Warnock signed a letter in 2019 comparing Israel’s actions in the West Bank with "the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa." In 2013, he also defended the Nation of Islam, a radical group led by anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan, for keeping black churches "honest."
Warnock’s Church Airs Sermon Calling Evangelical Christianity the ‘Ideological Basis’ of White Supremacy
At a voter outreach event on Saturday, Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock’s church featured a fiery sermon from a reverend who denounced evangelical Christianity as the "ideological basis" for slavery and white supremacy.
The Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Warnock serves as senior pastor, hosted a "Super Voter Saturday" panel discussion last weekend and aired a pre-taped 2020 sermon by Rev. Billy Honor. The event took place just a few days before voters will head to the polls in Georgia, which has one of the largest evangelical Christian populations in the United States.
"There is nothing about evangelical white Christianity that would make you think it values black lives," said Honor in the sermon. "The fact is that this is a tradition that devalues black bodies, so much so that the devaluing of black bodies is about as American as apple pie."
While Warnock did not speak at the event, his name was at the top of a welcome message to attendees that played at the beginning of the program. The sermon could reignite concerns about Warnock’s own controversial statements and promotion of extremist rhetoric, including a sermon in which he said Americans need to repent for their "whiteness" and his defense of anti-Semitic pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Honor added that "evangelical Christianity" was the "ideological basis for the enslavement of Africans, the expansion of white supremacy, the resistance to reconstruction, the acceptance of racial segregation laws, and the recent dismissal of the Black Lives Matter movement to end murders of black bodies by police."
Warnock’s opponent, Republican Herschel Walker, said the sermon promoted "division and hate" and slammed Warnock for hosting it at his church.
"Raphael Warnock and his allies believe America is a bad country full of hateful people," Walker told the Washington Free Beacon. "They even smear evangelicals who love Jesus as racist. They should be ashamed."
"Their politics of division and hate has gone too far, and I won’t let them get away with it," Walker added. "I’m going to fight for our state and our country. Love is stronger than hate, and with God’s help we will defeat them and prove that grace and hope is more powerful than their lies and division."
Warnock did not respond to a request for comment.
White evangelicals make up over a quarter of registered voters in Georgia, according to a Marist poll conducted in September.
Tiffany Roberts, the social justice chair at Ebenezer, introduced the video and told the audience on Saturday that Honor "delivered [this] sermon for us at Ebenezer two years ago about Jesus’ legacy as a social justice warrior and the importance of the vote" and called it "one of my favorite sermons in life." The replayed speech was followed by a live, in-person panel discussion about voter outreach that included organizers from liberal groups Care in Action and When We All Vote.
Warnock argued in late 2016 that Americans needed to "repent" for their "worship of whiteness," the Washington Free Beacon reported in 2020. He also defended a speech by anti-Semitic pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright—which compared U.S. leaders to al Qaeda and claimed the government invented HIV to kill black people—as a "very fine sermon."
Warnock signed a letter in 2019 comparing Israel’s actions in the West Bank with "the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa." In 2013, he also defended the Nation of Islam, a radical group led by anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan, for keeping black churches "honest."
"We've needed the witness of the Nation of Islam, in a real sense, to put a fire under us and keep us honest," said Warnock.
Honor, who delivered the sermon, is also an organizing director with the New Georgia Project, a left-leaning voter advocacy group founded by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and previously led by Warnock. Prior to the airing of his speech at Ebenezer, Honor described Wright as an "honorable freedom fighting American." He also called the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement "one of this country’s biggest enforcers of state sponsored white supremacy."
Enter former president Barack Obama with a warning that "demonizing" people and stirring up division is dangerous. When he came to this realization isn’t entirely clear—certainly many years after sitting in the pews listening to his friend Jeremiah Wright and cavorting with Louis Farrakhan, but not before arguing that Republicans are warmongers who have a lot in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
‘Highly Hazardous’: Warnock’s Apartments Hit With Housing Code Violations Over Rats, Mold, Electrical Fires
Sen. Raphael Warnock's (D., Ga.) church-owned low-income apartment complex has been slapped with multiple Atlanta city housing code violations over rodent and bug infestations, hazardous mold, and overflowing trash rooms, according to city records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Records from the Atlanta Police Department's Code Enforcement Section paint a troubling picture of the living conditions at the housing complex—revealing that the problems date back to at least 2016 and were considered serious enough for the city to intervene on multiple occasions.
