Friday, January 17, 2020

BLACK HATE AND VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

In 2019 St. Louis—A 49% Black/43% White City—91% Of Known Homicide Suspects Are Black
Paul Kersey
01/09/2020
A+
|
a-
Earlier: His Name Is Mark Schlemmer: White Father of Two "Mistakingly" Gunned Down by Black Male in St. Louis and Was Mark Schlemmer's Killing A MURDER Gone Wrong?

Out of 318,000 people, St. Louis is 49.2 percent black 43.9 percent white (as of 2010 US Census).

Our good friends at the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department not only put out an annual report on crime broken down by race, but a weekly analysis of the yearly crime rate.

Also, conveniently, the SLMPD breaks out violent crime by the race of suspects.
For 2019, there were 194 homicides in the city, with 175 of the victims being black (90%). 

Suspects are known in only 42 percent of the homicides, with 75 of the suspects being black and 7 being white (there were 15 white victims of homicide in St. Louis in 2019).

Thus, in 2019 St. Louis, black suspects represent 91 percent of known suspects.
This means blacks are 9.28 times more likely than whites to be arrested for homicide in 2019 St. Louis. And remember: Only suspects are known in only 42 percent of the cases… odds the 58 percent of the remaining cases have a black suspect? Pretty high.


There’s a reason it’s called Bell Curve City…

Black Anti-Semitism: The New Blood Libel

Why the Left blames the attacks on White Supremacy.
 
Danusha V. Goska

On Sunday, January 5, 2020, I was one of an estimated 25,000 protesters participating in the Solidarity March against antisemitism. Chilled and tightly packed marchers began in Manhattan's Foley Square, stepped, painfully slowly, over the Brooklyn Bridge, and congregated in Cadman Plaza.
In Cadman Plaza, a protester held up a handmade sign reading "RACIST WHITE HOUSE." Another man persistently walked in front of that man, carrying a mass-produced "Solidarity. No Hate No Fear" sign. The first man shifted position, but the second man would not be deterred. He clearly did not want Trump-blaming to triumph. The two protesters' eventual shouting match typifies a national debate. How to understand recent attacks by blacks against Jews? Is it all Trump's fault, or the fault of white supremacists? Or is there such a thing as black antisemitism?
That sign was just one of many attempts to attribute recent attacks on Jews by blacks in the New York City area to Donald Trump or white people in general. Democratic Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib blamed "white supremacists." Tlaib is herself a Palestinian-American who has made inflammatory statements about Jews. Jewish Currents editor David Klion warned against "right-wing forces" "exploiting attacks" to "legitimize racism." An invited speaker at Sunday's rally said that racism was a problem for "the past three years," that is, the years that Donald Trump has occupied the White House.
This article hopes to demonstrate that, contrary to leftist historical revisionism, headline-making incidents of black antisemitism stretch back decades. Though separated by time and space, these incidents share enough features to be understood as a cultural trend, rather than as the bad behavior of isolated lone wolves.
Naming and analyzing black antisemitism, contra David Klion, is not a "right-wing," "racist" exercise. I'm Catholic and Polish-American and I have no problem calling out Catholic or Polish antisemitism. The folk motif of the blood libel, the derogatory Polish word "Zydokomuna," the radio broadcasts of Catholic priest Charles Coughlin, are all part of my heritage. I explicitly reject them, condemn them, and distance myself from them. No, all African Americans are not antisemitic; only a minority are, but denunciation is all the more vital and urgent given persistent efforts to deny the very existence of black antisemitism, and to silence any discussion of it.
Van Wallach, a Times of Israel blogger, quotes antisemitic themes in African American writing dating back to 1965. A previous Front Page article mentioned the 1995 Freddy's Fashion Mart protests that culminated in eight killings, the deadly 1991 Crown Heights pogrom, Khalid Abdul Muhammad's 1993 speech at Kean College, and the 2002 Amiri Baraka poem that blamed Jews for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Here's another incident. On January 17, 1994, Castlemont High School students went to the movies in Oakland, California. The movie was Schindler's List. The students talked and laughed continuously throughout the film until, one hour into the showing, theater manager Allen Michaan stopped the projector. Audience members, "shaking with anger," complained. "I've never seen such furious, hurt customers. Some were Holocaust survivors, and one woman was sobbing," Michaan said. The students were asked to leave and their departure was applauded by the audience. A Castlemont student said that audience members applauding her departure was "so uncomfortable." An NPR producer highlighted how victimized the students felt. "There was always a feeling of being policed or policing yourself if you're young, brown, and carefree in a white space. That can harden you really quick." Castlemont students' behavior made national news.
Castlemont is a low-ranked, mostly black and Hispanic high school. Recent news stories describe it as a place of shootings, homelessness, manipulated test scores, and football protests featuring Colin Kaepernick himself.
Back in 1994, prominent persons said that African American students should not be criticized for laughing at Jewish suffering because African American students have very hard lives and are victims of oppression. When Schindler's List producer and director Steven Spielberg visited the school, the Jerusalem Post reported on April 13, 1994, "About 100 students and others protested Spielberg's appearance, saying the Holocaust does not speak directly to them." "We don't have any problem talking about their Holocaust. But there hasn't been anything about the Asian holocaust, the Latino holocaust, the black holocaust," said one Castlemont student. Another student said, "It was long ago and far away and about people we never met. We don't know about those concentration camps, but I do hear a lot of Jew jokes." Another student said, "We see death and violence in our community all the time. People cannot understand how numb we are toward violence." And another, "I don't want to hear anything about anybody else's Holocaust before I hear my own."
Those protesting Spielberg's visit carried signs that said, "How can a Zionist Jew teach us about racism and oppression?" and "Zionist Jews are the new Nazis." Before Spielberg took the mic, a student performed a monologue that began, "Dear Mr. President, I am a woman with three children and no food to eat."
California's Republican Governor, Pete Wilson, accompanied Spielberg. Wilson had previously said that welfare "seduces teenage girls into a life of poverty and encourages irresponsibility." One student said to Wilson that she saw his visit "as an opportunity to vent the anger, and the spite, and the animosity I feel toward your entire time in office. I mean, I want to know was your main purpose in portraying yourself through the streets of my city where you have cut welfare, education, and many young futures, like mine" (sic).
A Castlemont teacher organized an "African Holocaust Day. There were musicians and African dancers, lectures on ancient Egypt and Jim Crow." A speaker "wearing a regal brown and gold dashiki, a kufi, with a leather-bound neck pouch, walked up and down the front of a classroom, commanding students' attention, pointing to placards listing the names of people who had been lynched … This is the Maafa … Maafa is another word for the African Holocaust." One student's takeaway from these presentations was the false impression that "Slave ships were owned by Jews." A Jewish social worker at the school was asked, "Did your family own slaves?"
Film scholar Dennis Hanlon said that many students' comments reflected their feeling that "their own history and suffering were largely ignored and that before they should be asked to understand another communities' suffering, they should be allowed to learn more about their own." Spielberg agreed, telling students that they were victims of bad press. Partly in reparations for these black students' alleged victimization, Steven Spielberg made Amistad, about a slave uprising.
By 1997, the Washington Post published the false claim that "The only people who laughed during Schindler's List were skinheads." National Public Radio's This American Life addressed the Castlemont incident in 2018. Times of Israel blogger James Inverne argued that This American Life's handling of the topic perpetuated the notion that if Jews protest against antisemitism expressed by black people, they risk "creating more hatred towards Jews."
