in the claims in “Hebrews to Negroes” that there was no Holocaust or that today’s Jews usurped Judaism from blacks and should be punished for it. In fact, roughly 6 million Jews were murdered for being Jews during World War II; there is no historical support for a religious usurpation; and it is never OK to harass or attack Jews. If your religion tells you that they deserve it, then your religion is despicable.
And he might have added:
Jews make up about 2% of the US population but routinely suffer 60% of religion-based hate crimes. Here in New York City, nearly half of all hate-crime victims are Jewish — in a city only around 7% Jewish — and in cases where the attacker’s race is known, 42% of attackers are black. Brooklyn has experienced 186 hate crimes so far this year, at least 74 of these against Jews. This is shameful, and anyone who commits crimes against Jews needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
‘The real Jews’
If anything, Irving’s peace-and-love non-apologies served as a dog whistle to those whose ideologies he refrained from condemning. On his reinstatement day, scores of Black Hebrew Israelites, outfitted in the uniform of the group Israel United in Christ, amassed in military formation in Grand Army Plaza shouting: “Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up. We have good news: We are the real Jews.”
Still shouting, they army-marched to the nearby Barclays Center, where Irving was finally back on court, to distribute fliers promulgating the same brand of libel against Jews that Irving could have explicitly countered, but didn’t. Nothing that Irving has said or done since has stopped “Hebrews to Negroes” from becoming the best-selling book in multiple Amazon categories or delegitimized its hateful message.
Perhaps conscientious education can cure people of prejudice; certainly, dialogue is a critical and healthy part of civics. Anti-Semitism, however, is an age-old malignancy that leapfrogs bias to become something irrational, suffused with magical thinking and the potential for violence.
Maybe to combat this growing surge, we need to focus less on explaining why anti-Semitism is not nice and more on discovering what forces of misplaced grievance and fear in the black community are inflaming it now.
Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.
The Goals of Communism
(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)
1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.
2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.
3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.
4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.
5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.
6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.
7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.
8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.
9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.
10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.
11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)
12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.
13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.
14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.
15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.
16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.
17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
18. Gain control of all student newspapers.
19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.
20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.
21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.
22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."
23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."
24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.
25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."
27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."
28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."
29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.
30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."
31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.
32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.
33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.
36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.
37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.
38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.
39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.
40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.
43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.
45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
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