Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Director of Special Projects Liz Berney, Esq. issued the following statement:
Last week, an ABC TV series, aptly named “Scandal,” equated “wearing a black skullcap” to evil-doing. A black skullcap (also called a yarmulke or kippah) is an item worn by religious Jews. In an episode entitled “The Miseducation of Susan Ross” (Season 5, Episode 16, air date March 31, 2016, seen by 6.4 million viewers), a concerned employee describes her boss’s transformation, from formerly doing good, to now engaging in evil dirty tricks that will cause devastating harm to a political candidate’s innocent young child, as follows: “I’m talking about replacing the white hat with a black skullcap.” The Scandal TV series frequently uses “wearing a white hat” as a metaphor for doing good, and being on the side of truth and justice. The show could have easily used a metaphor other than “wearing a black skullcap” for evil – but instead made the veiled reference to religious Jews.
(If “Scandal” wished to use a “political” metaphor for evil, a far more appropriate garment to symbolize “evil” would have been the keffiyehs worn by the Arab terrorists while they slaughtered hundreds of innocent Jews living in Jerusalem and Hebron in the 1930s. Egyptian-born terrorist Yasser Arafat – who was responsible for targeting and the murders of hundreds of Jews including Jewish schoolchildren from the 1970s to 2000s – “popularized” the headgear as the “Palestinian keffiyeh”; it is worn by Palestinian Arab terrorists who continue to attack and murder innocent Jews today.)
Up until now, “Scandal” has avoided anti-Semitic references, and the offending line last week appears to be an isolated incident. Normally, we might write the line off to insensitivity. But in light of ABC’s rife-with-anti-Semitism series, Quantico, we wonder whether anti-Jewish bigotry has now infected another ABC show, whether this is a harbinger of plans for worse to come (which needs to be stopped now), and what in the world is going on at ABC.
According to IMDB (Internet Movie Database), the episode at issue was co-written by “Scandal”’s powerful creator Ms. Shonda Rhimes and Somali Muslim writer Ms. Raamla Mohamed.
ZOA urges Ms. Rhimes, Ms. Mohamed and ABC to issue an apology, delete or replace the offending line in replays of the episode (the offending line is unnecessary to the story), and avoid further anti-Semitic references or slurs in the future. ZOA wrote to ABC on April 6, and has received no response thus far.
What You Can Do / Contact Information:
Please feel free to contact ABC and the episode’s co-writers at the addresses below, to ask them to apologize, delete or replace the offensive line, and avoid future anti-Semitic references. Please copy ZOA on your correspondence at [email protected]:
Creator and co-writer Shonda Rhimes’ twitter address: https://twitter.com/search?q=shonda%20rhimes&src=typd
Co-writer Ms. Raamla Mohamed’s twitter address: https://twitter.com/dramaraamla
Ms. Channing Dungey
President, ABC Entertainment Group
Email: [email protected]
(818) 560-1000; direct: 818 460-7030
Ms. Hope Hartman
Senior VP, Communications, ABC Studios, ABC Entertainment
Email: [email protected]
Direct: 818 460-6360
Mr. Mark Mazie, Esq.
Chief Counsel, Disney-ABC Media Networks
500 South Buena Vista Street, Burbank, CA 91521
Email: [email protected]
tel: (818) 460-5767
Karl T. Nilsson
Executive Publicity Director – Disney/ABC Television Group
Email: [email protected]
Tel: (212) 456-7955
ABC Audience comments line: