11/24 Links Pt2: Thanksgiving Reaffirms the 400-Year-Old US-Israel Nexus; Irving, Stewart and Chappelle and the Double Standard for Jew-Hatred

From Ian:

Thanksgiving Reaffirms the 400-Year-Old US-Israel Nexus

Thanksgiving was reportedly first celebrated in November 1621 by William Bradford, the leader of the “Mayflower” and the Governor of the Plymouth Colony.

He enhanced his appreciation of the Bible — and especially the Five Books of Moses — in Leiden, Holland, where he found refuge from religious persecution in England. While there, he heavily interacted with the Jewish community.

Bradford and the other Mayflower passengers perceived the 66-day-voyage as a reenactment of the Biblical exodus, and the departure from “the Modern Day Egypt,” to “the Modern Day Promised Land.”

As a governor in this new land, Bradford announced the celebration of Thanksgiving by citing Psalm 107, which constitutes the foundation of the Jewish concept of Thanksgiving, thanking God for ancient and modern time deliverance.

The epitaph on Bradford’s tombstone in the old cemetery in Plymouth, Massachusetts, begins with a Hebrew phrase — “God is the succor of my life” (יהוה עזר חיי) — as befits the person who brought Hebrew to America. He aimed to make Hebrew an official language, suggesting that reading the Bible in the original language yields more benefits.

The Hebrew word for Thanksgiving’s central dish, turkey, is “Tarnegol Hodoo” (תרנגול הודו), which means “a chicken from India,” but also “a chicken of gratitude/Thanksgiving.”

The Original Puritans

Progressive causes and Protestantism in the U.S. frequently went hand-in-hand, from Prohibition to expanded public education, as the 19th century became the 20th. Indeed, the Social Gospel movement, the inspiration for many of the reforms of the Progressive Era, was led in its early years by Congregationalist minister Washington Gladden. In his book, Rothman quotes George McKenna, author of The Puritan Origins of American Patriotism, on the art of the overlapping Gilded Age and early Progressive Era: “The Puritans’ ethic of self-discipline and austerity was reflected in the numerous paintings and sculptures of Puritans that appeared during this period.” If this seems somewhat paradoxical—the cultural exultation of sober self-reliance alongside the excesses of the robber barons—consider that the progenitor of the New Deal was the blue-blooded FDR, himself the son of a cradle Congregationalist.

Rothman has a theory behind what he sees as a shift, from the late-20th-century paradigm of conservative Republicans as the “Just Say No” party fearful that “someone, somewhere, may be happy,” to progressive “New Puritans,” who, he writes in his book, “are draining life of its spontaneity, authenticity and fun.” Contending in his book that while the Democratic Party had broadened its tent by the 1990s to include upholders of the ’60s’ revolutionary legacy, by contrast, in 2016, Republicans were nominating a three-time divorced Howard Stern Show regular. “Conservatives didn’t so much lose the culture wars as much as they simply fled the field,” he writes.

Of course, the actual spiritual descendants of the New England Puritans, who began as radicals in their native England, are Congregationalists like the United Church of Christ, who are themselves fairly progressive on social issues. And when the idealistic utopianism of the Transcendentalist movement arose in the 19th century, with a focus on the primacy of the self and individual personal experience, it did so in the old Puritan stronghold of New England. Among its most prominent spokesmen was Ralph Waldo Emerson, the son of a Unitarian (itself an outgrowth of Congregationalism) minister at the First Church of Boston, which had been founded by the Puritan John Winthrop of “City Upon a Hill“ fame. In his landmark address, Winthrop warned his fellow New England Puritans that the eyes of the world were upon them, and as such, righteous living was essential. The reward, he wrote, would be a New England that was “a praise and glory that men shall say of succeeding plantations, ‘the Lord make it like that of New England.’”

“Today,” Rothman said in his message to Tablet, “as the left gravitates away from liberalism and toward progressivism, they are assuming many of progressivism’s conceits—chief among them, a messianic utopianism that views everything, even life’s most banal pleasures, through the prism of political activism.”

But contradiction is something the Puritans accepted as a fact of life. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” wrote the Apostle Paul to the young church at Philippi, and the Puritans took this charge seriously. “The [P]uritan life,” Winship writes, was “much more likely to involve protracted struggle with fear and doubt than it would a steady sense of God’s love.” They were a people ill-at-ease: with themselves, with each other, and with the wider world. That we perennially recast each other and ourselves in the New England Puritans’ story may suggest that the real mark that they left on the American character is something altogether more ambiguous than the saccharine annual depictions at Thanksgiving suggest.

The Case for Israel Celebrating Thanksgiving

Mark Twain wrote in his book Innocents Abroad about how desolate Palestine was when he visited in 1867, before the indigenous Jewish pilgrims and pioneers returned and made the desert bloom.

The success of Israeli agricultural innovation in feeding the people here, as well as in the Third World, is certainly worth celebrating. Israel’s successful hi-tech economy can be revered, as well as its unprecedented success in water conservation that would have made the environmentally conscious Native Americans proud.

Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl wrote in his 1902 book Altneuland that the Jewish state could transport water great distances. His vision and the success of the pioneers who implemented it could be celebrated on Thanksgiving in Israel.

Former diplomat Yoram Ettinger pointed out this week that William Bradford, the leader of the Mayflower and the Governor of the Plymouth Colony, interacted with the Jewish community and enhanced his appreciation of the Five Books of Moses in Holland before initiating the voyage.

“Governor Bradford announced the celebration of Thanksgiving by citing Psalm 107, which constitutes the foundation of the Jewish concept of Thanksgiving, thanking God for ancient and modern time deliverance,” Ettinger wrote. “Bradford was also inspired by the Jewish holidays of Pentecost (Shavuot in Hebrew) and Tabernacles (Sukkot in Hebrew), which highlight the importance of gratitude, and commemorating Thanksgiving for the harvest.”

Proper gratitude for the Land of Israel can be shown by eating turkey, whose Hebrew name, as Ettinger wrote, means both “a chicken from India,” but also “a chicken of gratitude/Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving falls this year on Rosh Chodesh, the celebration of the new Jewish month, when Jews say the Hallel prayer and its signature line Hodu LaHashem Ki Tov, which can be translated as “Give thanks to the Lord for He is good,” or “have turkey for God because it’s good.”

The final reason for celebrating Thanksgiving in the Jewish State is to remind the world and the often hostile international media that we – the People of Israel – are here in the Land of Israel, we belong here and we will always be here, even if we get bad press.

Lincoln, the Pilgrims and most of the Wampanoag are long gone, mostly due to tragic events that became part of history.

We the People of Israel have overcome countless tragedies, and yet we endure, which is clearly an excellent reason for us to be thankful.

Am Israel Chai!

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Our Jewish Response to Antisemitism Isn't Working (Judean Rose)

When Kanye (Ye) West finally managed to out himself as an antisemite, the response was predictable. Demand an apology. Demand that the offender’s lucrative business deals be canceled. This is the pattern we’ve seen over the past several years, as antisemitism grows, even in America, the Goldene Medina. But is it working?

