Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein and ZOA Chair Mark Levenson, Esq. released the following statement:
The ZOA is calling on the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), which is best known for its Grammy Awards, to immediately institute reforms within its organization and its annual event in light of its elevation of three prominent Jew-haters during the Academy’s 63rd Grammy Awards ceremony on March 14, 2021 and events during the preceding week.
NARAS nominated anti-Jewish rapper and Farrakhan-promoter Jay Electronica for a major award; featured anti-Israel, Farrakhan-praising activist Tamika Mallory in the Grammy Awards’ climactic broadcast segment; and honored Israel-bashing singer John Legend by designating him as honorary co-chair of the “Black Music Collective,” an advisory group that is part of NARAS. The Grammy Awards website features a 24-minute discussion between Legend and Mallory that was released last week. Legend is also one of NARAS’ trustees.
The litany of Jew-hatred expressed by these NARAS honorees (see further details below) include that: Jay Electronica’s Grammy-nominated album “A Written Testimony” includes anti-Jewish, anti-white and violence-promoting lyrics, plus excerpts from antisemite Farrakhan’s speeches. Electronica also attacked Rabbi Cooper of the pro-Israel Simon Wiesenthal Center as a “devil.” John Legend repeated the outrageous lies that the areas where Palestinian Arabs live in Judea and Samaria and in the Gaza Strip are “open-air prisons” because of Israel, and that Jews have stolen Arab lands. Tamika Mallory aggressively attacks Jews and deceives the public about Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. Mallory is a devoted fan of the Nation of Islam’s antisemitic Louis Farrakhan. She has referred to Farrakhan as the “GOAT” (“Greatest Of All Time”) and has attended at least 30 of his events. She is a frequent collaborator with notorious anti-Israel Jew-hating activist Linda Sarsour.
Morton Klein stated:
“In an age where organizations and institutions take great pains to be sensitive to minorities and their concerns, and when those who engage in prejudice and behaviors that target minorities are shunned, it is appalling that NARAS would honor one Jew-hater, feature a second Jew-hater during its broadcast, and gives a prominent position to yet a third Jew-hater. Why is there this double-standard when it comes to those who are anti-Jewish and who spread vicious lies about Jews, Jewish history, and the Jewish State? Why is Jew-hatred acceptable by the Recording Academy?
“The ZOA calls on Harvey Mason Jr., chairman of NARAS’ Board of Trustees, to address this matter immediately. We do not believe that there should be ‘witch-hunts’ into everyone’s background. However, when Jew-haters broadcast their antipathy towards Jews and the Jewish state in their lyrics, interviews, and social media, it is time to act. There needs to be zero tolerance for Jew-hatred. Institutions should state categorically that they will have nothing to do with those who engage in Jew-hatred – and that they certainly will not honor them.
“Attacks against Jews are rampant in America. Attacks against the right of Jewish self-determination are pervasive. Vicious lies about Jews and Israel in the media are becoming ubiquitous. We fear that if this continues, it could inspire a pogrom in America that will be even worse than the attacks, looting, arson and destruction perpetrated against Jewish religious institutions and businesses in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Los Angeles last May, at the instigation of Farrakhan-supporting Black Lives Matter groups’ leaders.
“Giving honors and awards to Electronica, Mallory, and Legend will expand their ability to engender Jew-hatred among some of their fans and social-media followers. It is of great concern that these lies about Jewish rights, Jewish history, and contemporary events will potentially supplant the truth for millions.”
Below are more details on these Jew-haters’ records:
Tamika Mallory:
During a Facebook Live event, after returning from a trip to Israel organized by the anti-Israel, Orwellian-named Center for Constitutional Rights, Mallory falsely accused Jews of stealing the Jewish homeland – where Jews have lived for thousands of years. Mallory absurdly stated:
“When you go to someone’s home, and you need a place to stay, you ask ‘Can I come into your home and can I stay here, and can we peacefully coexist?’ You don’t walk into someone else’s home, needing a place. It’s clear you needed a place to go — cool, we got that. I hear that. But you don’t show up to somebody’s home, needing a place to stay, and decide that you’re going to throw them out and hurt the people who are on that land. And to kill, steal, and do whatever it is you’re gonna do to take that land. That to me is unfair. It’s a human rights crime.”
“March’s Mallory, “Israel is a Human Rights Crime,” by Jeff Dunetz, Jewish Star, June 7, 2018. Video at “Media Won’t Ask Horwath About NDP Ties to Anti-Israel Activist,” June 2018.)
Mallory was a co-president and founder of the Women’s March before being forced out of that role due to her praise of racist, antisemite Farrakhan. She and Sarsour are among the leaders of a new activist group called Until Freedom, which claims to be “an intersectional social justice organization rooted in the leadership of diverse people of color to address systemic and racial injustice.” Intersectional groups have had a tendency to prioritize attacks against Israel and Jewish self-determination.
Mallory’s upcoming book, “State of Emergency,” includes a forward co-authored by noted antisemite Angela Davis. Davis is a featured promoter of antisemitic “Israel Apartheid Week” events and anti-Israel boycotts, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).
In January 2019, on the PBS show “Firing Line,” when host Margaret Hoover asked Mallory if she believed that Israel has a right to exist, Mallory refused to give a direct answer. (“Women’s March Co-Leader Mallory Refuses to Answer if Israel Should Exist,” Times of Israel, Jan. 18, 2019.)
Mallory has made a number of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel posts on Twitter. Among these, she labelled the Israeli government’s efforts to defend against Palestinian Arab terrorism “a crime against humanity.”
Mallory also told The New York Times: “we’ve all learned a lot about how while white Jews, as white people, uphold white supremacy … .” (“Tamika Mallory, Women’s March Leader: White Jews ‘Uphold White Supremacy’,” by Valerie Richardson, AP/The Washington Times, Dec. 24, 2018.)