The records raise new questions for Warnock, who serves as CEO and senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, which owns 99 percent of the Columbia Tower buildings through a shell company. Since taking office in 2021, the senator has positioned himself as a champion for fair and safe housing and said earlier this year that "housing is dignity."
Warnock has defended the church's ownership of Columbia Tower and Columbia Senior Residences at MLK Village apartments after the Free Beacon first reported in October on the building's eviction proceedings against tenants. In a recent debate, Warnock said the report on the evictions was an attempt to "sully the name of Martin Luther King Jr.'s church," which spends "every day every week feeding the hungry and the homeless."
Warnock in January sent a letter to the Department of Defense in response to reports about "repair delays, toxic mold, pests," and other housing problems on U.S. military bases.
Warnock said it was "shameful" that service members "had to deal with these poor living conditions in the first place."
"Housing is dignity," he wrote. "I will continue pushing the federal government to make sure we're doing everything we can to provide our courageous men and women in uniform, and their families, with the resources and support they need not just to live, but thrive."
Yet Warnock hasn't publicly raised concerns about similar complaints from residents at the housing complex owned by his church.
The Free Beacon received over 70 pages of inspection records, tenant complaints, photographs, and correspondence from the Atlanta Police Department's Code Enforcement Section, which led to at least four housing code violations against Columbia between 2016 and 2019.
In August 2016, the city of Atlanta received tenant complaints about "mice, roaches, and bugs infestation" at Columbia Tower. Inspectors found that the "dwelling unit is infested by insects" and cited Columbia for a housing maintenance violation.
Two years later, the city filed another code violation notice against Columbia, after multiple complaints about water leakage, flooding, and overflowing trash around the building that was attracting "rodents such as rats and possums." Inspectors cited "junk, trash, & debris on premises" and "ceiling surfaces [that] are soiled and unsanitary" in the violation notice, which included photos of water damage and piles of garbage.
In October 2019, a tenant told the city that he had been dealing with a bug infestation for eight months and said he had health problems due to overflowing trash outside his apartment. "Dumpster fumes are affecting his health," said the complaint, a situation that the city flagged as "highly hazardous." Another tenant reported in 2020 that his "baseboard [was] missing, causing spiders to come inside the apartments," which had been "going on since October."
Water damage and flooding were also a problem, according to records. Columbia received another violation notice in June 2018 after a tenant complained that water leaking inside her walls was "causing electrical problems such as blue flames when she turn[s] on the lights," according to a record. A photograph appeared to show fire damage on the electrical outlet. The city flagged the violation as "highly hazardous."
The city in September 2019 filed another housing violation citation against Columbia, which included photos of black mold growing in a closet, water damage, and dead bugs. Inspectors cited an "infestation of roaches," "soiled cabinets/mold," an "unsanitary trash room," and an "unsanitary stairway" in the building.
The records echo firsthand accounts from Columbia residents, who talked to the Free Beacon in October and said there are still extensive sanitation and maintenance problems at the housing complex.
"We have a smell here," one resident told the Free Beacon. "The trash room has this overwhelming trash smell. As soon as you come in the building, it inundates you. It's just in your face. And it's embarrassing."
Residents said the building management lets garbage pile up in the trash rooms and the building's chute for days, leading to an overflow of waste.
"The aroma of the trash was so horrific and ridiculous," said another resident, who lives on the first floor of the building near the waste room.
Another tenant told the Free Beacon about filth in the building's ventilation system, saying, "The vents haven't been blown out for years. The dust, it's sickening, actually."