It certainly didn’t work with West. The rapper only doubled down and refused to apologize, even after several very profitable business contracts were canceled, as a result. 

Kanye (Ye) West

The following exchange took place during an interview with Piers Morgan:

Piers Morgan: “Do you now regret saying ‘death con 3 on Jewish people’… Are you sorry you said that?”

Kanye: “No… Absolutely not.”  

Bottom of the barrel. Kanye West goes on Piers Morgan’s show, presumably because that’s the only show that would have him on, and offers most ridiculous half-assed apology ever. pic.twitter.com/HzOSvLAwA7

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 19, 2022

In other words, despite the fact that Ye lost out on billions of dollars in potential earnings, he has shown little to no contrition for the hateful things he said about the Jewish people.

Yet Morgan persisted until he at last managed to eke out a semblance of an apology from West:
“I will say I’m sorry for the people that I hurt with the ‘Death Con’ — the confusion that I caused. I feel like I caused hurt and confusion. And I’m sorry for the families of the people that had nothing to do with the trauma that I have been through, and that I used my platform, where you say hurt people hurt people, and I was hurt.”

Some media outlets referred to Kanye’s non-apology as an apology.

(Yahoo)

(The Wrap)

Others were more honest.

(TMZ)

(Daily Beast)

Once allowed back on Twitter after a six-week ban, Ye collectively mocked the Jewish people by tweeting a single word, “Shalom.” As if to say, “You Jews exploited me and stole my money as you always do, but I refused to bow my head.”

 

Shalom : )

— ye (@kanyewest) November 20, 2022

Kyrie Irving

The same irritating pattern was repeated with athlete Kyrie Irving. There was a tweet with hateful content, this time in the form of a link to an antisemitic movie: "Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America." The ADL put pressure on a sports shoe company—Nike—with West it was Adidas—and an apology was demanded but not received. Irving was also suspended from his position as a guard for the Brooklyn Nets. 

Sources: Nets have delivered Kyrie Irving six items he must complete to return to team:

- Apologize/condemn movie
- $500K donation to anti-hate causes
- Sensitivity training
- Antisemitic training
- Meet with ADL, Jewish leaders
- Meet with Joe Tsai to demonstrate understanding

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) November 6, 2022

But Irving was smarter than Ye, or at least saner. He figured out that he stood to lose a LOT of money if he didn’t apologize to those damned Jews. So after he tried to get away with not apologizing, followed by a non-apology that everyone knew was a non-apology, he finally made an actual apology—or at least said the words—whether he meant them is anyone’s guess (and I’m guessing not).

The non-apology:

   

The apology: 

“I don’t have hate in my heart for the Jewish people or anyone that identifies as a Jew . . . The difficult aspect is just processing all this, understanding the power of my voice, the influence I have. I am no one’s idol, but I am a human being that wants to make [an] impact and change.”

“I really want to focus on the hurt that I caused. I just want to apologize deeply for all my actions throughout the time that it’s been since the post was first put up. I’ve had a lot of time to think,” said Irving.

Having at last issued an apology—whether heartfelt or not—Kyrie was reinstated by the Nets.

Nick Cannon

The antisemitism of Kyrie and Ye are lately in the news. But we’ve seen this show before. There was Nick Cannon’s 2020 podcast with Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin. From the transcript:

Nick Cannon: Right. So let’s dive into it. Who are they? When we speak up, because this is where it truly is. And we talk about the six corporations, when we go as deep as the Rothschilds, centralized banking, the 13 families, the bloodlines that control everything even outside of America. When we talk about the people who, if we were truly the children of Israel, and we’re defining who the Jewish people are, because I feel like if we actually can understand that construct, then we can see that there is no hate involved. When we talk about the lies, the deceit, how the fake dollar controls all of this, then maybe we can get to the reason why they wanted to silence you, why they want to silence Minister Farrakhan, and they want to throw that we are having hate speech when it’s never hate speech, when it’s not. You can’t be anti-Semitic when we are the Semitic people, when we are the same people that who they want to be, that’s our birthright.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: It’s our birthright.

Nick Cannon: So if that’s truly our birthright, there’s no hate involved.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: It’s not.

Nick Cannon: How did this message gets so misconstrued?

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: When we came back to claim it. When we woke up and we came back to claim … If you steal my bicycle, when we were six years old, and you riding around the hood with my bike, now I’m 12, and I understand …

Nick Cannon: I want my bike back.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: I want my bike back, man. Now you’re going to kick up dust.

Nick Cannon: Right, right. Right.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: You understand what I’m saying?

Nick Cannon:  And I’m baller enough to get my bike back. . .  

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: You understand what I’m saying? That’s showing and proving that that’s my bike, and I’m here to claim it, man. You got, you have to give it back. So when you start hearing songs like Michael Jackson “hike me, kike me” and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, nah, you can’t say that.

Nick Cannon: You can’t say that. That’s hate speech.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: When you see Puffy talking about “I’m getting paid like the Hebrew,” you know what I’m saying?

Nick Cannon: Right, right. They want to mute the Hebrew.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: They want to mute that. You understand what I’m saying?

Nick Cannon: Even we the true Hebrews.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: Exactly. So we can’t even tell the truth now.

Nick Cannon: Right.

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: Not on record, not on television shows, not on YouTube. . . .

Nick Cannon: Because we’re not saying anything hateful, and that’s the thing when they want to put that on the Minister Farrakhan, was saying, even the term “white devils” or just devils in general …

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: Right, right, right.

Nick Cannon: … when he was really speaking about the people who devalue our communities and themselves, and that’s really where the word “devil” comes from and how he’s speaking it. But they want to take the sound bites and say, “This is antisemitic.” And so how does that occur? And why does that occur? Is that great? Is that spiritual warfare or is that just truly just us just silencing each other?

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: That’s the psychological covert, meaning hidden, war on the higher, infinite power healing our people.

Further on in the podcast is this exchange:

Nick Cannon: So ultimately are we saying that there’s a certain group of people that maybe they’re scared of the truth?

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: I think there’s Jewish people, but I just think there’s a group of Jewish people inside of that. You could call them Zionists. You can call them whatever.

Nick Cannon: Let’s dig into that for a second because that’s where I, and even sometimes I find myself wanting to debate this idea, and it gets real wishy-washy and unclear for me when we give so much power to the “they,” and then the theys then turn into the Illuminati, the Zionists, the Rothschilds …

Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin: The Freemasons.

Nick Cannon: The Bilderberg group, the Freemason. And as a community I feel, and I’ve done this myself, I want to blame others for the position that I’m currently in. And that often becomes when you say the privileged white girlfriend comes into the room or the apologists or these people come in and say, “Why aren’t you guys over slavery already?” or “Why are you always complaining? And why don’t you do for yourself? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And my people were also oppressed.”