A different event, thousands of miles away, echoes some of the same themes evident in the Castlemont incident. Those who insist that "black antisemitism" is a misnomer meant to distract attention from white racists, a recent invention, or that blacks who commit antisemitic acts are programmed to do so by white racists or Donald Trump might be surprised by a New York Times article entitled, "Jews Debating Black Antisemitism."
"Confronted by racial and religious hatred … a shocked Jewish community is debating what to do about it," the article begins. The article mentions suspicious synagogue fires in New York City. Some Jewish leaders quoted in the article argue for "vigorous" condemnation and counter action. Others fear that "defensive reaction might bring on a backlash and hasten the political antisemitism that all Jews seek to avoid." Some argue that the Holocaust ended antisemitism. Others allege that anti-Jewish "incitement" gains momentum when religious, cultural and political leaders de not rapidly condemn it. When New York City's mayor did speak out against antisemitism, a black teacher responded that the mayor was trying to "appease the powerful Jewish financiers of the city."
"Jews Debating Black Antisemitism" feels entirely of the moment. It reads as if it had been published in 2020. It wasn't. The Times published this article on January 26, 1969, fifty-one years ago. The article is as if frozen in amber. The same debates are happening today, and there has been no resolution to them. "Jews Debating Black Antisemitism" concerns one of the most headline-grabbing outbreaks of allegations of black antisemitism. These allegations swirled around the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers' strike.
Brownsville, a Brooklyn neighborhood, changed over decades from being predominantly Jewish to being increasingly black. Teachers were often Jewish. In the late sixties, African American activists demanded community control of schools. These activists were funded, ironically enough, by the Ford Foundation. This funding source for what would become an antisemitic manifestation is ironic because Henry Ford himself was a notorious anti-Semite. By 1968, Henry Ford had been dead for twenty-one years. His foundation, Heather MacDonald argues, had been radicalized into a steamroller of leftist social engineering. The Ford Foundation, MacDonald writes, exercised its considerable financial might to advance black separatists and anti-Semites. African American Civil Rights leader Bayard Rustin was critical of the black separatist position, but he didn't have the heft of the Ford Foundation at his back.
Black activists terminated Jewish teachers. Albert Shanker lead teachers on what has been called the longest and largest teachers' strike in US history. Shanker became so nationally prominent that his name was the punchline in a 1973 Woody Allen movie, Sleepers.
The terminated teachers protested, saying that they had seniority and that their dismissal was based on their racial identity, rather than their competence or qualifications. An African American judge determined that there were no credible accusations against these teachers, but activist Rhody McCoy stated, "Not one of these teachers will be allowed to teach anywhere in the city. The black community will see to that." Activist Sonny Carson said, "I don't think that any white person is interested in giving a black child an education … By any means necessary [whites] are going to be kept out." Pamphlets appeared alleging that Jews are "Blood-sucking Exploiters and Murderers … the So-Called Liberal Jewish Friend … is Really Our Enemy and He is Responsible For the Serious Educational Retardation of Our Black Children." "The Black Community Must Unite Itself Around The Need To Run Our Own Schools And To Control Our Own Neighborhoods Without Whitey Being Anywhere On The Scene," the pamphlet said.
Inflammatory rhetoric was sometimes accompanied by violence. Leslie Campbell was a teacher who, like many involved in this strike, would go on to jettison his "slave name" and take an African-inspired name, in his case Jitu Weusi. In another case, a student named "Cheryl" became "Monifa". Campbell / Weusi exhorted his students, "You have to stop fighting among yourselves … You've got to get your minds together. If you steal, steal from those who have it. … When the enemy taps you on the shoulder, send him to the cemetery. You know who your enemy is." Afterward, three teachers were injured "including one white woman who was punched, had her hair torn, and her clothes ripped."
The Rev. C. Herbert Oliver was chairman of the new community-control governing board. He signed the letters dismissing the Jewish teachers. When he was confronted on how his terminations would hurt the teachers and also hurt black-Jewish relations, Rev. Oliver said, "We have had three hundred years of scars and it's about time those scars were healing." In other words, Rev. Oliver argued that black suffering trumped any suffering the teachers might experience from being abruptly dismissed from their jobs, and that progress is a zero sum game. For blacks to advance, others must go back.
Separatists promoted their idea of an appropriate education for black students. Students were told that they descend from the Yoruba tribe, and from "African kings and queens." They were trained to perform African drumming and dances. One student remembers feeling humiliated and terrorized by her "white" schoolwork. Students were taught that "racism is inherent in the educational system" a system rife with "white privilege and white ignorance." This "white" schoolwork, for example, taught that Isaac Newton made advances in the sciences and mathematics. They were taught that Newton's work was not new, and Africans were the first to come up with innovations attributed to Newton. Students in the new curriculum read Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, H. Rap Brown, and Mao Tse Tung. "We became international," one former student remembers. "It's a good thing because black people are the Third World." "We're going to do Kwanza and not Christmas," another student remembered." We will, she said, "get rid of white Jesus." Students sang the Black National Anthem. (Accounts can be found here, here, here, here, and here.)
This curriculum suggests at least one potential irritant between blacks and Jews in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike. When Ashkenazi Jews first arrived in the US in large numbers in the late nineteenth century, they were a visible, vulnerable, hated and vilified minority. Many Jewish immigrants to America responded to their ghetto identity by shaving their beards, adopting American dress, and naming their children "Sylvia" and "Sheldon," non-Jewish names selected by Jewish immigrants exactly because the names were not Jewish. These Americanized Jews became teachers, and no doubt many believed that they were handing black children the keys they themselves had used to enter Die Goldene Medina, the Golden Land.
Jews were not just teaching these keys to success in America. Jews embodied these keys. A mere 23 years before the strike, Auschwitz and Dachau were still functioning. American Ivy League universities still had anti-Jewish quotas, and social, housing, travel, occupation, and employment opportunities were restricted for American Jews. And yet Jews overcame. Public education played no small part in their rise.