Published under: Atlanta, Georgia, Raphael Warnock
Warnock’s Church Airs Sermon Calling Evangelical Christianity the ‘Ideological Basis’ of White Supremacy
At a voter outreach event on Saturday, Georgia Democratic senator Raphael Warnock’s church featured a fiery sermon from a reverend who denounced evangelical Christianity as the "ideological basis" for slavery and white supremacy.
The Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Warnock serves as senior pastor, hosted a "Super Voter Saturday" panel discussion last weekend and aired a pre-taped 2020 sermon by Rev. Billy Honor. The event took place just a few days before voters will head to the polls in Georgia, which has one of the largest evangelical Christian populations in the United States.
"There is nothing about evangelical white Christianity that would make you think it values black lives," said Honor in the sermon. "The fact is that this is a tradition that devalues black bodies, so much so that the devaluing of black bodies is about as American as apple pie."
While Warnock did not speak at the event, his name was at the top of a welcome message to attendees that played at the beginning of the program. The sermon could reignite concerns about Warnock’s own controversial statements and promotion of extremist rhetoric, including a sermon in which he said Americans need to repent for their "whiteness" and his defense of anti-Semitic pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Honor added that "evangelical Christianity" was the "ideological basis for the enslavement of Africans, the expansion of white supremacy, the resistance to reconstruction, the acceptance of racial segregation laws, and the recent dismissal of the Black Lives Matter movement to end murders of black bodies by police."
Warnock’s opponent, Republican Herschel Walker, said the sermon promoted "division and hate" and slammed Warnock for hosting it at his church.
"Raphael Warnock and his allies believe America is a bad country full of hateful people," Walker told the Washington Free Beacon. "They even smear evangelicals who love Jesus as racist. They should be ashamed."
"Their politics of division and hate has gone too far, and I won’t let them get away with it," Walker added. "I’m going to fight for our state and our country. Love is stronger than hate, and with God’s help we will defeat them and prove that grace and hope is more powerful than their lies and division."
Warnock did not respond to a request for comment.
White evangelicals make up over a quarter of registered voters in Georgia, according to a Marist poll conducted in September.
Tiffany Roberts, the social justice chair at Ebenezer, introduced the video and told the audience on Saturday that Honor "delivered [this] sermon for us at Ebenezer two years ago about Jesus’ legacy as a social justice warrior and the importance of the vote" and called it "one of my favorite sermons in life." The replayed speech was followed by a live, in-person panel discussion about voter outreach that included organizers from liberal groups Care in Action and When We All Vote.
Warnock argued in late 2016 that Americans needed to "repent" for their "worship of whiteness," the Washington Free Beacon reported in 2020. He also defended a speech by anti-Semitic pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright—which compared U.S. leaders to al Qaeda and claimed the government invented HIV to kill black people—as a "very fine sermon."
BLOG EDITOR: SO CALLED 'NATION OF ISLAM' IS LOUIS FARRAKHAN'S HATE MONGERING MOVEMENT. WHO FUNDS THIS HATE MOVEMENT?
Nonetheless, Farrakhan continues to enjoy respect and wield influence on the Left. During the 2020 campaign, a Joe Biden ad featured a rapper who referred to Farrakhan as his “mentor.”
He is friendly with Barack Obama. A taxpayer-funded mural in New York features his image. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Gaza) wrote a column for Farrakhan’s blog. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has denounced Kanye West, but she has never denounced Farrakhan. Ilhan Omar has never denounced Farrakhan. Rashida Tlaib has never denounced Farrakhan. Nor has Joe Biden.
Warnock signed a letter in 2019 comparing Israel’s actions in the West Bank with "the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa." In 2013, he also defended the Nation of Islam, a radical group led by anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan, for keeping black churches "honest."
"We've needed the witness of the Nation of Islam, in a real sense, to put a fire under us and keep us honest," said Warnock.
Honor, who delivered the sermon, is also an organizing director with the New Georgia Project, a left-leaning voter advocacy group founded by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and previously led by Warnock. Prior to the airing of his speech at Ebenezer, Honor described Wright as an "honorable freedom fighting American." He also called the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement "one of this country’s biggest enforcers of state sponsored white supremacy."