But as was the case for Kyrie Irving, money talks, nobody walks. After ViacomCBS dropped Cannon like a hot potato, he found himself (shocker!) ready to apologize.  

 

That’s the pattern: demand an apology—and it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not it is sincere—and hit the hater in the wallet. Perhaps it’s time to question the wisdom of this method. Do the antisemitic beliefs evaporate once the apology is issued? Do the apologies matter at all? And doesn’t placing financial pressure on antisemitic offenders only reinforce classic tropes about Jews, money, and power?

ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt

From the ADL’s blog, Unpacking Kanye West’s Antisemitic Remarks:

Claims About Jewish Money and Greed

Ye’s claim that Jared Kushner’s actions between Israel and Arab nations was driven by his desire for financial gain corroborates long-standing antisemitic tropes about alleged Jewish control of money and financial institutions. His vague suggestion that a prominent Jewish holiday is associated with “financial engineering” also reinforces this stereotype. Overall, Ye's suggestions about Jewish people, holidays and the monetary implications of the two lends credence to the baseless idea that Jews can leverage their power for insidious purposes because of the stronghold they have on financial institutions.

From the ADL’s resource, Ye (Kanye West): What You Need to Know:

Claims about Jewish Control of Media and Government

In many of his recent interviews, Ye repeatedly referenced purported Jewish control over various industries — he used the phrase “Jewish media” over twenty times on “Drink Champs” alone. Ye also spoke about “Jewish Zionists” and “Zionist media handlers.” He made multiple references to prominent Jewish individuals, including George Soros — the Hungarian Jewish billionaire, philanthropist and Holocaust survivor who is a frequent bogeyman for both avowed antisemites and the political right — and Jared Kushner, as supposed examples of Jewish power.

Ye’s insinuations about Jewish control perpetuate the longstanding antisemitic trope that Jews wield an inordinate amount of power and exert control over global systems as part of a quest for world domination. These views are regularly promoted by extremists and antisemites of a wide variety of ideologies, from white supremacists and extremist Black nationalist groups to conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers.

·         “Jared Kushner is an example of how the Jewish people have their hand on every single business that controls the world.” (Ye on “Drink Champs,” 10/16/22)

·         “We’re not going to be owned by the Jewish media anymore…Every celebrity has Jewish people in their contract…And these people, if you say anything out of the line with the agenda, then your career can be over.” (Ye on “Cuomo,” 10/17/22)

·         “Kim [Kardashian, Ye’s ex-wife] has Zionist media handlers surrounding her.” (Ye on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” 10/19/22)

·         “I said the Jewish people because, by the way, it’s a barrage…George Soros knows, like, ‘wow, this guy is like a younger guy that’s looking at what I did and looking at how I control the world silently and he’s calling it out’…That’s what George Soros sees, right, when he’s dealing with me.” (Ye on the “Lex Fridman Podcast,” 10/24/22) 

Claims that Jews Exploit Black Artists for Financial Gain

Antisemitic tropes about alleged Jewish power and greed intersect in Ye’s comments about purported Jewish control of the music industry and exploitation of Black artists. This trope has been present in the discourse of other Black performers and activists in the past and is a common talking point within more extremist groups. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, for example, frequently makes this accusation.

·         “Jewish people have owned the Black voice…The Jewish community, especially in the music industry, in the entertainment [industry] period, they’ll take one of us, the brightest of us, right, that can really feed a whole village, and they’ll take us and milk us till we die.” (Ye on “Drink Champs,” 10/16/22)

·         “There’s so many Black musicians signed to Jewish record labels and those Jewish records labels take ownership not only of the publishing…but also ownership of the culture itself…It’s like a modern-day slavery.” (Ye on “Cuomo,” 10/17/22)

·         “I’ve been wronged so many times by Jewish businessmen…They’re taking money out of my children’s mouths and putting it into their children’s mouths!” (Ye on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” 10/19/22)

·         “90% of Black people in entertainment — from sports, to music, to acting — are in some way tied into Jewish businesspeople…Like if Rahm [Emanuel] is sitting next to [President] Obama or Jared [Kushner] sitting next to [President] Trump, there’s a Jewish person right there controlling the country, the Jewish people controlling who gets the best video or not, controlling what the media says about me.” (Ye on the “Lex Fridman Podcast,” 10/24/22) 

So let’s see, Jonathan Greenblatt, after pressuring Adidas (of the Nazi past) to break its very generous contract with Ye, educates us on classic Jewish tropes relating to money and power. Isn’t this a contradiction in terms? Of course it is. And a lot of Jews think the ADL has outlived its usefulness, and in fact, causes more harm than good.

The Dassler shoe factory--where Adidas and Puma were born--in Herzogenaurach, Germany circa 1930s. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Liel Liebovitz lays it out for us in No More ADL:

Pop quiz:

Which of these two individuals do you find more problematic?

Kyrie Irving, a kooky basketball player who believes that the Earth is flat, that JFK was shot by bankers, that the COVID vaccines were secretly a plot to connect all Black people to a supercomputer, and that Jews worship Satan and launched the slave trade?

Or Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, who accepted $500,000 from Irving last week without even meeting or even talking to the all-star—and who was then forced to give back the donation when Irving blatantly refused to apologize?

Let’s think about it for a minute. One of these guys is a weirdo with dumb opinions he may or may not actually believe. The other is running a soulless racket which just made it clear that you can say whatever you want about the Jews and buy your indulgences at a discount price.

Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely believe that Irving’s endorsement of a Black nationalist documentary based on an obscure Jew-hating book, to say nothing of Kanye West’s meltdown, will most likely contribute to a surge in antisemitism in America, particularly in the Black community. But we Jews don’t control Kyrie Irving; in theory, we do control the ADL, and we shouldn’t want our chief defense group to behave in a way that advances antisemitic conspiracy theories about shadowy Jews trafficking in money and influence for fun and profit.

As for the pro forma apologies, not everyone is so eager to accept them. Meghan McCain, for instance, who, remarking on Nick Cannon’s apology said that antisemitism remains “the last form of passable bigotry in America.”

Meghan McCain at the No Fear: A Rally in Solidarity with the Jewish People, July 11, 2021, (Ted Eytan, Wikipedia.)

“This isn’t just about Nick Cannon,” said McCain. “It’s why we, as Americans, seem to find more forgiveness in our heart for antisemitism than we do of racism of any other kind.”

“I think my concern is, for some reason, antisemitism is something we let people forgive a lot easier than any other forms of bigotry and racism.” McCain noted that “we’re having conversations about canceling Dr. Seuss,” but we say nothing about works by other authors which contain “deeply antisemitic characters.”

“I find that people who say antisemitic things are forgiven a lot easier than anything else,” said McCain, “And I think that’s something we really need to examine as a society.”

McCain is right. We are too forgiving, and the pattern of demanding apologies and forcing companies to cancel big name antisemites just isn’t working. If it were working, we’d see less antisemitism, rather than more, as in our current situation, with both Ye and Irving coming out of the (antisemitic) closet, so to speak.

