Editorials

Stop Hiding Behind Lies—A Challenge To The ADL

By Richard B. Muhammad - Editor | Last updated: Mar 24, 2016 - 11:37:54 AM

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Jonathan Greenblatt, the national director and CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has started his new tenure playing the ADL’s old, tired track falsely painting the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as a bigot and an anti-Semite.

Despite an admirable, well-reasoned argument and appeal for dialogue from hip hop guru Russell Simmons, who has worked with Jewish business partners, enjoyed long relationships with that community and also loves the Minister, Mr. Greenblatt rejected the spirit and the wisdom in the Simmons’ call.

Unlike others cowed by ADL-Zionist criticism for any association with Min. Farrakhan, Mr. Simmons has repeatedly tried to be a sincere bridge builder and sought to help resolve a 30-year-old conflict. He has stood strongly with the Minister, trying to explain why Black America loves this particular man. The Def Jam Records founder’s own personal history belies the charge that the Minister is anti-Semitic. Mr. Simmons would never associate with such a person.

Instead of finding any nugget to hold or word to lift in a positive way, Mr. Greenblatt rejected the hip hop industry giant’s insightful approach and stridently stuck to the worn ADL “Farrakhan is anti-Semitic” falsehood, saying of the attempted peacemaker: “And the problem is compounded when good people like Russell Simmons willfully ignore this reality or opt to minimize such hostility, and then end up blaming ADL for the alienation from Farrakhan.”

This dismissive attitude, the lies about Minister Farrakhan that followed in the Greenblatt op-ed published on Huffington Post and this unyielding position says something about the ADL: It’s arrogance, disrespect and disregard for Black people, and attack dog mentality have kept this fight going—not Min. Farrakhan. Another problem is the ADL is used to Black people and even Jews capitulating to its specious charges and dropping any position the Zionist group feels is incorrect.

Min. Farrakhan didn’t start this fight and has been open for private meetings and dialogue and public discussions to put this matter to rest once and for all. Yet for all its “truth,” the ADL doesn’t want to go toe-totoe in a public setting where it can cast its rod and the Minister can cast his. The ADL simply wants to repeat the Big Lie, not come to the table and deal with truth.

This is much more than an academic debate or WWF-style enmity, though the ADL has used overblown and fake accusations about the Minister to raise funds and squelch dissent and criticism of Jewish behavior. This battle is vitally important because it literally impacts the lives and quality of life for Black people.

Whether it was Nation of Islam ministers spreading light on college campuses, economic ventures designed to increase Black hiring and develop Black communities, companies owned by individual Muslims that were curbing drugs and violence in public housing projects or the Minister’s efforts three years ago leading the Fruit of Islam into city streets to lessen violence, the ADL and her Satanic allies have been around to oppose and derail such measures.

Never do they show up in a proactive way to solve any of these problems. Never do they live in the neighborhoods where Black folk suffer. Never do Black Lives Matter in their eyes.

Any and every move by Farrakhan to save his own people must be sabotaged, destroyed, annihilated and discredited— never mind that Blacks suffer or die in the meantime. Yet Israel must be protected at all costs, Jews must decide their own fate, and any Negro who steps out of line must be bludgeoned back into place.

The days of such paternalism are over. Black people and Minister Farrakhan will never concede or capitulate simply because the ADL demands that we kowtow to their agendas and their priorities. We have the right to define our leaders, our positions and our solutions for ourselves. We reject the slave master mentality inherent in ADL attacks and dogmatic demands.

And while the ADL may want to drape itself and all Jews in the mantle of allies, friends of Black people and guardians of civil rights, that’s simply untrue. Jewish merchants had a role in the TransAtlantic slave trade. According to an article on www.jewishjournal.com written by Cnaan Liphshiz and Iris Tzur of JTA, Lody van de Kamp, “an unconventional Orthodox rabbi, in the Netherlands” was penning “a historical novel “about an 18th-century Jewish merchant and his black slave trying to persuade Jews to drop out of the slave trade.”

“In researching the book, van de Kamp discovered data that shocked him,” the writers noted. “In one area of what used to be Dutch Guyana, 40 Jewish-owned plantations were home to a total population of at least 5,000 slaves, he says. Known as the Jodensavanne, or Jewish Savannah, the area had a Jewish community of several hundred before its destruction in a slave uprising in 1832.”

It was Jewish businessmen and landlords who financially benefitted from businesses in overcrowded, unhealthy Black ghettos and tenements. It was socalled Jewish allies and benefactors who objected to the consciousness of the Black Power movement, demands for Black self-determination and criticism of apartheid policies in South Africa. Later Israel shared nuclear secrets with the White supremacist South African government as that bestial nation fought a biological and outright war against a majority Black population.

When questions came up about affirmative action, it was the ADL that sided with those who wanted to and did kill this mild remedy for past discrimination.

When Rev. Jesse Jackson made an historic presidential run in 1984 and misspoke using the word “Hymietown” to refer to Jewish power in New York while calling for a balanced American policy in the Middle East policy, ads proclaiming “Ruin Jesse Ruin” paid for by Jews surfaced. Threats from the militant Jewish Defense League and an increased number of death threats followed. When the Minister warned against harming Rev. Jackson and called for a dialogue, this man who has never been arrested for spitting on a sidewalk, was declared a New Black Hitler by the ADL. How outrageous to call a man with a lifetime of fighting for freedom, justice and equality by the name of a wicked Caucasian murderer—that was an incredible insult.

We won’t list the names of Black political, social, economic, religious, entertainment or academic leaders or figures forced to repudiate Min. Farrakhan or face ADL wrath.

For the record:

  • The Minister never called “Judaism” a “gutter religion.” He condemned dirty practices in the name of religion. Can one violate the laws and statutes of Moses and still claim to be a Jew or hide behind that righteous covenant while engaging in evil?

  • The Minister has never harmed one Jewish person, called for the injury, assault or targeting of one Jewish person.

  • The Minister has never blamed “Jews,” for the 9-11 bombing but he has raised serious questions about who was responsible and the role wicked ones inside the U.S. government and among Zionists played in the murder of innocent people that ushered in a new era of civil liberties losses and wars that have devastated the Middle East. Not every Jew is a Zionist, many observant Orthodox Jews oppose Israel and her wicked mistreatment of the Palestinians. And those guilty of such wickedness hiding behind the name of religion can be rightly called “the Synagogue of Satan” for their misdeeds.
  • The Minister has pointed out the inordinate control the ADL and Jewish groups have exerted over Black interests. The fact that this “Farrakhan-Jewish controversy” has lasted so long, been a litmus test Blacks must pass to be accepted by the ADL, and the numbers of Blacks who have bowed to threats, intimidation and ADL bullying is proof of such domination.

Does the ADL want the truth or have the truth? If so why not accept a challenge issued by Minister Farrakhan to go before the world in a public venue and present the case, offer evidence from both sides, and have an honest debate about the issues? What does the ADL have to hide—besides its lies?