Ice Cube Doubles Down on Black Anti-Semitism after Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Condemns It

Rapper Ice Cube has doubled down on expressions of black anti-Semitism after Kareem Abdul Jabbar criticized it. Story here

The Bieganski chapter on black anti-Semitism would be helpful to anyone attempting to understand it. 

American Celebrity Nick Cannon Spreads Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories; Blacks Are the "Real Jews."

Forbes reports that the American celebrity Nick Cannon is spreading the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Blacks are the "real Jews" and that Jewish people "stole" their identity from black people. Read more here. This conspiracy theory is not isolated. It has some purchase among some African Americans. It was the belief of the African Americans who committed terrorist acts against Jews in Jersey City, NJ late last year. 

The chapter in Bieganski the Brute Polak that focuses on Black-Jewish conflict is helpful in understanding this conflict. 

"Jewish Group Slams Polish Public TV for 'Hateful' Role in Presidential Race": Reuters

WARSAW (Reuters) - A leading Jewish group criticised Poland's public broadcaster on Friday for its "hateful" role in a tight presidential election race that pits the conservative incumbent against the liberal mayor of Warsaw.

AJC Central Europe, an advocacy group, pointed to a report on public broadcaster TVP's flagship news show on Thursday that asked if opposition candidate Rafal Trzaskowski would "comply with Jewish demands", touching on the sensitive issue of Jewish property restitution.

Home to one of the world's largest Jewish communities before World War Two, Poland is the only European Union country that has not legislated on restoring property to pre-war Jewish owners or their descendants, despite U.S. pressure.

"What's wrong with Polish public TV?... Yesterday it again warned against 'satisfying Jewish demands'. Is that b/c you assume this hateful campaign would speak to many Poles? Think abt what message that sends," the AJC tweeted...

Full story here

Robert E. Lee does not equal Hitler. Slavery does not equal the Holocaust. A plantation does not equal Auschwitz. Our hearts and minds can respect both slavery and the Holocaust without entering into a distasteful Suffering Olympics.

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Robert E. Lee does not equal Hitler. Slavery does not equal the Holocaust. A plantation does not equal Auschwitz. Our hearts and minds can respect both slavery and the Holocaust without entering into a distasteful Suffering Olympics.

I devote one chapter of Bieganski, the Brute Polak Stereotype to a discussion of how the mainstream press treated accounts of conflict between African Americans and Jews. I did this as a control. I argue in the book that the mainstream press does not accurately depict conflict between Poles and Jews. To argue that point, a control group was helpful.

One aspect of both black-Jewish and Polish-Jewish conflict is what is sometimes labeled the Suffering Olympics. The Suffering Olympics is a distasteful exercise. Participants display their wounds, in a competition for compassion, legitimacy, and whatever other benefits accrue to those who can prove that they have suffered.

The Suffering Olympics play a role in Polish-Jewish relations, and that is regrettable. It is not helpful to compare what happened to Polish Jews to what happened to Polish non-Jews. Some individual Poles went through every horror that individual Jews went through, from round-ups to concentration camps to mass murder. A larger percentage of Poles survived.

The Jewish presence in Poland was wiped out. It was a true genocide. There were too many Polish non-Jews for the Nazis to commit an equal genocide against them. There are too many other factors to mention here, but all factors considered, it is not helpful to engage in a Suffering Olympics event. Both sides should learn to respect what happened to the other.

The folly of Suffering Olympics is brought home to me when I think of something George Taliaferro said during a meeting with me and others in Bloomington, Indiana, years ago. He did not approve of anti-discrimination funding going to women or homosexuals because neither group suffered as black people did. He wanted the funding to go to African Americans on the IU campus. He mentioned bad things that happened to black people that don't happen to homosexuals or women. One could easily mention lynching, typically an atrocity that is committed against black people, but not against women or homosexuals. If you stop with that comparison, though, you are missing a big part of the story. Gay people and women have their own story to tell.

