Where’s the outrage over NFL player’s anti-semitic words?
Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Desean Jackson won’t be on my Fantasy Football team this season. And, if I had my way, he wouldn’t be in an NFL uniform either.
For those of you who missed it, his recent Instagram posts were shocking and disgraceful.
Jackson posted a screenshot of a passage, which he wrongly attributed to Adolf Hitler, declaring that white Jews “will blackmail America. will extort America, their plan for world domination won’t work if the Negroes know who they were.” The passage went on to say that, “Negroes are the real Children of Israel” and “the white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time they’ve been mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel.”
Desean Jackson’s teammate Malik Jackson defended Desean. Former NBA player, Stephen Jackson, said that Desean was speaking the truth.
And the Eagles? They waited an entire week before they gave him the functional equivalent of an offside penalty and an undisclosed fine. The Eagles also fined and failed to suspend Jackson’s former teammate, Riley Cooper, for using a derogatory term for Black people in 2013. Those were neither appropriate punishments nor a sufficient message that such conduct won’t be tolerated.
As an American Jew, I have been appalled by the lack of outrage that has followed. His hate speech received nominal media coverage and surprisingly scant public condemnation.
Credit NBA legend Kareem Abdul Jabbar who called this out, “recent incidents of anti-semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation.”
That Adolf Hitler did not actually speak the words does not matter. Hitler was the evilest person ever born. As Chancellor of Germany, he led the Nazis in their attempt to annihilate the Jewish people in Europe.
So, whether it’s Mel Gibson asking Winona Ryder if she is an “oven-dodger,” or Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan calling Hitler a “great man,” Jews “termites” and Judaism a “gutter religion,” invoking Hitler in a positive fashion must be a no-go zone for everyone.
Scott Levin, the Anti-defamation League’s (ADL) regional director, observed to me that Desean Jackson’s social media posts are painful to Jews, “Not only did they rely on old tropes and lies long leveled against Jews, but to think that he would adopt a quote he thought was from Adolf Hitler, a man who claimed both Jews and Blacks were inferior humans, demonstrated his abject ignorance of history and lack of sensitivity.”
Anti-semitism, like racism, Islamophobia, ANTI-LGBTQ rhetoric and other forms of hate must be called out and unequivocally rejected. But following Desean Jackson’s offensive posts, the relative silence was deafening.
Yes, anti-semitism in America is alive and well in a country where Jews only make up about 2% to 3% of the population.
Anti-semitism is an ancient disease. Today, it pervades social media. Memes that blame Jews for either causing COVID19 or profiteering from it harken back to the blame placed on Jews for causing the Black Death by poisoning wells.
According to the ADL, nationally anti-semitic incidents increased by 12% between 2018 and 2019. In Colorado, incidents climbed by a whopping 56% in one year. And, where it perhaps matters the most, there was a 19% increase in K-12 incidents over that same year.
Abdul-jabbar is correct. The muted response perpetuates racism and contributes to an overall “apatholypse — apathy to all forms of social justice.”
Levin says that, “today, there is a long-overdue focus on how Black Americans bear the brunt of systemic oppression and police brutality . ... At the same time, we cannot allow the focus to diminish the need to address anti-semitism and other forms of hate in this country.”
In Colorado, we have witnessed people of diverse backgrounds deliver a unifying voice against hatred. Take the leadership of Levin and Bishop Jerry Demmer, president of the Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance, who have joined forces to speak out against anti-semitism, racism, white supremacy, xenophobia, Islamophobia, ANTILGBTQ and other forms of hate.
That’s the Colorado way, which gives me hope. Jews can’t afford to ignore anti-semitism and neither should you.