Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada: Killed Not for the Color of His Skin but for His Jewish Faith (Judean Rose)

Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada died of his wounds three days after an Arab terrorist set off a bomb at the bus stop where Ben Ma’ada stood, awaiting his bus. Ben Ma’ada was murdered because he was a Jew, and he was buried as a Jew. But you might not have read about him in your newspaper. That’s because Ben Ma’ada doesn’t fit the CRT narrative of the Jew as white and privileged.  Privileged he was, as a Jew who “came home” to Israel from Ethiopia 21 years ago, but white he was, of a certainty, not. 

wtf is this wording? https://t.co/k80cWKFSjx

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) November 27, 2022

Not that it matters even one little bit. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. It’s not that we “don’t see color.” It’s that we don’t care. Ben Ma’ada died al Kiddush Hashem, in sanctification of God’s name, because he was murdered precisely for belonging to the Jewish nation. That makes him holy. In Hebrew, in fact, martyrs are referred to as kedoshim, holy ones.

Ben Ma’ada wasn’t one of those “we are the real Jews” like Kyrie Irving, Ye West, or the Black Hebrew Israelites, but an actual real Jew who had zero interest in a trinity, or even Malcolm X.

Black Hebrew Israelites out in force today, chanting “we are the real Jews” and “time to wake up,” as they marched towards the Barclay’s Center in support of Kyrie Irving’s return. pic.twitter.com/hUPbbHlsBg

— Ari Ingel (@OGAride) November 21, 2022

Kyrie Irving has a lot of support outside of Barclays Center today

(Via @PlainJaneDee_) pic.twitter.com/DQpSAJ0ool

— NBACentral (@TheNBACentral) November 20, 2022

Ben Ma’ada, after undergoing the Jewish purification ceremony, was buried in his tallit, his Jewish prayer shawl, like every other Israeli Jew. Those who paid their final respects, wore kippot, yarmulkes. 

The Black Hebrew Israelites, on the other hand, during their recent march on New York in support of Kyrie Irving distributed leaflets that left no doubt as to their religious affiliations, reading in part:

“The biblical Israelites are targeted and accused of hate day and night without rest. Our knowledge of our heritage and laws has been systematically removed from us through the monstrous holocaust known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They may lie to the world and deny us of our birthright, yet Jesus the Christ, our Black Messiah, confirms the truth of who we are. We are not antisemitic, we are Semitic.”

To the Black Hebrew Israelites, it is Black Christians who are the real Jews, a nonsensical idea. Because the Jewish belief in one God, a belief certainly shared by the Jewish martyr Ben Ma’ada, is the diametric opposite of a belief in a trinity. For a Jew, it’s simple: God cannot be both dead and alive, nor is he a son of himself, while somehow a father, all at one and the same time. These ideas are not consonant with Jewish thought and practice, and would not have resonated with Ben Ma’ada, because he was a Jew like any other Jew.

Ben Ma’ada’s belief system blows a gargantuan hole into the theory of African American/Arab intersectionality. From Eunice G. Pollack, a retired U. of North Texas professor of history and Jewish studies:

Decades before the current embrace of “intersectionality,” Black political and cultural militants promoted the narrative of the commonality of the oppression of African Americans and Arabs—both colonized by White/racist Jews. Convinced by the Arab League and the Organization of Arab Students, its army on the campus, that in contrast to Israel, which discriminated against people of color, the Arab states were racially egalitarian and that supporters of Israel were “accomplices of colonialism and imperialism,” they sought to forge an alliance with their brown brothers.

The Black Hebrew Israelites are not alone in speaking of Jews as “white” and “racist,” and Arabs as people of color. A foundational belief of the Nation of Islam, founded in the 1930s and associated today with Louis Farrakhan, is according to Pollack, “the delegitimization of Judaism—and the denigration of ‘white Jews.’” Meanwhile, the Black Lives Matter Movement speaks of the “racist” Jewish State, and the “struggle for freedom” of the “Palestinian” people of color.