Dems, Media Demand GOP Call Off Campaign
Democrats have their own craven political response to the attack on Paul Pelosi
Three days out from an attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their San Francisco home, we still know precious little about the attacker’s motivations—or, for that matter, about what precipitated the attack itself.
That hasn’t stopped Democratic politicians and their allies in the mainstream media from fingering the culprits—their Republican adversaries—and concluding that, eight days out from an election in which they are bracing for a shellacking, the GOP should spend the final week of the campaign sitting on the bench, reflecting, atoning. How convenient. How cravenly and transparently political.
Pelosi herself, meanwhile, is fundraising on the back of the attack. This is the message tacked to the bottom of an email blast from her office that landed in inboxes on Saturday evening:
To hear the media tell it, Republicans are responsible for the attack and, while Pelosi raises money in this final week, they must cry uncle. Chuck Todd noted with surprise on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that ads against Pelosi "are still on the air."
Punchbowl News on Friday suggested there was something untoward about Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance urging voters to "fire Pelosi"—or, as they put it, employing "the ‘fire Pelosi’ rhetoric."
The media hive mind is real, and—lo and behold—the geniuses at the Washington Post also traced the attacks to "a ‘Fire Pelosi’ project—complete with a bus tour, a #FIREPELOSI hashtag and images of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) engulfed in Hades-style flames—devoted to retaking the House and demoting Pelosi from her perch as speaker." The audacity!
Enter former president Barack Obama with a warning that "demonizing" people and stirring up division is dangerous. When he came to this realization isn’t entirely clear—certainly many years after sitting in the pews listening to his friend Jeremiah Wright and cavorting with Louis Farrakhan, but not before arguing that Republicans are warmongers who have a lot in common with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
We know Obama’s exhortation only swings one way. Democrats are of course still out there trying to discern the motive for the attacks on the novelist Salman Rushdie, New York gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin (R.), and Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.).
It’s been just a few months since the New York Times got clear of defamation charges over the outrageous attempt to pin the shooting of Gabby Giffords on Sarah Palin. How about the Atlanta spa shooting that was pinned on the anti-Asian rhetoric of the Republican Party? Again, total nonsense. But the Democrats who write the news are in lockstep with the Democrats who make the news—and, of course, the Democrats who stand to benefit from Republicans sitting out the last week of the campaign.
Enough already. We await the conclusions of investigators in the Paul Pelosi case with an open mind and the knowledge that these things are often not what they first appear. In the meantime, Republicans should campaign hard until the polls close. Nancy Pelosi sure will be.
HE PARTNERS WITH ZUCKERBERG, SOROS AND LOUIS FARRAKHAN
“Obama would declare himself president for life with Soros really running the show, as he did for the entire Obama presidency.”
“Hillary was always small potatoes, a placeholder as it were. Her health was always suspect. And do you think the plotters would have let a doofus like Tim Kaine take office in the event that Hillary became disabled?”
“Obama has the totalitarian impulse. After all, he went around saying he didn't have Constitutional authority to legalize the illegals, and then he tried anyway. The courts stopped him.”
“The bottom line 2 is this: Barack Obama is a Communist. This was all an Obama operation. Why is anyone surprised that a communist (Obama) tried to subvert an election. That is what Communists do. It is Barack Obama and his people like Brennan and Clapper behaving to type. That's what Maduro does in Venezuela. That's what the Castro brothers did. That's what every communist and socialist nation does. THEY FIX ELECTIONS!!”
“Hillary kept a secret server overflowing with national security info which, more than likely, was hacked. June 28, 2016, on a Phoenix tarmac, Bill Clinton met with Attorney General Loretta Lynch to seal a deal insuring Hillary would not be prosecuted.”
“Obama, of course, covered up his own role, depicting his presidency as eight years of heroic efforts to repair the damage caused by the 2008 financial crash. At the end of those eight years, however, Wall Street and the financial oligarchy were fully recovered, enjoying record wealth, while working people were poorer than before, a widening social chasm that made possible the election of the billionaire con man and Demagogue in November 2016.”