Albert Shanker epitomized this saga. Shanker's mother, Mamie, was from a family impoverished by antisemitic laws and corruption in Russia. Mamie herself had to hide in a Christian neighbor's barrel under potatoes to survive a pogrom. Her half-sister was raped by soldiers and subsequently died. Shanker's father, "Morris rose at 2 A.M. seven days a week, pushed a cart stacked with bundles of the city's half dozen morning newspapers through a five-mile area of Queens, then returned at 10 A.M. to deliver the afternoon newspapers." Shanker hardly ever saw his father. His mother worked long hours in a sweatshop. "So grueling was her work that Mr. Shanker once visited her factory and could not recognize her as she sat bent in sweaty concentration at her [sewing] machine." Even so, Mamie bought and discussed novels and poetry and attended the opera when she could afford the "standing room only" section. Shanker didn't speak English when he entered school. He encountered antisemitism. But he excelled. Shanker learned "the value of public education to civic identity." The phrase "civic identity" is key. Part of public schools job is "e pluribus unum": out of many, one. Shanker entered school a despised Jew who could not speak English. He emerged as an American leader of national importance.
Jewish teachers wanted to hand these keys over to black students. Their very presence announced, "America is a Golden Land. We did it. You can, too. Yes, you will face prejudice, but don't respond with violence or despair; respond with hard work, family support, and determination." That route was rejected by black nationalists. During the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike, the Jews who traveled and embodied that route were rejected, as well.
Dr. Eunice G. Pollack argues that "Black nationalists wanted to discredit the integrationist movement. Malcolm X called the March on Washington the Farce on Washington. Black nationalists are black separatists. The way to discredit integration is to discredit the leading whites of the integrationist movement, the Jews. 'They are really Nazis. They dominated the slave trade,'" black nationalists falsely claim of Jews.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, in Tough Liberal: Albert Shanker and the Battles Over Schools, Unions, Race, and Democracy, argues that the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike pitted cherished liberal ideals, and two reliable liberal demographics, against another: blacks v. Jews, unions v. identity politics, integration v. separatism. Kahlenberg says that liberals have never resolved the conflicts generated by the strike.
Can white teachers educate non-white students? If black students do poorly in schools, is that because of their white teachers' racism? Do black students require "Afrocentric" curricula to succeed? Do efforts to raise student self-esteem improve student academic performance? Should liberals support unions and their concept of seniority, or identity politics and the black-teachers-for-black-students model? If white teachers can't teach black students, can black teachers teach white students? Are there such things as educational standards, authority, and competence, or do standards vary depending on the skin color of the student? Is it more important for a black student to learn African drumming or reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is, subjects that have constituted a basic curriculum for millennia? Is education "white" and "racist"? Does one group – for example, newly hired black teachers – rise only at the expense of another group – that is, the Jewish teachers whose employment was terminated? Can we ever overcome tribalism? Do we want to? Does progress have to be a zero sum game?
A remarkable document emerged from the Ocean Hill-Brownsville teachers' strike. On December 26, 1968, Campbell / Weusi appeared on WBAI, a left-wing radio station. Campbell read a poem that he said was written by one of his students in response to Jewish teachers. There are various versions of the poem on the web. One version is below.
Hey Jew boy, with that yarmulke on your head
You pale faced Jew boy. I wish you were dead.
I can see you Jew boy. No you can't hide.
I got a scoop on you. Yeh, you gonna die.
I'm sick of your stuff …
about the murder of six million Jews
Hitler's reign lasted for only fifteen years
For that period of time you shed crocodile tears
My suffering lasted for over 400 years, Jew boy …
Jew boy, you took my religion and adopted it for you
But you know that black people were the original Hebrews.
On January 29, 2019, the Brooklyn Historical Society hosted a fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of the Ocean Hill-Brownsville strike. An audience member who identified as a former teacher and member of the African Teachers' Association recommended the poem. Audience members applauded. They were probably ignorant of the poem's contents. But no one on the invited panel of experts objected, and either they knew the contents of the poem and let the mention slide, or they were not, as identified, experts.
Again, there are consistent cultural threads connecting events as dispersed as a teachers' strike over fifty years ago, a high school field trip twenty-six years ago, and recent violent attacks. Both the Rev. C. Herbert Oliver and Castlemont high students cited black suffering as justification for indifference to Jewish suffering. One version of Jitu Weusi's student's poem identifies Jews as imposters who have stolen black people's real identity from them. That very libel fueled both the 2019 Jersey City killers and the Monsey stabber.
The concept of Jews as thieves of black identity is the new blood libel. It is a metaphor. Those who embrace it are saying, "Jews, you are paler than I am and you have suffered. You are stealing my narrative that identifies all blacks as victims and all whites as privileged. Your suffering teaches people that blacks are not the only people who have suffered. Suffering offers some rewards, and I will not share those rewards with you. Suffering is a competition, a kind of Olympic event. You have the Nazi era? I will claim hundreds of years of slavery and trump you. If you mention millennia of antisemitism, and that Jews were slaves in Egypt, I will deny your story and insist that you stole it from me. I will claim that the Bible's characters were really black."
Responses, too, echo down the years. Should we ignore black antisemitism, on the grounds that black people have suffered enough, and are stereotyped enough, and any attention brought to black antisemitism only increases black people's considerable burdens? If we draw attention to antisemitic motivations for violent behavior, do we risk increasing that behavior and damaging important alliances? We asked these questions fifty years ago, and we ask them today.
Only a minority of black people are anti-Semites, but those that are, are not lone wolves. They are not inventing the wheel. Rather, they are steeped in a significant cultural trend, a trend that persons of conscience will name, confront, analyze, and denounce.
Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery

Horror New Year


Hanukkah Five stabbing victim in grave condition as authorities block information on suspect.

https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/01/horror-new-year-lloyd-billingsley

January 2, 2020 
Lloyd Billingsley
“Hanukkah stabbing victim’s ‘dire’ condition revealed,” headlined the January 1, 2020 Fox News story by Travis Fedschun. The victim was Josef Neumann and according to a statement from his family, “the 70-year-old was stabbed multiple times during the attack, sustaining injuries that included three cuts to the head, one cut to the neck, a shattered right arm, and a knife that penetrated his skull directly into the brain.”
Doctors are not optimistic about Neumann’s chances to regain consciousness, and “if our father does miraculously recover partially, doctors expect that he will have permanent damage to the brain; leaving him partially paralyzed and speech impaired for the rest of his life.”
A photo released Wednesday by the  Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council in Hudson Valley showed the unconscious Neuman with his bloodied and bruised head heavily sutured. The 70-year old was one of five victims of an attack in Monsey, New York, last Saturday at the home of Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg.
Shortly before 10 p.m., as the rabbi was lighting the candle on the seventh night of Hanukkah, a man with face partially covered burst into the home and began stabbing people with a machete. The attack claimed five victims, including the rabbi’s son. The suspect was covered in blood when police arrested him in New York City on December 22.
The suspect was identified as Grafton Thomas, 37, an African American from Greenwood Lake, New York. News reports said the suspect’s arrest record had been sealed and the mystery about possible motive continued into 2020.
“Judge mum on why suspect was set free last year,” read the second half of the Fox News headline. As Fedschun revealed, Thomas had “multiple run-ins with law enforcement” including an arrest for “assaulting a police horse.” The judge assigned to the case refused comment, calling it a “sealed case.”
After the attack, New York’s Democrat attorney general Letitia James, proclaimed “zero tolerance for acts of hate of any kind and we will continue to monitor this horrific situation.”
At this writing, James has offered no explanation why the prior case was sealed and district attorneys have declined comment. 
After the Hanukkah stabbings, New York governor Andrew Cuomo cited recent attacks, “motivated by hate. They are doing mass attacks. These are terrorists in our country perpetrating terrorism on other Americans, and that’s how we should treat it and that's how I want the laws in this state to treat it.” At this writing, the governor has made no public demand that the suspect’s previous cases be unsealed.
In similar style, New York authorities have announced no plans to prosecute the case as terrorism. The Southern District of New York is charging Thomas with five counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon, and resulting in bodily injury. NBC News describes the counts as “federal hate crimes charges.”
As Fedschun’s story noted, in journals recovered from his home Thomas questioned, “why ppl mourned for anti-Semitism when there is Semitic genocide,” along with a page with drawings of a Star of David and a swastika. Thomas’ phone revealed repeated internet searches for “Why did Hitler hate the Jews” as well as “German Jewish Temples near me” and “Prominent companies founded by Jews in America.”
Thomas’ court-appointed attorney Susanne Brody claimed the suspect has struggled with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Attorney Michael Sussman, retained by the family, told reporters Thomas had been hearing voices and may have stopped taking psychiatric medications. According to Sussman, nothing found in Thomas’ home pointed to “an anti-Semitic motive.”
According to a statement from Thomas’ family, the suspect has no history of violent acts, no history of anti-Semitism and is not a member of any hate groups. The family did cite a long history of mental illness but an insanity defense could prove difficult.
Such a defense shifts the burden of proof to the accused, who must prove beyond reasonable doubt that he did not know the difference between right and wrong at the time of the crime. The suspect has already exhibited evidence of planning the attack, and according to victims he covered his face with a scarf. His flight from the scene also betrays knowledge of criminal intent.
In 2002, Grafton Thomas joined the U.S. Marine Corps but left the service within a month. Marine Captain Karoline Foote told reporters the Corps was required to keep the details private. President Trump commander in chief of U.S. Armed Forces, might give Capt. Foote a call.  
President Trump condemned the “horrific” attack at the rabbi’s home and tweeted: “We must all come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of anti-Semitism. Melania and I wish the victims a quick and full recovery.” At this writing, recovery looks unlikely for Josef Neumann.
Meanwhile, after the attack, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio told Fox News, “An atmosphere of hate has been developing in this country over the last few years. A lot of it is emanating from Washington and it’s having an effect on all of us.” Also after the attack, California Democrat Eric Swalwell tweeted “Anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. And it’s being stoked by @realDonaldTrump who won’t condemn it.”