Raoul Wallenberg

The problem perhaps, is that the demands and pressures are coming from the Jews, when it would be preferable to have non-Jews fight this battle for us. But we have learned an unfortunate lesson from our tragic Jewish history. People like McCain, and even more so, righteous gentiles like Raoul Wallenberg who saved thousands of Jews during the Holocaust, are rare birds. For the most part, no one sticks up for the Jews, except for the Jews themselves.  

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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11/22 Links Pt2: Bari Weiss: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Kanye, Kyrie, and Antisemitism; The Black Hebrew Israelites are a real problem for the left; Why Is Jon Stewart Ignoring and Excusing Antisemitism?

From Ian:

Bari Weiss: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Kanye, Kyrie, and Antisemitism

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar retired from the NBA in 1989, but he remains one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Many argue he is simply the greatest.

He is still—even with Michael Jordan and Steph Curry and Lebron and Shaq and Kobe—the NBA’s all-time leading scorer (38,387 points) and the league’s only six-time MVP. In March, the basketball news site HoopsHype included Abdul-Jabbar in its list of the top ten most influential players of all time. ESPN called him the greatest center in NBA history.

As Jews say every Passover: It would have been enough.

But there’s so much more that makes the 7-foot-2-inch Abdul-Jabbar a true giant. His religious conviction, his integrity, his wide-ranging intellectual proclivities, his outstanding performance in the 1981 movie Airplane!—and the unusual fact that this black, Muslim basketball star has been a consistent and outspoken voice against antisemitism.

For all those reasons, I wanted to speak with Abdul-Jabbar about the various firestorms of late: Kanye and his antisemitic rants; Kyrie Irving’s promotion of an antisemitic movie that denies the Holocaust; and the alarming rash of anti-Jewish hate crimes seemingly inspired by their worldview. A few weeks ago, a banner declaring “Kanye was right” hung over the 405 in Los Angeles as people gave Nazi salutes. On Halloween, the side of a townhouse in an Atlanta neighborhood was sprayed with graffiti: “Jews kill Blacks.” On the stop sign around the corner: “Jews enslave Black lives.” Last week, headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Chicago were vandalized with swastikas and the phrase “Kanye was rite.” And in Brooklyn, physical attacks against Orthodox Jews have become routine.

I asked Abdul-Jabbar about all of that and more in the Q and A below. And if you’re looking for more from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, check out his Substack, where he writes and talks about everything from basketball to pop culture to politics. — BW

BW: I want to focus on Farrakhan’s influence. He believes that Jews are parasitic, that Jews are behind a plot to exploit black Americans, and that blacks are the real Jews from the Bible. We’re hearing these ideas come out of the mouths of musicians like Kanye West (“Jewish people have owned the black voice”) and athletes like Kyrie Irving (“I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from”). For many Jews, hearing this kind of rhetoric is shocking, but many black Americans have noted that these views are more commonplace than we’d like to admit. So what I think a lot of people are afraid to ask is: How mainstream are these beliefs among black Americans? Are Kanye and Kyrie unique? Or has the influence of people like Farrakhan made this strain of antisemitism somehow more normal than many want to believe?

KAJ: Certain black leaders do exactly what certain white leaders do who want to gather followers, money, and power: They find a scapegoat they can blame. They can’t blame others who are marginalized because of the color of their skin, like Latinx or Asian-Americans, so they go for the default villain of fascists and racists: Jews.

What astounds me is not just the irrationality of it, but how self-destructive it is. Black people have to know that when they mouth antisemitism, they are using the exact same kind of reasoning that white supremacists use against blacks. They are enabling racism. Now they’ve aligned themselves with the very people who would choke out black people, drag them behind a truck, keep them from voting, and maintain systemic racism for another hundred years. They are literally making not only their lives worse, but their children’s lives. The fact that they can’t see that means the racists have won.

British Comedian David Baddiel Takes His ‘Jews Don’t Count’ Argument to TV

David Baddiel, a comedian-turned-activist against antisemitism who calls himself “one of the U.K.’s very few famous Jews,” was holding court in the basement of one of Britain’s best-known TV studios.

As a reporter headed hurriedly for the exit, Baddiel slouched into his chair, seemingly exhausted by the interview he had just completed about the forthcoming documentary based on his 2021 bestseller, “Jews Don’t Count.”

“I am speaking to many people like the last journalist who had not thought about any of this in their life,” he said.

The “this” Baddiel was referring to was to the idea, outlined in his book, that progressive anti-racists are guilty of hypocrisy towards Jews by not viewing them as worthy of similar protection or championing as other minorities because they are seen as white, privileged and wealthy.

When the book came out last year, it received rave reviews, and Baddiel has since become seen by some as a “voice for Britain’s Jews.” He often litigates the finer points of contemporary antisemitism as a guest on radio and television, and he has been quick to square off with trolls and critics on Twitter.

Now, with the premiere of an hour-long documentary also called “Jews Don’t Count” on Britain’s public Channel 4 network, Baddiel gets a primetime slot to make his case to a bigger audience. Featuring Baddiel’s interviews with Jewish stars of pop culture in both Britain and the United States — ranging from comedian Sarah Silverman to novelist Jonathan Safran Foer to actor Stephen Fry — the film argues that “in a culture where all forms of racism are being monitored, called out and held accountable, one form is apparently invisible.”

Can we fight antisemitism without losing our sense of humor?

If a comic with a huge following like Dave Chappelle goes over the line, he will immediately be put under a societal microscope that will analyze and respond from every possible angle, as I’m doing now.

If you run an organization that fights antisemitism, or simply cares for the welfare of the Jewish community, it’s almost certain that you will feel obligated to respond. Many of those responses follow the usual dance of “expose, condemn and ask for an apology.”

Chappelle himself poked fun at that dance at the start of his monologue: “Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared. I denounce antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”

Chappelle exposed the uneasy truth of celebrities getting caught saying something offensive and then releasing a statement that everyone knows was written by a PR handler. By revealing the goal of “buying yourself some time,” he captured the phoniness of the whole exercise.

That was cutting and funny. It’s when he played up antisemitic tropes around the “all powerful” Jew that he entered dicey territory.

“I’ve been to Hollywood,” he said. “And I don’t want y’all to get mad at me, I’m just telling you this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like a lot.”

Perhaps realizing he was on sensitive ground, he called the idea that Jews run show business a “delusion,” but then added: “It’s not a crazy thing to think. But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this.”

In other words, it’s not crazy to think that Jews run the show; just don’t say it out loud.

Whether he intended it or not, that “hush hush” vibe suggests mystery and conspiracy, precisely the ancient trope that fuels Jew-hatred and makes so many Jews nervous.

Which brings us back to the “Chappelle trap.” It’s one thing to fight antisemitism when it comes from places like a neo-Nazi march or a BDS group or even celebrity musicians or athletes. None of those people make a living by making us laugh.

Chappelle does.