Quran (9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge
the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians], until they pay the Jizya [the tax for being a Jew or Christian] with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."
Outcry over Louis Farrakhan Rant Calling Prominent Jews Including Alan Dershowitz ‘Satan’
Notorious antisemite and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan live-streamed a three-hour Independence Day rant on YouTube where he calls prominent Jewish Americans, including Jonathan Greenblatt and Alan Dershowitz, “Satan,” as well as repeating the lie Israel was behind George Floyd’s killing.
The Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) on Wednesday called on YouTube to remove the video, saying it was “in clear contravention of YouTube’s own policies on hate speech.”
Farrakhan’s Fourth of July address also aired Saturday on Revolt TV, a cable channel owned by Sean “Diddy” Combs. Combs encouraged his 15.6 million Twitter followers to watch the video, tweeting “Everyone can watch…Just not the scared ones.”
Everyone can watch… Just not the scared ones.
— Diddy (@Diddy) July 4, 2020
In the address, the 87-year-old Nation of Islam leader called the head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Jonathan Greenblatt, “Satan.”
“Mr. Greenblatt, you are Satan. Those of you that say that you’re Jews, I will not even give you the honor of calling you a Jew. You are not a Jew… you are Satan and it is my job now to pull the cover off of Satan so that every Muslim when he sees Satan, pick up a stone, as we do in Mecca,” Farrakhan said.
“When you know who Satan is, you don’t have to kill him [but] the stone of truth, that’s what you throw. We cast truth at falsehood till we knock out its brains,” he continued.
He also called Jewish renowned defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz “a skillful deceiver” and “Satan masquerading as a lawyer.”
Farrakhan also implicated Israel in the death of George Floyd and in police violence in general.
“That’s why you gotta come at us like a coward,” he said. “Like snakes trying to wrap yourself around us so you could give us the treatment that you were taught in Israel. You may, as you gonna stop your police from going to Israel to learn how to kill better.”
“Your days of killing us without consequence are over,” he added.
Greenblatt took to Twitter to respond to Farrakhan’s “trademark antisemitism.”
“This is routine for Farrakhan- give him a platform, he never fails to espouse hatred,” Greenblatt said.
CAM Director Sacha Roytman-Dratwa wrote in a letter addressed to Matt Halprin, YouTube’s vice president of global trust and safety:
Louis Farrakhan has a long history of antisemitism, incorporating it into the very legitimate, important fight for civil rights and equality. His perversion of these values by promoting hatred and dehumanization of Jews is quite simply unacceptable.
According to CAM, by allowing the video, which has garnered nearly 900,000 views in three days, to remain on its site, “YouTube is allowing him to hijack the worthy cause of racial justice and use the video sharing site as a platform for anti-Semitism.”
“[Farrakhan] even suggested the Jewish community seeks to kill him, saying, ‘If you [Jews] make that move, I can guarantee your destruction,'” the letter reads.
In his address, Farrakhan bizarrely attempted to disavow accusations of antisemitism.
“They tell lies to make you think I am a bigot or antisemite, so that you won’t listen to what I’m saying. So far they’ve been pretty successful,” he said.
“If you really think I hate the Jewish people, you don’t know me at all. [I’ve never] uttered the words of death to the Jewish people,” he went on.
In the past his rancorous antisemitic rants have included calling Jews members of the “Synagogue of Satan” and claiming Jesus called the Jews “the children of the devil.”
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said he was not surprised by Farrakhan’s remarks.
“At this stage of history, no one can be surprised by the rants of America’s Godfather of antisemitism,” he told The Algemeiner.
Cooper also condemned Farrakhan’s “lurid antisemitic conspiracy linking the Jewish state to the death of George Floyd.”
The new Fox ‘Soul’ network has announced that it will air Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s “Message to America” on a special July 4th program, despite his history of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.
Fox ‘Soul’ Network to Air Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan July 4
28 Jun 20205,435
2:02
The new Fox ‘Soul’ network has announced that it will air Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s “Message to America” on a special July 4th program, despite his history of racism, antisemitism, and homophobia.
