Daniel Greenfield August 31, 2023
@ Sultan Knish Blog In August 1991, racist mobs roamed the
streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, attacking anyone they thought might
be Jewish. Black rioters stabbed, stoned and beat their victims.
Community members huddled in their homes watching gangs smash their
windows. Al Sharpton appeared to denounce the Jews at an event that
included the banner, “Hitler did not do the job.”
In
August 2023, the ADL ignored the anniversary of the Crown Heights
Pogrom and instead joined Sharpton in Washington D.C. The ADL urged its
members to take part in Sharpton’s ‘March on Washington’ headlined by
his National Action Network and co-chaired by the ADL.
The ADL
not only failed to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the Crown Heights
Pogrom, it partnered with the hatemonger who was front and center at
the pogrom. ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt issued a press release
together with Al Sharpton about the recent murder of three people in
Florida, while forgetting about the three people who died in Crown
Heights.
They
include Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting Australian student, who was
surrounded and stabbed to death, Anthony Graziosi, an Italian-American
salesman, dragged from his car and murdered because his hat and beard
make him look like an Orthodox Jew, and Bracha Estricher, a Holocaust
survivor who seeing the thugs pounding on her door committed suicide
rather than fall into their hands. Not to mention a woman who suffered a
miscarriage after being chased by the mob.
“Hate still exists,”
Greenblatt declared in D.C. at an event headlined by the most lucrative
bigot who used the Crown Heights Pogrom as a springboard to running for
president, becoming a Democratic Party kingmaker, and securing a role as
Obama’s envoy. He implied that critics of the ADL’s relationship with
Sharpton were practicing “cancel culture”, when what we really needed to
do is “embrace them” and “educate them about our history.”
Like
the time that Sharpton taunted, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell
them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”
The
‘March on Washington’ was not Greenblatt’s first collaboration with
Sharpton. The two men have repeatedly worked together and participated
in joint appearances, events and press releases on various leftist
causes, often having nothing to do with either Jewish or black issues,
such as condemning the Trump administration’s efforts to secure the
border in 2018.
But co-chairing an event with Sharpton’s hate
group on the 32nd anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom is an
unforgivable expression of contempt for the victims of the violence. On
another August after a mob shouting, “There’s a Jew! Get the Jew! Kill
the Jew.”, chased down and killed Yankel Rosenbaum, the ADL boss is
eager to dismiss this as a mere matter of “differences”.
While
it’s entirely conceivable that Jonathan Greenblatt, an Obama
administration veteran ignorant of Jewish issues who steered the ADL
into intersectional wokeness, did not know what else Sharpton had done
in August (the last time the ADL commemorated the worst antisemitic riot
in America history was in 2021), this is not the first time that this
has happened.
The ADL and Greenblatt had come under fire for
taking part in Sharpton’s ‘March on Washington’ in 2020 some months
after BLM riots had targeted Los Angeles synagogues. When the pogrom was
first taking place, a rabbi had blasted the ADL for ignoring the
violence and instead “issuing a press release about skinheads in Idaho”.
In
2016, Norman Rosenbaum, an Australian prosecutor who had come to
America to fight for justice for his murdered brother, condemned the ADL
and future New York City Mayor Eric Adams for marking the pogrom with a
“community festival” offering fun for all.
After
securing a federal civil rights trial for his brother’s killer, who had
gotten a pass from a friendly local jury, Rosenbaum passionately held
establishment groups like the ADL accountable. When Sharpton was invited
to events, he would challenge those who did it, reminding them that,
“it completely disregards the pivotal role that Al Sharpton played in
inciting the riots which took my brother’s life.”
Norman
Rosenbaum passed away in July 2020, freeing up the ADL to work on
Sharpton’s March to Washington that year. With him gone, the ADL boss
felt no shame in using the 32nd anniversary of the pogrom to party with
Sharpton in Washington D.C.
In one of his last messages, Norman
Rosenbaum wrote in 2019 that, “It was a mob of about 30 who attacked and
murdered Yankel, of which 28 have never been brought to justice. And as
he parades around as a supposed leader and champion of civil rights,
Sharpton has never once called on his supporters to turn in to law
enforcement the remaining 28 people. But that is not a priority in Al
Sharpton’s world.”
Nor is it a priority for the ADL.
The
ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt claimed that he had come with Sharpton to
Washington D.C. to stand up for justice. Sharpton has never faced
justice, not for Crown Heights, for the Tawana Brawley hoax, or the
Freddie’s massacre in Harlem which killed 7 people.
The last time
the ADL commemorated the Crown Heights Pogrom was two years ago while
refusing to use the correct term “pogrom”, instead choosing to use the
media’s distorted politically term “riots” in order to evade the
responsibility of the political establishment, including Mayor David
Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor, in having the police stand
down.
The ADL’s press release stated that “one of the enduring
lessons of the Crown Heights Riots is in acknowledging the
responsibility to confront antisemitism, no matter where it is and who
is perpetrating it.” Two years later, the ADL is co-chairing an event
with an antisemite who was at the epicenter of the worst antisemitic
riot in the nation’s history.
In Washington D.C., Sharpton began
his speech with, “No justice, no peace”, the same slogan that he had
brought to Crown Heights three decades ago and which Charles Price, who
was convicted of inciting the Rosenbaum murder had shouted, along with,
“Let’s get the Jews”.
The Jews were on the ground, courtesy of
Greenblatt and fading actor Sacha Baron Cohen, most famous for singing
“Throw the Jew down the well” in the persona of ‘Borat’. “Many of you
are probably wondering what the hell is a white Jewish comedian from
England doing here,” he asked, after first opening with a tiresome joke
about performing at the Rosenberg bar mitzvah.
“I promise that this is not a prank on you,” he assured the crowd. “It might be one on me.”
That was an adequate summary of Jews showing up to Sharpton’s event.
“Today
was a day to show our strength,” Sharpton boasted and vowed to fight
for racial preferences in corporations. “We are not going to let you
take affirmative action.”
While Sharpton and his allies show
their strength, the ADL and the Jewish organizational establishment show
their weakness. That is as true today as it was 32 years ago.
The
ADL’s actions are not only a moral disgrace, they’re also a betrayal.
Why is the ADL joining an antisemite’s campaign in support of racial
preferences which primarily discriminate against Asians and Jews? (The
successful campaign against affirmative action was waged by Edward Blum,
a Jewish conservative, and Asian-American plaintiffs.) What interests
are served here?
When the Crown Heights Pogrom took place, the
ADL had waited a week and a half to condemn it. Abe Foxman, the ADL’s
longtime leader, explained that the group had remained silent in the
face of days of antisemitic violence, assault and murder out of “a quest
for social justice”. Social justice, or more accurately, leftist
politics, is still the priority for the ADL.
Jewish lives don’t matter, social justice does.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.
My Take - This goes beyond antisemitism and racism. Those of us old enough to remember this outrage didn't appreciate just how insidiously dangerous this was.
By allowing these murderers and thugs to get away with all this, especially Sharpton, this helped lay the groundwork that turned America's major cities into an unrecoverable disaster, because they're not only refusing to prosecute criminals, they're promoting them, and then turn around and blame everyone else.
As for the ADL and similar groups I have to wonder what's behind their insanity. Who in the world keeps funding a group that is so destructive to those they're supposed to be supporting?
We’ve lost our minds and entirely lost our way when these kinds of murderous events are celebrated, and by default, the murderers are lauded.
What's even more disgusting is Sharpton, who is dumb as dirt, is treated like wise senior counselor to the nation by the media and the left, who, as impossible as it may seem, are even more stupid and more disgusting than Sharpton.