Several Women’s March co-chairs were not only tied to Farrakhan but endorsed and amplified his antisemitic views. In 2016 and again in 2017, the co-chairs informed Jewish organizers that “You people hold all the wealth,” and that “Jewish people bore a special collective responsibility as exploiters of black and brown people” (McSweeney & Siegel, 2018; Pollack, 2019). It must be said that Tamika Mallory later clarified that they only meant “white Jews.”

Would Mallory have given Ben Ma’ada a pass as the “right kind” of Jew being that he was the “right kind” of color? Or would she have seen him as an accomplice “of colonialism and imperialism?” It certainly is confusing. You can see why it was just easier for the mainstream media not to say all that much about the murder of Tadasa Ben Ma’ada, who was not white, and could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be seen as oppressing people of color, being that he was, himself, a person of color AND a Jew. Not the fake kind of “Jew as Christian” Jew, but the real deal, born into the Mosaic faith.

But of course, these things are all in the eyes of the beholder. White supremacists hate Jews just as much, if not more than any BLM or NOI activist. Pamela Paresky notes this fact with some irony: “In the critical social justice paradigm, Jews, who have never been seen as white by those for whom being white is a moral good, are now seen as white by those for whom whiteness is an unmitigated evil.”

Paresky continues:

The subtlety is that, instead of targeting Jews directly, the target of critical social justice is “whiteness.” But this does nothing to protect Jews. In 2018, when Hasidic Jews were victims of a wave of violent attacks — a precursor to another cluster of bloody attacks to come a year later — Mark Winston Griffith, the executive director of the Black Movement Center in Crown Heights, told The Forward that some black Americans see Judaism as “a form of almost hyper-whiteness.”

You could have fooled the white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville, Virginia to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from a city park. “Jews will not replace us,” they chanted, looking like nothing so much as gleeful, blood-lusting Nazis at a Hitler rally. Here the word “replace” refers to the Great Replacement, known also as the white replacement or white genocide theory. In this conspiracy theory, in which white supremacist ideology is rooted, Jews promote mass immigration, intermarriage, and other phenomena that could lead to the “extinction of whites.”

And of course, Caryn Elaine Johnson, who adopted the insulting stage name “Whoopi Goldberg” called Jews and Nazis, “two white groups of people.” “If you’re going to do this, then let’s be truthful about it . . . these [Jews and Nazis] are two white groups of people.”

This clip of Whoopi Goldberg saying that the Holocaust was not about race is a great reminder that there have only been two Jewish co-hosts in the 25-year history of @TheView, and none since 2016. pic.twitter.com/ZlHBetzTfI

— Melissa Weiss (@melissaeweiss) January 31, 2022

Would Goldberg Johnson have referred to the bombing that took Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada’s life as two brown groups of people fighting it out? Likely not. In fact, it is more than likely that Goldberg Johnson has never had the chance to meet a “real Jew” like Israeli Jew Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada, may Hashem avenge his blood. Which may be the real lesson in all of this, which is that, as Paresky says, “Jews should never again accede to being defined and divided in racial terms.”

Nor should we ever again be driven off our land by people who pretend to inherit what God gave to the Jews—real Jews like Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma’ada, killed not for the color of his skin, but for his Jewish faith.

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11/28 Links Pt2: IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Is Only "Polarizing" to Israel's Detractors; Anti-Israel activists and human sacrifice; Ye x Milo x Fuentes

From Ian:

IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Is Only "Polarizing" to Israel's Detractors

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) "working definition" of antisemitism is not polarizing to anyone other than Israel's detractors and antisemites.

The IHRA definition has been adopted by three dozen nations, at least six Canadian provinces and numerous states in the U.S.

The IHRA's detractors refuse to acknowledge that modern antisemitism is often tied to the Jewish State (e.g., Jewish soldiers being called Nazis).

They accuse those of us who defend the definition of being "right-wing" and of "weaponizing antisemitism" in order to defend Israel.

This is meant to undermine our efforts to protect ourselves against hate.

In the case of the IHRA definition, it's often the same people who call for universal rights and freedoms who oppose those very same rights for the Jewish people, particularly as they define their relationship with the State of Israel.