LIVE ON FOX SOUL: THE CRITERION
THE HONORABLE MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN will deliver his MESSAGE TO AMERICA on JULY 4th at 11am ET / 8am PT.
For More information visit https://t.co/cQCGt59mm7 and tune into FOX https://t.co/ZQ7BibvsBi or Download the FOX SOUL APP pic.twitter.com/CdJoQLcEnP
— foxsoultv (@foxsoultv) June 26, 2020
Farrakhan’s history of hateful rhetoric is well-documented. In 2018, he compared Jews to termites. That same year, he drew criticism for defending the use of the phrase “death to America” during a conversation with students in Iran.
The main FOX network launched Fox Soul in January in an effort to reach African American audiences — and to reach beyond the conservative branding of Fox News. Fox Soul offers four hours of streaming programing daily.
Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D), founder of Americans Against Antisemitism, made an impassioned plea on Twitter on Sunday for Fox Soul to cancel the program.
.@AmericansAA calls upon @FOXTV to immediately cancel the planned JULY 4 broadcast of Dishonorable Minister of Hate @LouisFarrakhan on @foxsoultv@splcenter considers the Nation of Islam to be an extremist hate group. So why amplify this hateful voice?!#CancelFarrakhanNow! pic.twitter.com/FJo632h4cR
— Dov Hikind (@HikindDov) June 28, 2020
The advertisement (above) for Fox Soul’s special Farrakhan broadcast includes a link to the Nation of Islam’s website.
The website (link not provided) is billing Farrakhan’s appearance as The Criterion: Announcement to the World. The website also includes links to purchase the Nation of Islam’s antisemitic trilogy, The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews.
The Nation of Islam has had controversial relationships with the anti-Trump “Women’s March,” and provided security for the recent funeral of George Floyd.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). His new book, RED NOVEMBER, is available for pre-order. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Black Lives Matter: Not Just Communist, But Viciously Anti-Semitic Too
No matter the color of their skin, Jews are going to be labeled “white.”
June 29, 2020
Clare M. Lopez
By the time violent rioters tore through the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Fairfax, Los Angeles on the night of Saturday May 30, 2020, it was too late. The vicious antisemitic, anti-Israel language of the M4BL and Black Lives Matter’s demands that included accusations against Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide” had been brushed aside. Black Lives Matter (BLM) delegations had traveled to the Middle East to endorse Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria and pose for photo ops with the Palestinian flag. Statements from delegation leaders spoke of “occupation, ethnic cleansing and brutality” that Israel supposedly has perpetrated against the region’s Arab-Muslim population.
Even when city after city across America went up in flames after the May 25, 2020 killing of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis by a white police officer, with BLM ‘protesters’ assaulting private businesses, their owners, and law enforcement officers alike, smashing store fronts, setting fires, and destroying property, some among America’s Jewish leadership could hardly get their statements of support out fast enough. Jewish American organizations, the Reform Movement, rabbinical leadership figures, progressive and Zionist activists, even the Hasidic Community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn in New York City all practically fell over one another in their haste to endorse the BLM movement.
The Jewish Federation of Santa Barbara was no different. On June 13, 2020, the group – including, among others, the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara, ADL Santa Barbara Tri-Counties, Santa Barbara Congregation of B’nai B’rith and Santa Barbara Hillel – issued a statement to condemn “racism” and “institutional biases.” The Focus Project, whose online website is remarkably empty, disseminated a set of talking points on June 16, 2020 that appear to date from September 2019. An increasingly popular trope is included among them that distorts the ancient Jewish term ‘Tikkun Olam’ in a way to make it seem like some kind of modern-day social justice program. In fact, ‘Tikkun Olam’ is a Kabbalist term that made its way into Judaism by way of the Aleinu prayer that is specific to Rosh Hashanah. ‘Tikkun Olam’ is not from the Torah (md’oraita) in origin at all – and therefore not one of the 613 obligatory commandments (mitzvot) nor anywhere to be found in the normative rabbinical literature concerning the praxises of Jewish Law (Halacha). Rather, as a kind of companion bit of moral guidance, ‘Tikkun Olam’ urges Jews to repair one’s individual relationship to the Almighty by way of observance of the actual ‘mitzvot’, or obligatory commandments that lead to perfecting personal behavior.