Because Chappelle plays in the very Jewish playground of comedy, it makes it that much harder to calibrate our response. How do we fight a comic without losing our sense of humor, without losing what made America love us in the first place? At what point do we say, “We can’t take this joke because it goes too far?”

If the ritual of “expose, condemn and ask for an apology” is phony anyhow, is it worth losing our sense of humor? And does complaining so loudly, as much as it makes us feel good, make things better or worse?

In the classic Jewish tradition, I have more questions than answers.

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11/18 Links Pt2: Theodor Herzl was gone, but his message survived; BBC broadcasts folksongs that glorify attacks on Jews; FBI Director: Jewish Community Under Threat ‘From All Sides’

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Theodor Herzl was gone, but his message survived

Editor’s note: Excerpted from the new three-volume set “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings” edited by Gil Troy, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People, now available at www.theljp.org. This is the 11th in a series.

In 1897, Theodor Herzl essentially described himself when he wrote about a man who once “deep in his soul felt the need to be a Jew,” and who, reeling from Jew-hatred, watched “his soul become one bleeding wound.” Finally, this man “began to love Judaism with great fervor.”

In this short story, “The Menorah,” Herzl saluted his step-by-step Judaization and Zionization. Celebrating Hanukkah, he delighted in the “growing brilliance” candle by candle, gradually generating more and more light.

The “occasion became a parable for the enkindling of a whole nation.” Flipping from the reluctant, traumatized Jew he had been to the proud, engaged Jew he was surprised to see in the mirror, Herzl admitted: “When he had resolved to return to the ancient fold and openly acknowledge his return, he had only intended to do what he considered honorable and sensible. But he had never dreamed that on his way back home he would also find gratification for his longing for beauty. Yet what befell him was nothing less.”

Herzl concluded: “The darkness must retreat.”

Seven years later, Herzl spelled out Zionism’s dynamic power, its spillover effects. “For inherent in Zionism, as I understand it, is not only the striving for a legally secured homeland for our unfortunate people, but also the striving for moral and intellectual perfection,” he wrote.

This vision made Herzl a model liberal nationalist. He believed that “an individual can help himself neither politically nor economically as effectively as a community can help itself.”

Mark Regev: Did Israel's famed diplomat Abba Eban lack clout back home?

The 20th anniversary of the passing of Israel’s legendary foreign minister Abba Eban on November 17 is an opportunity to ask whether the acclaimed diplomat, with his stellar global reputation, was as effective in defining Israeli policy as he was in advocating it abroad.

An outstanding student at England’s Cambridge University, Eban graduated in 1938 with an exemplary triple first, positioning him to pursue a lifetime career as a respected academic.

But the South Africa-born Eban could not sit out the impending world crisis that would so heavily impact the Jewish people. Drawn to Zionism, he worked at the London headquarters of the World Zionist Movement under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann (who later became Israel’s first president).

With the outbreak of World War II, Eban joined the British military to fight the Nazis, serving as an intelligence officer in Mandatory Palestine. Discharged at the end of the war, Eban joined the staff of the Jewish Agency’s political department and was sent to New York where he became the Jewish Agency’s liaison with the UN’s Special Committee on Palestine, helping steer it toward recommending Jewish statehood. Subsequently, Eban was part of the lobbying effort that produced the necessary two-thirds majority General Assembly vote for partition on November 29, 1947.

After successfully orchestrating Israel’s acceptance to the UN in May 1949, Eban became the Jewish state’s permanent representative to the organization. In parallel, he also served as Israel’s ambassador to the US, concurrently working in both Washington and New York throughout the 1950s.

Eban was a celebrity. His remarkable intellectual and oratorial prowess made him one of the foremost English speechmakers of the period, on a par with Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy. Henry Kissinger wrote: “I have never encountered anyone who matched his command of the English language. Sentences poured forth in mellifluous constructions complicated enough to test the listener’s intelligence and simultaneously leave him transfixed by the speaker’s virtuosity.”

Howard Jacobson: Ulysses Shmulysses

Homeric he is not; but a hero for our time he is. Ulysses is first and foremost a comedy of exile. Joyce wrote it while living in Trieste, Zurich, and Paris. That Dublin went on calling to him throughout the years he lived elsewhere is clear from the novel’s intense recreation of the city’s bursting vitality. But novelists thrive on being away, and Joyce needed to be anywhere but Dublin, free from Irish politics, the church, and his own memories of personal and professional failure. Leopold Bloom is not given that choice; Joyce does not buy him a ticket from Dublin to Tiberias. But he is already, in his Jewishness, exile enough for Joyce. Behind the epic figure of Odysseus, in this novel, looms the shadow of the mythical Wandering Jew who, for having jeered at Jesus on the way to the cross, is doomed to roam the earth until the end of human time. Call him a figment of early Christian antisemitism. And while antisemitism isn’t a major theme in Ulysses, it shows itself with some unexpected savagery from time to time as in the figure of the headmaster Mr. Deasy who gets a kick out of declaring “Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the Jews … and do you know why? She never let them in. That’s why.” “That’s not life for men and women,” Bloom responds, “insult and hatred.” Those who are not let in, must find somewhere else to go.

This has been in large part the Jewish story for 2,000 years. And the homeless Jew is the metaphorical undercurrent of Ulysses. Joyce is said to have worked up the the character of Leopold Bloom from the Jews he met in the course of his own wanderings in Trieste and Zurich. He must have studied them attentively, for Bloom is no mere token Jew. In his queer lapses from Judaism, mistaking words and confusing events, he is every inch the part-time, no longer practicing Jew, making the best of the diaspora, more Jewish to others than to himself.

And in him, unexpectedly but triumphantly, Joyce sees a version of his own rejections and rebuffs. Without going into what we know or think we know of Joyce’s own sexual predilections, it is accepted that there are similarities between Bloom’s submissiveness and his creator’s, and that Joyce chose Bloom’s Jewishness as the perfect vehicle to express the passive, much put-upon and all-suffering openness to life that he needed to drive—or, rather, be driven by—this novel. At home in being far from home, content to be cuckolded and remaining in love with the wife who cuckolds him, pessimistic and yet happy enough, dialectical, pedantic—in one lunatic scene he morphs into “The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft who tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science … produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centre”—Bloom makes being a stranger in a strange land an enticing condition.

One of the best jokes made about Bloom is that he was once a traveler for blotting paper. His absorbency might not make him the most forceful husband for Molly, but it is the key to the novel’s plenty. With Bloom around to soak in every misadventure without complaint, there’s no limit to what Joyce might plausibly invent. Ulysses first appeared in 1922. Worse things than exile were still to happen to Jews. And for many novelists in the ensuing years, the Jew would become the perfect protagonist, the very model of humanity in extremis—homeless, tragic, patient, funny. But James Joyce got there first.

La Revue Blanche

The Dreyfus affair was not the only social battle in which the Revue engaged. In 1897, across two issues, it published a remarkable “Enquete sur la Commune,” a series of brief, firsthand accounts of the great uprising of 1871 whose specter still haunted France. A century and a half later it remains one of the best accounts of that event.

