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America is experiencing unprecedented levels of antisemitism. And it’s no longer coming from the usual suspects like white supremacists and extremist groups. Today’s echo chamber includes social media influencers and mega celebrities.
While it is traditionally framed as antisemitism, that term is too sanitized and largely misunderstood.
So, let’s just call it what it is, Jew hatred.
Kanye West, the 45-year-old rapper–who legally changed his name to Ye— advised his nearly 32 million Twitter followers that he was “going death con 3 on Jewish people,” adding, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.” Ye continued to double down on his bigotry to amplify his hatred of Jews. He blatantly said, “I can say antisemitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me.” No one should want their brand tied to hate, so – of course – it did.
To put it in perspective, Ye has roughly 17 million more followers than there are Jews in the world and 24 million more followers than there are Jews in America.
Ye’s statements have drawn on longstanding antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories about Jewish people. The Anti-Defamation League reported that during an interview on Revolt TV’s “Drink Champs” series, Ye said that the “Jewish people have owned the Black voice” and that “the Jewish community, especially in the music industry…they’ll take us and milk us till we die.” Referencing the disgraced Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, he also commented that he was “#MeToo-ing the Jewish culture. I’m saying y’all gotta stand up and admit to what you been doing.”
Ye’s words inspired others to follow suit.
Demonstrators gave Nazi salutes as they stood on overpass above a Los Angeles freeway holding a banner that read, “Kanye is right about the Jews.” They also held signs that read, “End Jewish Supremacy in America” and “Honk if you know it’s the Jews.”
Across college campuses, there has been a deluge of Jew hatred. After the Florida-Georgia football game, “Kanye is right about the Jews!!!” was projected onto the exterior of TIAA Bank Field.
Earlier this month, dozens of headstones at a Jewish cemetery in suburban Chicago were vandalized with anti-Semitic hate, including swastikas — and praise for disgraced local rapper Kanye West, “Kanye was rite.”
Ye’s vitriol was followed by Brooklyn Nets basketball superstar, Kyrie Irving’s Jewish hatred. Irving, a seven-time NBA All Star, posted a link on Twitter to his 4.6 million followers to a 2018 film called “Hebrew to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.” The movie promotes antisemitic tropes and falsehoods about Jews, including lies that Jews falsified the history of the Holocaust.
In multiple combative news conferences, Irving refused to apologize for posting the video and refused to directly answer the question of whether he held antisemitic beliefs.
Irving, finally and belated apologized, after a mere 8-game suspension.
And, like Ye, Irving’s comments were embraced by extremist groups. Irving’s return was greeted by a large crowd of Black Hebrew Israelites wearing shirts with “Israel United in Christ” as they handed out flyers titled, “The Truth about Anti-Semitism,” which contained anything but the truth. The Anti-Defamation League describes BHI as a fringe religious movement that rejects the widely accepted definition of Judaism and includes some factions that are highly antisemitic.
In the past, NBA players have been rightfully outspoken against social injustices, and supported the Black Lives Matter movement.
Where is the outrage from NBA players when an NBA player touts Jew hatred? How many of the NBA’s 450 players condemned his actions contemporaneously? I don’t recall anyone other than LeBron James and Deni Avdija, a Jewish player from Israel.
Make no mistake: silence is complicity. Silence only normalizes these actions as being acceptable and demonstrates a lack of sensitivity to the plight of other aggrieved communities.
You can’t be vocal about BLM and not be vocal about Jew hatred too.
Credit former NBA player and TNT commentators Reggie Miller and Charles Barkley for speaking out about the deafening silence and calling for his suspension. Miller said, “The players have dropped the ball on this case when it’s been one of their own. It’s been crickets. And it’s disappointing, because this league has been built on the shoulders of the players being advocates. Right is right and wrong is wrong. And if you’re gonna call out owners, and rightfully so, then you’ve got to call out players as well. You can’t go silent in terms of this for Kyrie Irving. I want to hear the players and their strong opinions as well, just as we heard about Robert Sarver and Donald Sterling.”