Now, just as ‘perfecting of one’s personal behavior before the Almighty’ has nothing to do with the social justice narrative per se, neither does it have anything to do with supporting a communist/Marxist, pro-Maoist organization, one of whose BLM co-founders’ declaration of the group’s Marxist ideology was featured on Twitter just days ago. Yes, the BLM movement was founded by three African-American women with longtime Marxist backgrounds: Alicia Garza, Opal I. Tometi, and Patrisse M. Cullors. Its original Platform (issued in August 2016, but scrubbed up a bit in its more recent iteration) called for collective ownership of all resources, the breaking up of banks, redistribution of wealth by way of confiscatory taxes on ‘high earners,’ free health care, and free education. Truly, Karl Marx would have blushed.
But back to the question of how BLM rioters came to be rampaging through Jewish neighborhoods of Los Angeles, CA, reportedly shouting “F___Jews”, and spray painting “F___Israel” and “Free Palestine” on the walls of the Congregation Beth Israel and at least four other synagogues. How did Jews come to be collectivized into the enemy “white privilege proletariat” class by these BLM Marxists?
That original BLM Platform also explicitly supports the BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement. Another indicator comes from Cullors (who organized the 30 May pogrom in LA): she reportedly told a New York Times reporter, “Let’s go into the heart of what is symbolically white in Los Angeles, which is Beverly Hills…These people need to hear our pain and our grief. We wanted to bring this to communities who often aren’t dealing with police violence.” No matter the color of their skin, therefore, Jews are going to be labeled “white”—as a pejorative from which it is always going to be impossible to escape. It goes back farther than that, however. By 2015, BLM representatives traveled to the Middle East to make common cause with Palestinians in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. Fast forward to late May 2020, shortly after the death of George Floyd, and the Democratic Socialists of America’s BDS national working group blatantly tried to link that killing to Israel, by claiming that U.S. police forces learned riot control techniques from Israeli police. Then, on June 1, Al-Awda, the Palestinian Right of Return Coalition, published a hideous cartoon at its website showing an Israeli soldier with his knee on the neck of a keffiyeh’ed Palestinian, arm-in-arm with an American police officer with his knee on the neck of a black man. The article it accompanied was entitled “Al-Awda PRRC statement of solidarity for Black lives and Black struggle.”
The BLM’s Marxist agenda is on full display across America today. Exploitation of the insurrectionist riots in which it plays a leading role to demonize Jews and Israel is, too.
Raymond Ibrahim Interview: Truth About Islam Must Be Acknowledged
How an ideology's teachings are antithetical to Western values.
Fri Sep 11, 2020
Note: Journalist Niram Ferretti interviews Raymond Ibrahim, a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center, for the Italian publication, L’Informale (original here). Pasted below are excerpts from the English version.
Question: How much is the concept of jihad intended as holy war, central to the way Islam has interpreted itself during the centuries?
The concept of jihad was central from the start—at least according to the earliest Muslim historians who often portray the first warriors of Allah as being zealously motivated by the notion of jihad.
Question: The last time that Islam tried to penetrate Europe through war was on the 12th of September 1683 at Kalhenberg, near Vienna, where 65.000 thousand Christians fought against 200,000 Ottoman Turks. For how long after that date did jihad against the West stopped and when and why was it resumed?
Raids continued for some time, particularly by sea, and well into the late 1700s, meaning for about a century after the successful defense of Vienna. Even as the Ottoman Empire was beginning its slow retreat from eastern Europe, the Muslim slavers of the so-called Barbary States of North Africa wreaked havoc all along the coasts of Europe—even as far as Iceland. The United States of America’s first war—which it fought before it could even elect its first president—was against these Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary’s ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the “ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that … it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners….”
Question: In his seminal book of 1996, Samuel P. Huntington wrote about Islam and the West the following sentence, “Kto? Kovo? Who is to rule? Who is to be ruled? The central issue of politics defined by Lenin is the root of the contest between Islam and the West”. Do you agree?