The IHRA definition is not "polarizing" to anyone other than those who either lack an historical understanding or are with an agenda to exacerbate the problem of hate and defame the Jewish state.

Anti-Israel activists and human sacrifice

In the anti-Israel context, there is the more recent case of Rachel Corrie. A college senior, Corrie became a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a terror-connected NGO that exploits foreign activists in service of the Palestinian cause. It is likely that she had already been indoctrinated in anti-Israel ideology, but the ISM almost certainly compounded it by orders of magnitude via a cult-like environment of hate.

Corrie lived for some time in Gaza, where she became infatuated with the people and decided that Israel was committing genocide against them, in which, as an American, she was complicit. In 2003, she knelt in front of an Israeli bulldozer, ostensibly in protest of a house demolition. The driver could not see her, and she was crushed to death.

She has, of course, become a martyr, and her letters and emails have been transformed into books and plays. Yet what they reveal is a deeply insecure and troubled young woman, possessed by existential guilt and desperate to redeem herself. Corrie’s death, in other words, was less a tragic accident than a kind of seppuku—a ritual suicide that she hoped, perhaps unconsciously, would be a moral expiation. She did not come to this conclusion on her own. She was the victim of unscrupulous people who wanted, or at least knew they were likely to acquire, a martyr.

One should not look away from what this means: Emotional blackmail kills. It is a kind of murder. Murder at third hand, perhaps, but murder nonetheless.

It is also part of a very ancient tradition. What the blackmailers are after, in the end, is the most primal of all forms of absolution: the human sacrifice. It is sometimes an emotional sacrifice, but far too often it is also physical.

From their origins in prehistory, such sacrifices were, almost invariably, expiatory acts. They were attempts to redeem a person or a community from their sins, to appease the gods and turn them away from stern judgment. And above all, such sacrifices made the victim a sacred object.

There are many among us, often young and vulnerable, who wish to become sacred objects and are told that if they sacrifice themselves, whether in life or in death, they will become so. It is tragic that many choose to believe this, but that does nothing to redeem those who lead them to the altar.

Judaism has always seen human sacrifice as an abomination, which indeed it is. We should not forget this admonition. No one, however righteous they consider themselves to be, has the right to demand such things from anyone. Like the priests of Moloch, those who use emotional blackmail of vulnerable individuals to achieve such an end stand accused.

Ye x Milo x Fuentes

Stop me if you've ever heard this one before:

Fueled by his hatred of Jews, one of the most recognizable black man of his era decided to forge an alliance with one of its most high-profile white nationalist, or, at the very least, the one whose juvenile stunts attract the most attention. One of the men behind the scenes who worked on arranging the meeting is himself Jewish, though he has long repudiated his heritage, is known to have engaged in antisemitism, as well as for being a grifter, and is distrusted by many in the movement. On the other hand, he has shown an uncanny ability to ingratiate himself with its leaders and keep the spotlight on himself. All of this revolving around grand political ambitions on both sides.

Obviously, I'm referring to the infamous 1961 entente of George Lincoln Rockwell, Malcolm X, and Daniel Burros which culminated in years of friendly relationships between the American Nazi Party and the Nation of Islam.

On June 25th, 1961, ten members of the American Nazi Party quietly arrived at the Nation of Islam rally in Washington, DC. In the Uline arena, they were surrounded by more than 8000 members of the Nation of Islam. They were not there to disrupt, attack the attendants, to protest the speech; instead, they were front-row guests. That night, Elijah Muhammad had called in sick, so Malcolm X took the stage to give the keynote speech in his stead. Rockwell contributed $20 to the cause and, while having his picture snapped by Jewish photographer Eve Arnold, he barked at her, 'I'll make a bar of soap out of you.' (She answered, "As long as it isn't a lampshade”).

At first glance, it would seem highly bizarre that members of the American Nazi Party, in full regalia and occasionally Sieg Heiling, would be tolerated amongst the Black Nationalist movement. Still, it more than made sense once you realized that they shared the same antisemitism and views on racial separatism. There was also a historical precedent; the units described as the most vicious, brutal, and antisemitic of the SS were the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar, composed almost entirely of Muslims.

