August 24, 2020
Originally published in the Jewish News Syndicate
By Dov Wilker and Holly Huffnagle
While blacks and Jews are uniting, as they did in the civil-rights era, to combat gun violence, police brutality, food shortages and health disparities in poor neighborhoods—important work advanced by NOI—Farrakhan’s vile anti-Semitism keeps getting in the way. At every live and live-streamed event, acolytes peddle The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a series of books authored by Farrakhan that blame Jews for the slave trade and its repercussions. Rhetoric about Satanic Jews peppers every speech, including his three-hour July 4 diatribe.
But in an age of synagogue shootings, conspiracy theories and other indications of rising anti-Semitism, Farrakhan’s weapon has been backfiring—not on him, but on his followers, the people he purports to empower.
Dov Wilker is director of the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Atlanta Region. Holly Huffnagle is AJC director for Combating Antisemitism in the United States.