 The Alarming Escalation of African American Attacks Against Jews

Are full-fledged riots and mass massacres next?
January 3, 2020 
Joseph Klein
Anti-Semitic attacks have reached epidemic proportions in the New York metropolitan area. A shooting early last December at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City left several people dead, including two Hasidic Jews. A policeman was also killed by the same shooters nearby. The killers aimed to kill as many Jews as possible before they were struck down. Last Saturday night, five Jewish people were stabbed by a Jew-hater wielding a machete at a Hasidic rabbi’s house in the suburb of Monsey, New York. One of the victims suffered serious head injuries, which has left him in a coma and may result in permanent damage to his brain. Orthodox Jews residing in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg are living in constant fear, triggered by a slew of anti-Semitic incidents that were a near daily occurrence during December and have continued into 2020.
These were not violent crimes committed by white nationalists. While white supremacists continue to pose a major threat to the lives and well-being of Jews and other minority groups nationwide, the alarming series of recent anti-Semitic attacks in the New York metropolitan area were conducted primarily by African Americans.
Anti-Semitic propensities among some African Americans have been simmering for years, as documented by a survey conducted back in 2013 by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and a second survey conducted by the ADL in 2016. The 2016 survey noted that over the past four years, “Anti-Semitic views among the African American population have remained steady and are higher than the general population.” As compared to the white population, anti-Semitic propensities among African Americans as measured in 2016 were more than double that of whites - 23% versus 10% respectively. This survey also found that Hispanic Americans born outside of the U.S. have even higher anti-Semitic propensities (31%) than African Americans. The anti-Semitic propensities of U.S. born Hispanics were measured at 19%, higher than whites but lower than African Americans.
Why do they keep doing this to us?” asked one Hasidic woman after the New Year’s Day incident that occurred close to her home. “We mean them no harm, yet they’re always cursing at us and hitting us.”
Part of the answer is rooted in a hate-filled black supremacist ideology that has influenced some African Americans willing to move from militant rhetoric to violence.
The Jersey City murderers were Black Hebrew Israelites, a sect which includes black supremacists who believe that they are God's true chosen people as the real descendants of the Hebrews of the Bible. They dismiss whites who call themselves Jews as imposters.
The accused Monsey machete slasher reportedly kept journals that were filled with anti-Semitic rants reflective of this ideology and that referred specifically to “Hebrew Israelites” in one passage.
Even the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) listed 144 Black Hebrew Israelite groups as “hate groups because of their anti-white and antisemitic beliefs.” SPLC noted that these Black Israelite groups “believe that, as members of the 12 Tribes of Israel – consisting only of African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans – they are God’s ‘chosen people.’” They regard Caucasians and members of the LGBTQ community as ‘devils.’
“Extreme Black Hebrew Israelites believe that individuals outside the movement are deserving of slavery or death,” SPLC added. Remember that this assessment is coming from the same organization that finds white supremacists and Islamophobes lurking everywhere.
But extremist ideology is not the entire answer for the escalating violence by African Americans against Jews. Some African American leaders have stoked anti-Semitic accusations that Jews possess too much economic and political power in the United States, which Jews are supposedly exploiting against African Americans who live in the same neighborhoods. African Americans believing such false accusations turn their anger into self-justifications for violence. Hasidic Jews wearing religious garb living in these neighborhoods stand out as the most vulnerable targets.
Following the murder of Jews in Jersey City, a black school board member named Joan Terrell-Paige posted on Facebook a diatribe against Jews who have moved to the city. She pooh-poohed the concerns expressed by some political and religious leaders over the anti-Semitic killings.
 “Where was all this faith and hope when Black homeowners were threatened, intimidated, and harassed by I WANT TO BUY YOUR HOUSE brutes of the jewish community,” Terrell-Paige wrote. “Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the Black communities of America?” she added, displaying shocking indifference to the slaughter of innocent Jews as well as of a policeman.
Terrell-Paige said that she did not regret her post. While some New Jersey government leaders called for her resignation, a House candidate John Flora viewed her post as a teaching moment. “To me her remarks were an invitation for the entire city to discuss honestly what led up to such a horrific event," Flora said Tuesday. "There is a lingering resentment in certain transitioning neighborhoods that I’m not sure repeated sit-downs with the same community leaders will ever resolve.” He announced a vigil in support of Terrell-Paige on Thursday.
The Hudson County Democratic Black Caucus said that while it did not agree with “the delivery of the statement made by Ms. Terrell-Paige we believe that her statement has heightened awareness around issues that must be addressed.”
Rabbi Avi Shafran responded to such outrageous excuse-making in an op-ed article entitled “Not-So-Good People.” He wrote:
“No, dear Caucus, the only issue that must be addressed is black anti-Semitism.
That phrase, of course, isn’t intended to implicate the larger African-American community, any more than the phrase ‘white anti-Semitism’ implicates all Caucasians.
It simply acknowledges the sad reality that Jew-hatred exists not only in the fever dreams of racists who hate blacks but also in the delusions of some of those they hate.”
Progressives leading the Democratic Party leftward, along with their friends in the mainstream media, refuse to acknowledge this reality. They shrink from speaking out forcefully against the violence of black racists, while using every opportunity they can to denounce white supremacists. Heaven forbid that they upset the narrative of “white privilege” and white “oppression” of minorities, which casts Jews as part of the oppressor class and people of color as always the victims.
Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib even blamed “white supremacy” for the Jersey City murders by the black supremacist Hebrew Israelites. “This is heartbreaking. White supremacy kills,” she wrote in a tweet. Tlaib has since deleted this absurd tweet, but it reflects her clear anti-Semitic bias.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio reverted to form last Sunday when he blamed the recent spike in anti-Semitic attacks in New York on an "atmosphere of hate" that has been “emanating from Washington.” He mentioned only President Trump by name. While placing some of the blame on divisiveness in Congress, he did not call out the leading anti-Semites in Congress, Representatives Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The epidemic of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York metropolitan area are emanating from within the local African American communities themselves. The attacks are rationalized or ignored by leftists who believe that only “privileged” whites commit hate crimes.
Misguided policies that coddle criminals are making it easier for the violence against Jews to spread, because word gets around that the perpetrators face no serious consequences. Indeed, the irresponsible no-bail catch and release policy in New York, which technically went into effect on January 1st,  has already put an anti-Semitic offender back on the street to continue her rampage. The get-out-of jail card will likely mean the quick release of most of the other offenders as well. What good are the increased police patrols in Jewish neighborhoods promised by Mayor de Blasio and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo if the attacks against Jews are treated like petty crimes?
Will there be a repeat of the anti-Jewish riot in Crown Heights that occurred in 1991? Are massacres of Jews resulting in many deaths and injuries inevitable if nothing is done to stem the current level of violence? It’s a distinct possibility. The seeds of African American anti-Semitism have already been sown. The fertilizer contributing to their potential fruition into full-fledged riots or mass massacres consists of a radicalized left obsessed with “white privilege,” lax criminal laws, and government leaders unwilling to directly confront the scourge of African American anti-Semitism. Hopefully, there is still time to turn the tide.
Black Anti-Semitism and Leftist Paternalism
Infantalizing Blacks hurts Jews and Blacks.
January 7, 2020 
Danusha V. Goska