The repressive legislation passed in response to the anarchist bombing wave of the early 1890s, laws which effectively banned anarchist propaganda and activity of any kind, was harshly criticized in the pages of La Revue blanche. The strongest criticism was an article signed “Un Juriste.” The author described the legislation as, “Everyone admits that these laws never should have been our laws, the laws of a republican nation, of a civilized nation, of an honest nation. They stink of tyranny, barbarism, and falsehood.” The pseudonymous author was the future three-time prime minister of France, Léon Blum.

An 1898 volume of anti-militarist articles released by the review’s book publishing arm, provocatively titled L’Armée contre la Nation (the army against the nation) would lead the minister of war to press a charge of defamation against the publishers, a charge the Natansons were able to successfully defend themselves against by claiming the book contained nothing but articles that had already been published elsewhere and not been found criminal.

By the turn of the century French intellectuals began withdrawing from the political field. Charles Péguy later described the letdown felt during and after the Dreyfus affair by lamenting that “everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.” At the same time, the editorial staff and stable of writers at the review had turned over several times. One of its later editors, Urbain Gohier, was a barely disguised antisemite who would become an important figure on the anti-Jewish fringe. Yet the quality of the contributors was still high. If Mallarmé’s poetry no longer appeared in its pages, the young Guillaume Apollinaire did. Alfred Jarry became a regular contributor, the Revue publishing his masterpiece, Ubu Roi, as well as Octave Mirbeau’s classic Diary of a Chambermaid, serially and in book form by its Editions de la Revue blanche. That enterprise also published what is considered to be France’s first bestseller, a translation of—of all things—the Pole Henryk Sinkiewicz biblical epic Quo Vadis.

By the first years of the 20th century only one Natanson brother, Thadée, remained on the magazine. Embroiled in a lengthy divorce, he seemed to have grown tired of the magazine. It was losing money, but then, according to Thadée’s wife, later famous as Misia Sert, that had always been the case. In 1903 La Revue blanche published the last of its 237 issues. Its closing was in no way an indication of failure. It had set out to be the voice of a new France, of a more open country, both politically and culturally, and was, in the end, both its begetter and its voice.

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11/17 Links Pt2: Antisemitism should test America’s conscience; Liberal network funnels cash to charity sponsoring Palestinian terror-linked group; Robert Clary, Corporal LeBeau on ‘Hogan’s Heroes,’ Dies at 96

From Ian:

Antisemitism should test America’s conscience

The memory of the brutal Holocaust may be fast fading; yet, the evil that brought it about appears to be creeping upon us, once again. Hate speech, defamation, history revision and violence are being directed towards Jews of all ages. Perpetrators appear to be gradually “testing the waters” to see what they can get away with before upping the ante of hostilities; especially in a freedom of speech driven America.

Enemies of Jews recognize now, unlike in times gone by, that Jews no longer stand alone, and will not quietly succumb to another existential threat. This is due, in no small part, to the existing sovereign State of Israel, which now serves as a vocal advocate and refuge for Jews since its rebirth in 1948. Anti-Jewish forces recognize that Israel will not sit idly by, while the blood of our people is spilt; as was the case in its absence, during the 1930’s and 40’s; enabling the “Final Solution” Holocaust.

Indigenous Israel is and never was merely incidental to Judaism, but rather integral to the Jewish faith and its survival. Our enemies appreciate this reality. The protection afforded is so formidable that those who hate us have come to the conclusion that they must first eliminate Israel before challenging our Jewish viability. To assist in their cause and by trial and error, they came upon diversionary tactics; including cloaking their hostility towards Jews under the guise of ‘Anti-Zionism.’

This augmented with the malicious “Boycott, Divestment and Sanction terror tactics (B.D.S.),” has gained traction within the media and support from some, self-labeled progressive politicians including a number who appear to reside within the legislative branch of our government; if not covertly elsewhere, as well.

Ignoring the present day escalating antipathy towards Israel and by extension towards Jews in Israel, Europe and now in the United States, is only serving to reinforce contempt for them, in general. The ugliness manifests through opportune acts of targeted property destruction, including defacing head-stones of our dead and violence towards our living where they feel they can get away with it.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper: Is Germany ending its ‘culture of memory’ of the Holocaust?

If the Israelis and Zionists are today’s Nazis, they should be attacked on the streets of Berlin, London, and Los Angeles. Germans may read that last year there was another 29% spike in antisemitic crimes in their cities – 3,027 in 2021. But why should they care? After all, they weren’t alive during World War II, let alone personally linked to Nazi Holocaust. In addition, in 2022, human rights NGOs like Amnesty International paint Israel as an apartheid state and antisemitic diplomats are given free rein to crank out one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the UN Human Rights Council and General Assembly. Meanwhile, the German cultural elite, instead of rallying behind beleaguered Jewish citizens, greenlighted and defended a prestigious art exhibition rife with ugly antisemitic stereotypes.

And German Jews woke up on the anniversary of Kristallnacht to this catchy campaign on the KFC app: “Memorial Day of the Reichspogromnacht [Kristallnacht]: Treat yourself to more tender cheese with the crispy chicken. Now at KFCheese!”

Any wonder why a prominent German Jewish leader just announced he can’t live in Germany anymore? He’s leaving for Israel and urging the rest of German Jewry to follow.

It’s small solace that Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, had to personally intervene with the secretary-general of the Goethe Institute to cancel the event entirely.

Before it is too late, it’s time for Germany’s political and cultural elite to denounce all those who facilitate the demonization of Israelis; time to hold antisemites accountable for their deeds and crimes, whether from far right neo Nazis, Islamists, or Jew-haters from the far left; time to end blatant antisemitic exhibitions to dress up pornographic Jew-hatred as artistic freedom; time for all German states, cities, and municipalities to fully adopt and implement the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism; and to endorse the Bundestag vote that labeled the anti-peace Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement as antisemitic.

For decades, Germany and Israel and Jews the world over have worked hard to rebuild relations between our people in the wake of the Shoah. But where are the German voices today that rebuke those who demonize Zionists as Nazis at home, and that speak out in the face of the Iranian regime’s serial Shoah denial? Where is the public display of solidarity with Jews?

Eight decades after the Shoah, Germany must connect younger generations to the nation’s self-declared culture of memory, or it will wake up one day soon to see Hitler’s dream of a Germany that is Judenfrei, free of any Jews, become a reality.

Liberal dark money network funnels cash to charity sponsoring Palestinian terror-linked group

AFGJ, which also got $210,000 from the New Venture Fund in 2020, is based in Arizona. The self-billed "progressive" and "anti-capitalist" group is an offshoot of the Nicaragua Network, a group that backed the socialist Sandinista political regime in Nicaragua.

Samidoun, which is one of up to 130 projects that AFGJ sponsors, was designated a terrorist group by Israel in February 2021 for operating as an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. Samidoun aims to free Palestinian prisoners, who in many cases have ties to the PFLP, according to NGO Monitor, an Israeli watchdog group.

Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy found in a 2019 report that one Samidoun activist was "trained by" the Islamist terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon. That activist allegedly paid money to PFLP activists in Belgium.

On the heels of this report, Mastercard, Visa, and American Express said they would not allow their services to be used by Samidoun. Similarly, Paypal, Plaid, and Donorbox, three major global payment providers, shut down online donation portals for Samidoun in 2019 because of its PFLP ties.

In October, the Netherlands banned Samidoun's leaders from entering the European Union. Discover, the credit card company, said in 2021 it would quit processing donations to AFGJ because of its ties to Samidoun.

"If you have a mechanism that enables regular Americans to give money to a terrorist organization, that is a problem," Itai Reuveni, a spokesman for NGO Monitor, told the Washington Examiner.

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When is an Antisemite not an Antisemite? When it’s Dave Chappelle Defending His Antisemitic Friends (Judean Rose)

Dave Chappelle made it onto my Comprehensive List of Antisemitic Celebrities already a year ago. That’s approximately when his offensive Netflix comedy special, “The Closer” was first aired. The special included a joke about making a movie called “Space Jews.” It was masterful. No one could ever have imagined that so many antisemitic tropes could be packed into so few sentences: 

In my movie idea, we find out that these aliens are originally from earth. That they’re from an ancient civilization that achieved interstellar travel and left the earth thousands of years ago,” he said. “Some other planet they go to, and things go terrible for them on the other planet, so they come back to earth, [and] decide that they want to claim the earth for their very own. It’s a pretty good plot-line, huh? I call it ‘Space Jews.’

Let’s unpack that.

1.       Jews aren’t human. They’re “alien.”

2.       The Jews weren’t expelled from their homeland, but left for the Diaspora of their own volition, having “achieved interstellar travel.”

3.       Jews didn’t like the way they were treated in space/Europe, what with all the pogroms and the Holocaust and such, so they came back to earth/Israel to claim it for themselves. Of course, they don’t plan to stop there: the (Space) Jews are aiming for world domination.

The joke "works," so to speak. We know that Chappelle drove home his point, that the underlying meaning of Space Jews was received loud and clear. We know this from the reaction of at least one audience member who called out, “Free Palestine!”

The Jews Are White and Rich

But wait. There’s more. In case you did somehow manage to miss Chappelle’s meaning, or decided to give his short detour into Nazi ideology a pass, he revisits the joke some 30 minutes later.

There was a black man in South Carolina during slavery who somehow got granted his freedom by his so-called master. And when his master granted him the freedom he also gave him a plot of land. Now it turns out this brother was brilliant. He had a good eye, good knack for farming. And he farmed this plot of land very successfully and made a lot of money, and this is where the story gets crazy. When he got all that money this [guy] bought some slaves… Not only was he a slave owner, he became a slave breeder. And employed tactics that were so cruel even White slave owners were like, “Yo, my man.” He was a wild dude, but he did it just because that’s what successful people did at the time. He just wanted to be down, what a f**** tragedy. How can a person that went through slavery perpetuate the same evil on a person that looks just like him? It’s mind blowing. And shockingly, they’re making a movie about him. Ironically… It is called Space Jews.

So let's take a closer look. Unpacking Chappelle’s revisionist Jewish history of the South, we find that:

1.       At one time, Jews were oppressed and enslaved like blacks, but the whites let the Jews into their secret cabal of whiteness. The other whites then gave these Jewish “whites” land and their freedom.  

2.       The Jews were clever and sly, so the plantations they built did well and they got rich (like they always do).

3.       Once the Jews were rich, they forgot they themselves had been slaves in Egypt and enslaved the black man, treating him cruelly and subjecting him to all kinds of perversions. So shocking were these ugly Jewish deeds that even the (non-Jewish) white slave owners were appalled and took pains to protest.

4.       When confronted by the other whites, says Chappelle, the Jews made excuses for their horrid behavior to blacks. “It’s what successful people do," said the Jews, by Chappelle's account. "It’s what people did at that time to get ahead,” the Jews would say, according to Chappelle.

The Evil Jews Enslaved the Blacks

Chappelle, describing the Jews as evil, asks a question based on lies: How can a person that went through slavery perpetuate the same evil on a person that looks just like him? 

What is Chappelle REALLY asking? It's this:

• How can the Jews, who were once slaves, enslave the black man? 
• How can the Jews do the same things to the blacks, perpetrate the same evils, that the Egyptians once did to the Jews?

Arriving at the end of his "joke," Chappelle lands back where he started, at the movies: Not only is “the Jew” a cruel, rich, evil white oppressor of the black man, but he is celebrated for that fact in the movies and in Hollywood itself, which of course, is dominated by . . . “the Jew.”

Despite the overt antisemitism contained in Chappelle’s special, the Wikipedia entry on "The Closer" says not a peep on this subject. The entry does mention the Space Jews joke, but spells “Jews” with a lower case “j.” Under “critical reception” the entry quotes from Eric Deggan’s critical NPR review, decrying Chappelle for oversimplifying hate of various kinds.

"Untangling homophobia, transphobia, racism and white privilege requires a lot more effort and understanding than Chappelle makes here."

Wikipedia Buries the "A" Word

But the quote cited makes no mention of understanding or “untangling” antisemitism. That’s because Wikipedia wants you to believe that antisemitism doesn’t really signify in the official woke list of “hates.” Even Wikipedia, however, can’t quite avoid airing the truth. It would be too obvious an omission. Hence, we find the “A” word at last at the bottom of the page, in a footnote, in teeny letters, a further quote from Eric Deggan:

“[Chappelle knows] reviewers like me will quote the joke and criticize him for it, which I am. I don't really care what point he's trying to make; a joke that sounds like antisemitism gets a hard pass from me.”

Even a reviewer at the woke NPR knows that Chappelle is an antisemite. Wikipedia, however, saw it fit to bury that fact. Wikipedia was happy to note however, that "The Closer" “received various award nominations including for two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Variety Special and Directing for a Variety Special.” 

Vindication! Not only did Chappelle get away with his antisemitic jokes, but he was nominated for awards in two separate categories! Jew-hate, for the win!

"Buying Time" Through False Contrition

Against this background, we arrive at today's big story: Dave Chappelle’s newest monologue, a defense of Kanye that further smears and maligns the Jewish people. It’s in his opening, where Chappelle suggests that if you want to be free to talk smack about kikes and still make money, you’ve got to dissemble and apologize to "the Jew”:

Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared. I denounce antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.

We'd already forgotten about Space Jews, but with Ye in the news, Chapelle decided to ride the tail of West's sudden notoriety, and make himself relevant, by reminding us that he too is an antisemite. How best might he illustrate this fact other than to use his platform to let us know that every time someone references “the Jews,” something bad happens to blacks.

I gotta tell you guys, I’ve probably been doing this for 35 years now and early my career, I learned that there are two words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence and those words are “The” and “Jews.” Never heard someone do good after they say that.