Yes, inasmuch as that Muslims must always work to make Islam rule over non-Muslims, based on their sharia, which while allowing for truces and times of peace—particularly when Islam is weak vis-à-vis infidels—also sees the spread of Muslim rule as the culmination of the Islamic mission that began in the early 630s.
Question: Let us now talk about your new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. What has brought you to write a book focused specifically on the battles which have occurred along the centuries between Islam and the West?
Yes, as indicated by the title, the book is a military history between Islam and the West, narrated around their eight most decisive clashes, the first and last of which occurred more than a millennium apart. But while the eight battles/sieges form the centerpieces of the book’s eight chapters, the bulk of the narrative chronologically traces and tells the general, but much forgotten story of Islam and the West, most of which of course revolved around warfare—with all the attendant death, destruction, slavery, and geopolitical demarcations and map rearrangements. We can say I began working on portions of this book some twenty years ago—since around 1998-99, when I first started doing academic research for what became my MA thesis in History: a close examination, including through the original Arabic and Greek sources, of the battle of Yarmuk—the first major military encounter between Islam and the Eastern Roman Empire in 636, highlighted in Chapter 1 of the Sword and Scimitar.
Question: To what extent is the Islamic terrorism that we are facing today a continuation of the battles between Islam and the West that you describe in Sword and Scimitar?
To a very great extent. Both the motivation and the pattern of terrorist acts are very much mirror reflections of past Islamic motivations and patterns. In other words, from the start to finish, the book pages are full of all the ugly words and deeds committed by modern groups such as the Islamic State—ordering Europeans to convert to Islam or face the sword; the willful destruction of churches; the mass slaughter—including by beheading, crucifixion, or burning—of Christian defenders, and the mass enslavement and rape of Christian women and children—all of these permeate the pages of my book.
Question: Islam is a way of life. It is a complete set of ideas and rules which differs deeply from our Western values. Is there any chance of an accommodation between Islam and Western societies or this is just wishful thinking?
Can water and oil mix? In the same manner, pure Islamic teachings and pure Western values are often antithetical to one another. For example, the West believes in freedom of religion, whereas in Islam those who seek to apostatize are penalized, including by death; the West believes in freedom of speech, whereas in Islam any critical talk concerning Muhammad can get one killed. One can go on and on but the point should be clear. Of course, a nominal/secular Muslim may be able to assimilate in a Western society, but that is not a reflection of Islam, which is hardly nominal but rather a full way of life based on sharia.
Question: According to you what are the ways in which Europe on one side and the United States on the other should face the reality of Islam in such a manner that could be helpful both for Westerners and Muslims? What are the false assumptions that must be rejected?
First, the truth must be acknowledged—including for example the truth that, for well over a millennium, Muslims invaded European/Christian territory on the same logic that Islamic terror groups cite—that it is their right to invade, conquer, butcher, and enslave infidels for no less a reason that because they are non-Muslims. If this is how Muslims have been behaving for centuries, is there really any need to find “reasons” why some of them are behaving so now? Are grievances, territorial disputes, etc., necessary to explain this unwavering hostility? Once these facts are embraced, the rest, including policy—for instance, the question of Muslim immigration—should become self-evident.
Question: How inbred is religious violence in Islam and how it differs from the way in which it is presented in the Bible and has accompanied Christianity in the course of its history?
Many apologist for Islam like to claim that the Bible, especially the Jewish scriptures (or the Old Testament), is just as if not more bloody and violent than the Koran—so why do we insist that Muslim violence is rooted to Muslim scriptures? The problem with comparing violence in the Bible — both Old and New Testaments — with violence in the Koran is that it conflates history with doctrine. The majority of violence in the Bible is recorded as history; a description of events. Conversely, the overwhelming majority of violence in the Koran is doctrinally significant. The Koran uses open-ended language to call on believers to commit acts of violence against non-Muslims. See “Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?” for my most comprehensive and documented treatment of this tired apologia.
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