Husband: "Ya fired the cleaning woman!"
Wife: "She was stealing!"
Husband: "But she's colored!"
Wife: "So?"
Husband: "So the colored have enough trouble!"
Wife: "She was going through my pocketbook!"
Husband: "They're persecuted enough!"
Wife: "Who's persecuting? She stole!"
Husband: "All right! So? We can afford it!"
Wife: "How can we afford it? On your pay? What if she steals more?"
Husband: "She's a colored woman from Harlem! She has no money! She's got a right to steal from us! After all, who is she gonna steal from, if not us?"
Wife: "I married a fool!"
Woody Allen depicted his character, Alvy Singer's, parents having this argument in his 1977, Academy-Award-winning film Annie Hall. The argument echoes in January, 2020, in the wake of numerous, headline-grabbing attacks by African Americans on Jews in the New York City area.
On December 10, 2019, two shooters, influenced by the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology, shot to death four people in Jersey City, NJ. Their target was a Kosher supermarket. On December 28, 2019, a lone man, also influenced by Black Hebrew Israelite ideology, barged into a rabbi's home in Monsey, New York, during a Hanukah celebration. The assailant stabbed five people before guests threw furniture at him and he fled.
These violent attacks received relatively greater attention than other recent assaults, although Seth J. Frantzman pointed out in the Jerusalem Post that the Jersey City shooting did not receive the attention that other comparable shootings receive. Frantzman wrote,
"The murder of three people at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City was mostly ignored in the United States. No rallies or marches against the antisemitism that led to it. No major political upheavals or even much recognition. The usual anger over gun violence after mass shootings was nowhere to be found … America as a whole can’t mourn Orthodox Jews and it can’t confront perpetrators when the perpetrators come from a minority community. This is inconvenient antisemitism and it is a kind of antisemitism privilege. Despite widespread anti-racism programs in the US, there are still those in America for whom being antisemitic is a birthright and not something to be ashamed of."
I live fourteen miles from Jersey City and I am a voracious consumer of news media. Frantzman is correct. It was a long time before concerned residents were informed of what exactly transpired, who the assailants were, and what their motive was. When this information finally was released, it was rapidly buried. If Jewish assailants, armed with an arsenal including a pipe bomb, had attacked a black-owned business and its customers in broad daylight, no doubt at least a week of news stories would have followed.
The Monsey and Jersey City attacks are part of a trend. An incident on December 24, 2019 is fairly typical. A Jewish man is walking on the sidewalk of Albany Avenue and Lincoln Place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Seven young black males approach him and throw something at his head. The Jewish man is knocked off center but continues walking, rapidly, away from the youths. Three of the youths, one armed with a long object, chase after him. Two punch him. This is all recorded on video. At first, the victim did not report this attack to anyone. Such attacks had become part of life for Jews in the New York metro area. Further, new "reforms" would make the victim's name known to his attackers. They could come at him again, using means other than street assault. Seth J. Frantzman calls the frequency of these attacks "a slow-moving pogrom."
One might think that after the Monsey and Jersey City atrocities, news accounts, editorial pages, Twitter and other social media would be flooded with demands that African Americans confront the antisemitism percolating in their communities, that schools would be developing curricula to educate those in thrall to irrational hatred and violence, and that elected officials would be fearless in naming and shaming the ideologies and resentments that incite violence and hate.
Those reasonable expectations would be thwarted in any perusal of mainstream and social media in early January, 2020. Rather one finds an almost science-fiction phenomenon at work. Jews condemning police protection. Jews insisting that blacks not be associated with antisemitism. And, of course, a rally in support of an antisemitic schoolboard member.
In the wake of the kosher market shooting, Jersey City schoolboard member Joan Terrell-Paige posted a protest against Jews on Facebook. Terrell-Paige referred to "jews" – lower case – as "brutes" who "wave bags of money" to get their way. Terrell-Paige implied that the shooters were martyrs, trying to protect the black community from evil Jews. "Drugs and guns are planted in the black community" she alleged, perhaps by Jews. Jews are guilty of an "assault on Black communities of America. My people deserve respect and to live in peace."
New Jersey Governor Murphy asked that Terrell-Paige resign. As of this writing, she is still a member of the Jersey City schoolboard.
What's more, Patch.com reported on December 30 that a candlelight vigil was planned to support Terrell-Paige. Al Sharpton's National Action Network defended Terrell-Paige. Gov. Murphy and Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop "need to shut their mouths" said the National Action Network's Carolyn Oliver Fair. Terrell-Paige "said nothing wrong. Everything she said is the truth. So where is this anti-Semitism coming in? I am not getting it," said Oliver Fair, who also alleged that the Jersey City shooters were Jewish. The shooters were not Jewish; rather, they were influenced by the Black Hebrew Israelites, a hate group that insists that Jews are "imposters" and that the real Jews of the Bible were black.
What is more astounding is the number of Jewish spokespersons who took a similar approach. On December 30, 2019, the Labour-Leftist aligned British daily The Guardian managed to round up enough tweets to publish an article entitled, "Jewish Groups Push Back Against Police Surge in Wake Of Antisemitic Attacks. Liberal Groups Say the New Policing Measures Put Forward by Mayor De Blasio Will Divide Communities." All the words in that headline are spelled correctly. The grammar works. But that's where sanity ends. In the wake of deadly attacks, one inside a private home during a holiday celebration, The Guardian wants Jews to forgo police protection in the name of leftist identity politics.
Where have we encountered this selection of one group's suffering as earning priority over another group's suffering? Oh, yes. After women were raped, sometimes gang-raped, by Muslim migrants in Europe, they were often told to keep quiet, because reports of these rapes would interfere with migration policy. (See here, here, here, here, and here).
It's weird enough that non-Jews would tell Jews to forgo police protection and endure beatings, even death, in the name of political correctness. But Jews are doing it, too.
On December 29, 2019, the Jewish Voice for Peace blamed "rising white nationalist violence" for attacks on "Jews, Muslims, Black people, and all people of color." Police protection for Jews was unwanted. Jews should not "rely on the very forces detaining and locking up and killing our friends, family, & neighbors."
David Klion, editor at Jewish Currents and published in The Nation, The New York Times, and The Guardian, tweeted on December 29 that "I never want out of my mind" that "We should not give one inch to right-wing forces within and outside of our community exploiting these attacks to legitimize racism."
The "racism" at work in these attacks is expressed by black people who despise Jews. And Klion wants never to have "out of his mind" (no pun intended) that right-wing racism is the problem? Well, yes. Because, as Klion tweeted on December 27, "Flooding POC neighborhoods with cops is going to carry real costs, potentially even fatal ones, for tens of thousands of people who have no complicity in these attacks. I'm also deeply uncomfortable with the optics of cops functioning as security for Jews against POC."
Jews shot; Jews stabbed; Klion is worried about "optics" of a police presence. In reply to Klion's tweet, Twitter user "TalkToTheHand" posted a photo of National Guard troops accompanying black children to school in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement. Thank you, TalkToTheHand.