In recent days, conflict between blacks and Jews has flared up again. See posts here and here. NFL player DeSean Jackson posted that "Hitler was right." Former NBA player Stephen Jackson overtly cited Suffering Olympics tropes. "Your races pain doesn't hurt more than the next races pain. Don't act like your hardships or more devastating than ours" (sic).

In mainstream media and social media, Black Lives Matter proponents have justified the iconoclastic purge sweeping the land by saying, paraphrase, "You wouldn't want to go to Germany and see statues to Hitler. So you shouldn't want to see statues to Robert E. Lee."

This comparison is not helpful. One can respect the horrors of the slave trade without insisting that those horrors were identical to the Holocaust.

388,000 slaves were brought directly from Africa to the US, according to PBS. Wikipedia reports that more were brought into the US from the Caribbean, bringing the total to approximately 600,000.

By 1860, the black population of the US was 4.4 million. The population grew from c. 600,000 to 4.4 million by natural increase, that is, slaves having children who survived to adulthood to have children of their own. Source

In 1939, there were 9.5 million Jews in Europe.

In 1945, there were 3.8 million Jews in Europe. Source

Had the Allies lost, the Nazis would have succeeded in their goal of wiping out every Jew in Europe.

It's not just numbers that differentiate slavery from the Holocaust. Read accounts of life as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe. Read Elie Wiesel's Night or Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz. Read accounts by non-Jewish Poles, like The Auschwitz Volunteer about Witold Pilecki, and Taduesz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.

The last book contains an unforgettable passage. Borowski describes himself and other prisoners playing soccer during an arrival of Jews who are swiftly erased. "Between two throw-ins in a soccer game, right behind my back, three thousand people had been put to death." In 1951, when he was 28 years old, a few days after his daughter was born, Borowski put his head into an oven, breathed in gas, and died.

Compare these accounts of concentration camps to any given slave narrative, including those collected by the WPA. They clearly describe very different experiences.

Again, the Suffering Olympics obscure rather than clarify. The plantation was not the concentration camp, but the word "holocaust" does apply to slavery's overall impact on Africa and Africans.

To understand what the slave trade did to Africa as a continent, one must factor in the mass death of the Muslim Slave Trade. John Azumah says, "While the mortality rate of the slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as 10%, the percentage of the slaves dying in transit in the Tran-Saharan and East African slave market was a staggering 80 to 90% … While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated, and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth … However, a minimum of 28 million Africans were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since at least 80% of those captured by the Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave markets, it is believed that the death toll from 1,400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 million."

When you factor in those numbers, and the numbers of dead on the Middle Passage, yes, the word "Holocaust" is entirely apt. But that still does not make the American plantation Auschwitz, and it does not make Robert E. Lee Hitler. It makes the American plantation its own species of bad, and trying to make it Auschwitz doesn't help.

Former NBA Stephen Jackson Doubles Down with Anti-Semitism

"You know that for a fact? You know who the Rothschilds are? They own all the banks. ...

“I haven’t said one thing that’s untrue yet.

So I just read a statement that the Philadelphia Eagles posted regarding DeSean Jackson’s comments. He was trying to educate himself, educate people, and he’s speaking the truth, right? He’s speaking the truth. You know he don’t hate nobody, but he’s speaking the truth of the facts that he knows and trying to educate others. But y’all don’t want us to educate ourselves. If it’s talking about the Black race, y’all ain’t saying nothing about it. They killing us. Police killing us and treating us like s—. Racism at an all-time high. But ain’t none of you NFL owners spoke up on that. Ain’t none of you teams spoke up on that. But the same team had a receiver that  said the word, to say n— publicly! And they gave him an extension! I play for the Big3. We have a Jewish owner. He understands where we stand and some of the things we say, but it’s not directed to him. It’s the way we’ve been treated.