Donald Sterling, former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers was fined $2.5 million and forced to sell his team over racist remarks made in a private conversation between him and his then girlfriend, which became public. Robert Staver, majority owner of the Phoenix Suns was suspended for one year, and barred from all events, practices, games and business activities, and fined the maximum amount of $10 million after an independent investigation revealed that he used the N-word at least five times and for multiple violations of workplace conduct standards.
Stories of Jewish hate appear every day in America today.
Last weekend, two men were arrested and charged with making an online terrorist threat toward a New York synagogue as they were entering Penn Station in Manhattan with a large hunting knife, an illegal Glock 17 firearm and 30-round magazine, and several other items.
This latest threat of violence against synagogues comes more than a week after a New Jersey man was arrested after being accused of making threats to attack a synagogue and Jewish people.
Last year, Malik Faisal Akram, took four members of a Texas synagogue hostage during Shabbat services. One hostage was released and the other three, including the rabbi, escaped just before the 10-hour standoff ended with law enforcement officers storming the building and killing Akram.
FBI Director Robert Wray recently spoke at the ADL’s Never is Now Summit and recounted that just last year, Richard Holzer was convicted on both hate crime and explosives charges for plotting to bomb the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo. Holzer told undercover agents he wanted to do something that would tell Jewish people in the community they weren’t welcome in the town.
In Colorado, people associated with the extremist group that hung the banner over the Los Angeles highway supporting Ye have been distributing flyers on front lawns up and down the Front Range blaming Jews for everything from COVID to the Federal Reserve.
Four years ago, on a quiet Shabbat morning a gunman entered Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue where 22 people were worshipping and murdered 11 and wounded six more people.
A total of 2,717 antisemitic incidents were reported last year across the nation – a 34% increase compared to 2,026 in 2020, according to the ADL. In ADL’s Mountain States Region of Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, there was a 49% increase.
According to the FBI, 63% of all religious hate crimes are targeted against the Jewish population which makes up only 2.4% of America’s population.
The American Jewish Committee’s 2021 State of Antisemitism in America reported that one in four Jews were victims of hatred over the past year and four out of ten Jews changed their behaviors out of fear.
To be clear, this is not a Black vs Jew issue. Blacks and Jews have a rich history of working together to fight all kinds of hate speech. They are both the target of white supremacy hatred in America.
In the early 1900s, Jewish people helped found the NAACP and National Urban League.
They stood shoulder to shoulder in the Civil Rights movement. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma. In 1964, 17 rabbis were arrested in St. Augustine, Florida, for supporting the civil rights movement.
They also died together. In the summer of 1974, three young men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner – one Black and two Jewish –were murdered in Mississippi while trying to register African Americans to vote. The case galvanized the nation and provided the final impetus for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Here’s why this should matter to you – to each and every one of us: hatred of Jews is not simply a Jewish problem. Just as hatred of Blacks isn’t a Black problem. It is critical for non-Jews to speak out about Jewish hatred and people who aren’t Black to speak out against Black racism.
After completing this column, Club Q in Colorado Springs, a LGBTQ+ nightclub, was attacked by a gunman. While his motives are still being investigated, this senseless and incomprehensible attack that killed five and injured 18 others, appears to be another horrific example of a bias-motivated crime.
According to ADL’s Mountain States Regional Director Scott Levin, “Words have consequences. Celebrities and athletes like Ye and Irving have particularly large and influential megaphones to amplify and normalize hate. The danger of such normalization is not limited to animus against Jews, it also extends to hatred of people of color, other minority religions and, as we tragically saw this past weekend at Club Q in Colorado Springs, against the LGBTQ+ community. While motives are often difficult to determine, we know there are people who violently respond to normalized hate.”
We all share a collective responsibility to advocate for each other and not simply when we are the target.
Doug Friednash grew up in Denver and is a partner with the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber and Schreck. He is the former chief of staff for Gov. John Hickenlooper.
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