John Legend:
In 2020, Legend participated in a live podcast about the criminal justice system for The Intercept, along with Patrisse Cullors, a founder of the Black Lives Matter organization, and who herself has an anti-Jewish history. Legend told the interviewer: “There should not be a whole group of people in a country, because of their nationality or religion, being held in open-air prisons, and denied freedom of movement and having their land annexed by settlers and all these things. That’s just a human position. I’m not an expert in this area. Clearly it’s wrong what is happening to the Palestinians, it’s so obvious. Anyone who doesn’t believe that is the case is being willfully blind, I believe.”
Several years earlier, while a panelist on Bill Maher’s TV show, Legend also brought up the Palestinian Arabs: “As Progressives we should also speak up for human rights for Palestinians, and I think, for too long, I think, it’s been out of bounds.”
In 2014 Legend tweeted: “So sick watching our Secretary of State [John Kerry] have to grovel so hard to tell Israel how much he loves them while Israeli cabinet shits on him.”
Jay Electronica:
Jay Electronica’s rap song, “Ghost of Soulja Slim” on his “A Written Testimony” album, includes the following anti-Jewish, anti-white, violence-promoting lyrics:
“That lil’ [bullet-proof] vest ain’t gonna do you, I shoot from neck up
. . . .
And I bet you a Rothschild, I get a bang for my dollar
The synagogue of Satan want me to hang by my collar…
I put on for my nation like I’m King T’Challa [Black Panther]
Crushing the oyinbo [Caucasians] that try to bring wahala [trouble]
You want it, I got it”
The same rap song includes an introduction by antisemite Louis Farrakhan, saying,
“. . . Negro. . . Don’t you come out and defend our enemy.”
The same Electronica “Written Testimony” album, in the rap song “Overwhelming Event,” includes a verse featuring Farrakhan saying:
“. . . . “Who are the real Children of Israel?”
. . . . The honorable Elijah Muhammad has said that almighty God Allah
revealed to him
That the black people of America are the real Children of Israel
And they, we, are the choice of God
And that unto us, he will deliver his promise That’s right”
Electronica’s rap song “The NeverEnding Story,” also on the same album, includes these lyrics urging his followers to listen to Jew-hater and white-hater Louis Farrakhan:
“. . . they’ll steal ya Jesus
. . . . that blue-eyed version is make believe stuff
. . . .
“Listen to everything from a lecture
From the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan”
Electronica’s “Universal Soldier” on the same album calls “The teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s my backbone.” [Farrakhan was a follower of Nation of Islam leader and Black separatist Elijah Muhammed.]
Electronica’s next album in 2020, “Act II: The Patents of Nobility (The Turn),” repeats his pejorative references to Rothschilds and the “synagogue of Satan.” His “Patents of Nobility” rap song includes the below lyrics, celebrating condemning the Rothschilds, vowing to continue doing so, and imagining that he’ll eventually be persecuted for doing so:
“I showed these major labels how to make a man from dirtAnd breathe in his nostrils, fill him up with GospelLeave him at the mountain top blasting at the Rothschilds
. . . .
It’s just real Black History
. . . . I’m gon’ spit it till they strip me
Crown me with thorns
March me up the hill crucifix me then ditch me”
Also in his second album, the track “Better in Tune with the Infinite,” opens with a lecture from NOI Black separatist Elijah Muhammed, and afterwards includes Electronica’s lyrics again imagining that he may be persecuted by “synagogues of Satan”:
“The synagogues of Satan might accuse or jail me
Strip, crown, nail me, brimstone hail me
They might defeat the flesh but they could never ever kill me”
Electronica also tweeted his antisemitic rants. The Jerusalem Post reported that:
“[R]apper Jay Electronica has taken to Twitter to launch an antisemitic tirade in which he invoked both the Christian Bible and Islamic preacher Louis Farrakhan to claim that the Jews are not the true children of Israel.
‘Revelation 2:9 Revelation 3:9’ Electronica tweeted . . . to his 372,900 followers, in reference to passages in the Book of Revelation that refer to the Jews as the ‘synagogue of Satan.’ ‘ps, to my Christian family, do you know what the talmud says about Jesus and His Mother? also, what is a Goy?” the Muslim rapper added.”
“Jay Electronica Joins Fellow Rappers in Tweeting Antisemitic Tirade,” by Donna Rachel Edmunds, Jerusalem Post, July 26, 2020.)
In addition, following a furor over entertainer Nick Cannon’s antisemitic statements that “Rothschilds” and “Zionists” have “too much power,” and Cannon’s subsequent conciliatory meeting with Rabbi Cooper, Electronica tweeted that the Rabbi was a liar, a coward and a devil, and condemned the Talmud, saying:
“Rabbi Abraham Cooper is a COWARD who LIED to our brother Nick Cannon about the history of the caucasian race. Ask him does he stand behind the VILE TEACHINGS of the Talmud? Don’t be a coward next time Cooper you DEVIL.
— J A Y E L E C T R O N I C A (@JayElectronica) July 26, 2020”
(“Rapper Jay Electronica Calls Rabbi a ‘Coward’ and ‘Devil’,” by Jackson Richman, JNS, July 27, 2020.)
In a follow-up tweet, Electronica promoted Farrakhan’s antisemitic lies that Jews are imposters and thieves, saying:
“Sit down w The Hon. Louis Farrakhan or The Exec Council of The NOI and defend your claims and prove us wrong. WE are INDEED THE TRUE Children of Israel. And you are an imposter and birthright stealer as described in the scriptures. The ADL, THE WEISENHALL CENTER… BRING EM OUT.” (Id.)
Those hateful, false, and absurd ravings should never have received a Grammy nomination. Shameful.