Eight months after their first public meeting, George Lincoln Rockwell addressed more than 12,000 black audience members at the Chicago International Amphitheatre, urging them to ally with Nazis to be truly uplifted. "You know we call you niggers," he addressed the crowd. "But wouldn't you rather be confronted by honest white men who tell you to your face what the others all say behind your back?". He later praised the Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad as the 'Adolf Hitler of the black man.'

The Decline of Islamism, and the Rise of the Muslim-American Far Left and Far Right

Born in St. Louis, Umar Lee (né Brett Darren Lee) converted to Islam at the age of seventeen, and was quickly drawn to its stringent Salafist form, and to Islamist political radicalism. He subsequently broke with extremism, although he remains a committed Muslim. In conversation with Dexter Van Zile, Lee discusses his own experiences—including a recent visit to Israel—and his observations about Islam in the U.S.
Islamism is no longer popular. Back in the day, it was very popular. . . . I attribute that to reality—the failure of the Arab Spring, the disaster of what happened in Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Islamist politics has become so unpopular in the Muslim world that historians in 100 years are going to write that there was a 40-year period—from the mid-to-late seventies until the late 2010s—of Islamist political revival that faded away after the Arab Spring. In the U.S. we don’t see people talk about Islamist politics.

Conversion had some negative consequences [for me]—a period of extremism and Islamist politics—but it also kept me out of trouble and away from a criminal lifestyle. You have to remember that a very high percentage of guys who grew up where I did ended up addicted to drugs, or alcoholics. Many didn’t live to see forty and quite a few didn’t make it to twenty-one. For all of the problematic aspects of the Muslim experience in America, there is a track record of conversion keeping some men off the streets and clean.

On the subject of how American Muslims fit into contemporary political divides, Lee comments:
What you’re increasingly seeing in the Muslim community in America is a gender divide. You’re seeing that progressive politics [are] very popular, especially with women, especially young women. We know after 9/11 there was [a] leftward shift in the American Muslim community. . . . But you’re [now] seeing an insurgency led by men, particularly younger men, that are rejecting this progressive shift. They’re rejecting it in very harsh terms and going very far to the right. What you’re seeing in the Muslim community is—especially the young people—the left, and now this segment of the far right, are really taking up all the oxygen and moderate politics is very unpopular.

Unfortunately, there is more uniformity when it comes to attitudes toward the Jewish state:
By far, the least popular thing you can do [in the Muslim community] is support Israel. I could get on video and drink liquor [or] smoke weed and people would say, “Hey everybody, no one’s perfect. Everyone makes mistakes.” I could be in a [pornographic film] and people would say, “Hey, well, . . . ” But support Israel? That is the worst thing that you can do.

When it comes to Israel, everyone is still unhinged. It doesn’t matter what segment of the communities they’re in. There are very few rational people. And even the rational people I talk to, [who] agree with me in private, won’t say anything in public.

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Keith Ellison is Offended (Judean Rose)

Rep. Keith Ellison (D), the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee says it is offensive that anyone would ask him to denounce antisemitism, "I got to tell you it is frustrating to be pulled out and be in... and it’s like it’s your daily moment to denounce anti-Semitism. We denounce it. We absolutely denounce it. We think it is reprehensible, murderous, and genocidal. And it offends me that anyone would insist that I do it one more time."

Oh yeah. Completely offensive. After all, why should the man be repeatedly asked to denounce antisemitism, just because he was in the room with Louis Farrakhan a long time ago er, not so long ago. For instance at the private dinner held by Farrakhan that Ellison attended back in 2013 (along with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani). Not to mention that time Ellison met with Farrakhan in the Nation of Islam leader’s hotel room for a long chat, WAY back in 2016.

Of course, if you ask Ellison, he’ll lie and say he hasn’t met with Farrakhan since 2006, when he first ran for Congress.  

Yes. Ellison has lied and been caught at it, scrambling after the fact and calling his intimate talk with Farrakhan in his hotel room, in 2016, a “chance meeting.”