With all this I be saying, and all these facts I be saying too, I try to make everything understandable for y’all, how it ain’t rocket science, how it’s simple, right? And it is people that’s on the side with us. It is people that understand what we saying and not hearing to respond or not hearing to debate what we’re saying. It’s a lot of people that’s listening to us that understanding what we’re saying is right and understanding, we’re not saying that to demean another race. We’re saying it to educate people and understand why we’re hurt, why we want equality. And a lot of people know what’s been done to us. They just ain’t never had the conversation and ain’t never had the guts to admit it. I want to salute Steve Kerr for reaching out. I want to salute the coach from Minnesota for reaching out. I want to salute Mark Cuban for reaching out. I want to salute Adam Silver for reaching out. Because they understand. It ain’t about hate. We just want equality.


Let me say this, too, to finish that last message. I don’t give a f— who I offend. Ain’t nobody gave a f—about offending us all this time. Ain’t nobody standing up when people are saying s—, racist s—, about us. So, no. I don’t give a f—about offending nobody. And that’s just what it is. If you know me, you know I love everybody the same way. But what I’m standing for now – if you don’t understand it, then you never knew me. You was just around me for the wrong reasons. Love for all who have love for all. It’s that simple. If you don’t love everybody, then so be it. That’s on you. But I’m looking to offend you. I’m looking to piss you off. The days of you being comfortable and treating people like s—is over. Big facts.

Source of the above quotes and another source here

American Football Player Desean Jackson Posts Anti-Semitic Text, Praise of Hitler

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American football player DeSean Jackson has posted anti-Semitic material that echoes ideas that have some purchase among black anti-Semites. The idea is that Jews are faking it, and black people are the real descendants of the authors and main characters of the Bible. 

These ideas were held by the terrorists who carried out a terror attack against Jews in Jersey City, NJ, in late 2019. Read more on that attack here

Poland Stubbornly Continues to Refuse to Accept Responsibility for Nazism: The Forward

Author Joel Swanson 

A state-run Polish television network closely linked to President Duda recently claimed that his opponent wants to provide compensation to Jewish Holocaust survivors and their descendants for property stolen during the war. "Experts are certain," the TV presenter warned. "The stream of money that is flowing from the state budget into the pockets of Polish families will dry up if Trzaskowski, after a potential victory in the presidential election, seeks to satisfy Jewish claims."

President Duda's refusal to acknowledge any Polish complicity in the extermination of Poland's Jews reflects a distinction historian Deborah Lipstadt draws between "hard" and "soft" Holocaust denial. If "hard" denial means openly denying the existence of the gas chambers and death camps, "soft" denial is something harder to identify and, in many ways, more pernicious.

It means blaming the Germans for the murder of every single Jew who died during the war, allowing all other nations to evade responsibility. It means claiming all Poles suffered equally during the German occupation, thereby erasing the specificity of Jewish suffering.

The German occupiers were unable to distinguish between Polish Jews and non-Jews on their own, and so turned to Polish police officers to identify the Jews in their midst. Grabowski concludes that "without the Polish police, the Germans would not have succeeded in their plan."That's the history President Duda does not want Poles to accept, because then they might have to accept responsibility for making restitution today. Far easier to portray the Poles as passive victims of the Germans.

Something similar is happening in the United States, where Vice President Mike Pence recently refused to say "Black lives matter," instead insisting, "all lives matter." Pence's refusal is not actually about affirming the universal value of human life, but about denying that the United States has a long history of anti-Blackness, institutionalized through federal government policy, which requires specifically pro-Black policies to address its effects today.let's condemn Duda's anti-Semitism, and his refusal to accept Polish responsibility for the Holocaust. 

Joel Swanson is a contributing columnist for the Forward and a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, studying modern Jewish intellectual history and the philosophy of religions. Find him on Twitter @jh_swanson.

Read full article here. Excerpts above. 

Thanks to Hanna for sending this in.