Ariel Gold asked, "If the National Guard are deployed and more police are on the streets to keep Jews safe, what will that mean for Black communities? Is the trade off worth it? Is this the answer? Is this lasting safety for all?" Think about the "tradeoff" Gold mentions. She's talking about keeping Jews safe from street assaults. What is the other object in this trade? "more police … in Black communities." To Gold, that is a bad thing. More police. Less crime. Bad. Think about that.
Sophie Ellman-Golan tweeted, "This sends a pretty stark message to non-Jewish POC living in these neighborhoods that their safety matters less than the safety of their Jewish neighbors. That's really really bad for literally everyone except our common enemies, who benefit when we're divided."
The Forward insisted that "Anti-Semitism Isn't Blacks vs. Jews. Saying So Hurts Us All." The article insisted that no relation be drawn between any aspect of African American culture, no matter how fringe, and attacks on Jews. Apparently the attackers have all been lone wolves with no connection to any aspect of black culture.
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice tweeted that "Our response to antisemitic violence must focus on building solidarity with other groups targeted by white supremacy, not increased policing."
What makes the above-cited material all the more surreal is how much it differs from rhetoric that accompanies accusations of antisemitism when the accused are more clearly identified as Christians, and, in the case of my own research, identified specifically as Polish Catholics. My book Bieganski details rhetoric about Poles and other Eastern European Christians in relation to accusations of antisemitism. As I demonstrate in the book, antisemitic crimes committed by Poles are spoken of as inseparable from Polish identity. This approach can be summed up as, "You did the bad thing you did because you are Polish. Polish people do bad things." When it comes to blacks, the analysis becomes, "You did the bad thing you did because you are a victim of oppression. The people who are oppressing you are responsible for the bad thing you did."
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski was captured by the German Nazis and imprisoned in Auschwitz. He made it out – and immediately co-founded, in Nazi-occupied Poland, Zegota, the only organization in Nazi-occupied Europe whose sole purpose was to rescue Jews. After the war, he protested against antisemitic atrocities committed by his fellow Poles, as co-founder of the All-Poland Anti-Racist league. For this, he was imprisoned by the Soviets.
And yet, the very Polish, devoutly Catholic Bartoszewski faced verbal abuse in both Germany and Israel. Why? His ethnic identity. Polish identity has been conflated with antisemitism for too many people. If you are a Pole, you are an anti-Semite.
That rhetoric is used to conflate Polish identity with antisemitism and to shield African American identity from any association with antisemitism may be of little interest to anyone but Poles. But this dichotomy is in fact pertinent to African Americans.
It's undeniable that antisemitism has played a significant role in Polish culture and that Poland was site of antisemitic atrocities carried about by Poles. Poles are not protected by political correctness. Why? Political correctness is a concern of the left and Poles are not likely recruits  in bringing on world revolution. Poles famously fought the Soviets, significantly in 1920, in the Polish-Soviet War that Poles, miraculously, won. Poles fought the Soviets again after Soviets, along with their allies, the Nazis, invaded Poland in 1939, and then again in 1945, with resistance lasting till the end of communism in 1989. Poles are notoriously Catholic, and Catholics are not likely fodder for world communist revolution. Leftists have no reason to use rhetoric to protect Poles. Rather, leftists are all too happy to insist, inaccurately, that hate is a Christian thing, and that Catholicism is responsible for antisemitism.
The ease with which Poles are identified with antisemitism, and the difficulty of naming African Americans as anti-Semites, is reflected in Deborah Lipstadt's December 29, 2019 piece in The Atlantic Monthly. Lipstadt is the professor of Holocaust history of Emory University. Her essay appeared after the Hanukah stabbing, after the Jersey City shooting. She had plenty of reason to address African American antisemitism. She did not. She chickened out. In fact she never uses the words "black" or "African American."
Whom does Lipstadt accuse? The Poles. And the Slovaks. Eastern European, Christian populations. Her bashing is not warranted. Szczecin, a city in Poland, wanted an explanatory note added to a commemorative plaque, clarifying that the victim the plaque commemorated was murdered by German Nazis. That's a reasonable and necessary request, given how Holocaust history is distorted. Slovaks? Thugs desecrated a Jewish cemetery. A very bad thing, but not representational of Slovaks, and not pertinent to Monsey.
The simple truth is, neither Lipstadt nor The Atlantic Monthly will catch one bit of flak for bashing Poles and Slovaks, who don't matter to Atlantic Monthly readers or Emory University or America's elite. Go after easy targets. With them, be as racist and as essentializing as you want. Poles do bad things because they are Poles. African Americans do bad things because they are oppressed, but that's potentially controversial, so we won't even mention it in this article.
Their lack of politically correct protection has, ultimately, been to Poles' advantage in some ways, though Poles may find that hard to perceive. Poles have been accused before the world of being essential, unchanging and unchangeable anti-Semites. Those accusations have prompted mass examination of conscience in Poland. Those outside of Poland are probably largely unaware of these national mea culpas, confessionals, and resolutions to reform, but they are very real. Nobel-prize winner Czeslaw Milosz produced two of the earliest significant works of art addressing the Holocaust, "Campo de Fiori," and "A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto." Pope John Paul II became the first pope to enter a Jewish house of worship "since St Peter," and he was the first pope to visit Auschwitz, where he made it a point to pray at the monument to Jewish victims, defying communist propaganda that downplayed the Jewish identity of most victims. John Paul insisted on the continued validity of God's covenant with the Jews.
I could go on, naming filmmakers, authors, theologians, and average citizens who have taken it upon themselves to address and to work to eliminate Polish and all forms of antisemitism. I pray that in my own small way, I continue this mission.
As quoted above, Seth J. Frantzman wrote that "There are still those in America for whom being antisemitic is a birthright and not something to be ashamed of." The key word here is "shame." Shame drives some Poles to address and defeat antisemitism. Shame, combined with pride in Poland's multicultural heritage, its tradition of "For your freedom and ours."
The publications, organizations, and social media users insisting on not addressing those aspects of African American culture that allow antisemitism to metastasize are not doing African Americans any favors at all. Shame is necessary to human community. Years ago I was on a bus in my majority minority community. Garbage on the street is a major problem here. People throw their garbage on the street, in the river, on playgrounds, without a second thought. A young man got off the bus and was about to throw garbage on the street. I glared at him. For a second he caught my baneful glare. He actually stopped, and carried his garbage to a garbage can. I shamed him. His behavior changed.  
No, not all African Americans are anti-Semites. Only a minority are. No, no decent person wants to return to the bad old days of vicious stereotyping. But the violent attacks are going to continue until someone has the courage to stand up, root out, and analyze the ideologies that give a free pass to the black antisemitism that does exist. We can't do that as long as we are virtue signaling. Servicing one's own reputation as a good, paternalistic liberal infantilizes and betrays black people.

Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)