Most terrifying thing I've ever seen on American television. https://t.co/z4R10j7SWW

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) November 13, 2022

Jews are the least homogeneous people on Earth. Saying "The Jews" believe something, control something, changes the observation into a conspiracy theory. And that's what makes it antisemitic.

— Elder of Ziyon 🇮🇱 (@elderofziyon) November 13, 2022

"Deathcon 3 on the Jews" a Nothing Burger

Chappelle wants us to know that the whole Kanye thing is a tempest in a teapot—that no one even remembers how the whole thing started. Chappelle depicts as a minor event Kanye’s threat to go “deathcon 3” on the Jews. Just innocent, meaningless, harmless words. An empty threat.

After all, what exactly can Kanye do to “the Jews?” Nothing. It was all just words.  

Can’t even remember how it started. I vaguely remember it started with a tweet — a strange tweet. It was like, “I’m feeling a little sleepy, I’m gonna get me some rest, but when I wake up, I’m gonna go DEFCON 3! On the Jews!’ And then he just went to bed. I was up all night worried. What is he going to do to the Jews?

Dave Chappelle’s SNL skit was a meticulous & calculated move to desensitize the population from antisemitism, getting society to laugh at Jewish traumas/struggles, and normalizing historic tropes by manipulating the average person’s pain and redirecting their reactions onto Jews.

— Rudy Rochman (@rudy_rochman) November 13, 2022

Some of Chappelle’s Best Friends are Jewish

Naturally, some of Chappelle’s best friends are Jewish, which is why he can say these things.

I grew up around Jewish people. I have a lot of Jewish friends so I’m not freaked out by your culture. I know a little bit about it just from hanging around like, yeah let’s get out after school tomorrow and it’s like we can’t go out it’s sha na na tomorrow. Like, what? What is sha na na? I had so many questions, like why do some of your people dress like Run-DMC?

Chappelle next sets his sights on Adidas, not without cause. From Chappelle’s point of view, Adidas has a huge hutzpah ending Kanye’s contract, that is considering the sports shoe company's own notorious antisemitic past history of cozying up to the Third Reich. Chappelle says that Adidas cut ties with Kanye to erase the past and placate “the Jews.” About this, at least, Chappelle is not wrong:

We went on [the podcast] Drink Champs again and this time he was all mad about something. He said “I can say antisemitic things. And Adidas can’t drop me.” Adidas dropped that [expletive] immediately.  Ironically, Adidas was founded by Nazis and they were offended. The student has surpassed the teacher.

"The student has surpassed the master." The West family in better times, all smiles, all chummy with Louis Farrakhan, antisemite par excellence.

The Jews are a Hollywood Mob

But now as in the "The Closer," Chappelle must then go back to his favorite target, the Jews. This time he has the Jews dominating Hollywood. He likens them to a mob.

It was a big deal. [Ye] broke the show business rules. You know, because it’s a rule, the rule of perception. If they’re Black, then it’s a gang, if they’re Italians a mob, but if they’re Jewish, it’s a coincidence and you should never speak about it.

And of course, says Chappelle, the movie touted by Irving was only some minor weirdness, as was the Holocaust, and anyway, “the Jews” always blame their troubles on the blacks.

Kanye got in so much trouble, Kyrie got in trouble. Kyrie Irving posted a link to a movie that he had seen on Amazon, no caption on the post or nothing like that. But apparently this movie had some, I don’t know antisemitic tropes or something, and it was a weird title like “From He-Bro to Negro” or something … He was slow to apologize and then the list of demands to get back in their good graces got longer and longer and this, this is where, you know, I draw the line I know that Jewish people have been through terrible things all over the world but you can’t blame that on Black Americans, you just can’t…Because Kyrie Irving’s Black ass was nowhere near the Holocaust. In fact he’s not even certain it existed.

 

Barnes and Noble thankfully pulled the grossly antisemitic book “Hebrews to Negroes” from its shelves.

Your turn @Amazon @ajassy pic.twitter.com/jnumngRfM8

— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) November 15, 2022

“In Hollywood—It’s a LOT of Jews”

As Chappelle describes it, it’s an all-out Jewish invasion. The Jews, he says, have taken over Hollywood but you’re not supposed to talk about it, or you’ll be called an antisemite:

In Hollywood — don’t want ya’ll to get mad at me. I’m just telling you this is just what I saw. It’s a lot of Jews. Like, a lot. But that doesn’t mean anything. There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri … I can see if you had some kind of issue, I mean, you might go out to Hollywood and you might start connecting some kind of lines and maybe adopt the delusion that the Jews run show business. It’s not a crazy thing to think. 

But it’s a crazy thing to say out loud.

Everyone knows Kanye is nuts. Chappelle posits himself as a teller of difficult truths. It's worse.

— Adam Feldman (@FeldmanAdam) November 13, 2022

Actually, no Dave Chappelle. It’s not crazy to say so at all. The Jews have been successful and predominant in many spheres (oops, I said "the Jews" and nothing bad happened). What IS crazy and hateful to say is that Jewish success is due to some kind of secret behind-the-scenes stuff. Some white conspiracy. 

Well, let me tell you something Dave Chappelle. Jews are not white. And it’s called “sweat equity.” We worked hard and sweated blood to get to where we are. Perhaps you did the same. 

The Jews Stifle Free (Hate) Speech

Dave Chappelle tricked Lorne Michaels, the creator of SNL, into clearing his monologue by switching out his monologue during the rehearsal. It makes sense Chappelle would do this, try to put one over on Michaels. Michaels is a Jew. And Chappelle says that “the Jews” use antisemitism to stifle free speech. If Chappelle hadn't tricked Michaels into thinking his monologue was going to be about something else entirely, Dave wouldn't have been allowed his (antisemitic) say:

It shouldn’t be this scary to talk about anything. It’s making my job incredibly difficult. And to be honest with you, I’m sick of talking to a crowd like this. I love you to death and I thank you for your support. And I hope they don’t take anything away from me… whoever they are.

He's wrong of course. The rantings of Ye, Irving, Chappelle, and James Baldwin before them, are not free speech to be tolerated, but hate speech that should be given no quarter and never condoned. It begins with speech and ends with people dying by violent means. And the people who do the dying are "the Jews," despite them conquering Hollywood and enslaving the world and all that.

Chappelle's latest monologue contains all the hallmarks of classic black antisemitism. "The Jews" are white. "The Jews" are rich. "The Jews" enslave the black man. "The Jews" are cruel. "The Jews" are a mob; they have taken over Hollywood; they stifle free speech and force the black man to bow his head and apologize for his hate, a hate that is only natural, in the light of the awful phenomenon that is "The Jew."  

Like regular, garden-variety antisemitism, black antisemitism is informed by hate and superstition, and not a little jealousy. And of course, hate and jealousy don’t do well in a vacuum—these emotions require a scapegoat, and somehow that scapegoat is always “the Jew.”

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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