Just a "chance meeting" with Farrakhan, the guy who said things like, "Jews were responsible for all of this filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out, turning men into women and women into men,” and “Let me tell you something, when you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.”

But what difference does it make what Farrakhan says? Words? They aren't a danger to anyone. Says Ellison:

"In Charlottesville last year they was marching through town yelling, ‘Jews will not replace us.’ Wasn’t no black people in that crowd.

"I gotta just say this to you. Any form of bigotry at all including antisemitism is going beyond the pale. But let’s keep in mind what is gonna kill somebody. Like what happened to Heather Heyer. Like the threats to synagogues."

Because expressions of antisemitism? Nope. That's not the start of anyone actually killing Jews. Right?

But we're not speaking of Hitler. We're speaking of the guy Ellison termed a “role model” in columns he wrote in the 80’s and 90’s, before he ever ran for public office (in 2006, around the time he denounced the Nation of Islam, lather, rinse, repeat). Which tells you something about the sincerity of Ellison’s denunciation of antisemitism. Because he's still hanging with the guy, with Farrakhan. As late as in 2016.

Now what would you think of me if I hung out with Hitler in his hotel room, just by chance? Arafat? Bashar Assad? Stalin? Wouldn’t you question the nature of that meeting, that association? My character??

Of course you would. But if you question the association between Ellison and Farrakhan, it’s a smear. And Ellison? He is frustrated.

"It is frustrating to be pulled out and, it’s like your daily moment to denounce antisemitism.”

The nerve of us. Asking the man to denounce antisemitism, again and again. Well, what does it actually matter that Ellison had an intimate chat with the man in his hotel room, because Farrakhan is irrelevant. Says Ellison.

“Look, I gotta be honest with you and tell you, this thing about Farrakhan being absolutely radioactive and then trying to connect anyone possible to him and then make them radioactive, is. . . Look, Farrakhan’s organization is tiny, they don’t have any influence, nobody listens to them, they don’t have any answers for anyone. Nobody’s paying any attention to them. I’m telling you, they’re not. I mean, give me credit for leading my life.

“Farrakhan is irrelevant. To any politics. Nobody ca- - is he working on health care, is he working on anything? Is anyone thinking oh yeah, I’m gonna be an antisemite like him. No one is saying that. What I’m telling you is, the only way Farrakhan gets in the news is if someone tries to say, oh this black person whose whole life is dedicated to human rights met him or saw him or was in a room with him. It’s a smear, Man. I’m sorry, it is a smear.”

Irrelevant. Just as Hitler was an irrelevant house painter.

Until he wasn't.

Now not only are we smearing Ellison and offending him by drawing attention to his association with Farrakhan, but Farrakhan should moreover, according to Ellison, be given a pass for his antisemitism.

Because slavery.

“Let me tell you, here’s the truth of the matter, if we’re more interested in that: Farrakhan is known best for things like the Million Man March, and fiery rhetoric condemning American racism. He’s also well known for his antisemitic scapegoating of the Jewish community. Because you’re talking about people who spent 250 years in slavery, another 100 hundred years in Jim Crow government sponsored segregation and it’s only been around 16 years since anything else has been going on and we still have disparities in every aspect of American life, the black community is susceptible to a person who is going to stand up and say what’s happening to us is wrong.”

Now THAT is interesting. Because Ellison is essentially saying black people get a pass for anti-Jewish bigotry because blacks were enslaved for 250 years followed by 100 years of Jim Crow.

Which is funny.

Because the Jews spent 410 years in slavery, followed by close to 3000 years of persecution which includes the systematic murder of over 6 million of the Jewish people.

And yet in the 1960’s, the Jews were empathetic to the plight of black Americans, helped to form the NAACP, and marched alongside black people in Selma.

No. It’s not slavery or the years of Jim Crow that give black people like Farrakhan a pass for his antisemitism.

Actually, nothing does that.

And frankly, Ellison taking offense at being accused of antisemitism, instead of owning up to it—to the association with the antisemitic Nation of Islam, and its antisemitic leader Farrakhan—is offensive.

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