THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 124, July 13, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FARRAKHAN DEMANDS REPARATIONS FROM JEWS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
LOUIS FARRAKHAN'S RECENT MESSAGE TO THE HEADS OF JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS IN AMERICA: A VEILED CALL
FOR BLACK MUSLIMS IN THE U.S.A. TO TAKE VIOLENT ACTION AGAINST AMERICAN JEWS -- BLAMING THE
TRANS-ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE ON JEWS & DEMANDING REPARATIONS FROM THEM -- AN UNSUBTLE ATTEMPT AT
EXTORTION
FULL STORY:
Louis Farrakhan recently sent a three-page letter, along with two books, to the heads of sixteen Jewish organizations.
Dated June 24, 2010, the letter is resplendent with a crescent-and-moon flag and Farrakhan's impressive-sounding title
("National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam"). In it, he announces that the
books (The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews (Volume Two) and Jews Selling Blacks: Slave
Trade by American Jews) present an undeniable record of Jewish anti-Black behavior, starting with the horror of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, plantation slavery, Jim Crow, sharecropping, the labor movement of the North and South, the
unions, and the misuse of Black people that continues to this very moment.
Farrakhan challenges the recipients of his letter – who range politically from Jeremy Ben-Ami (of J-Street) to Lee
Rosenberg (of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) to Morton Klein (of the Zionist Organization of America) –
to find one act committed by me or those who follow me that has injured one Jewish person, stopped Jews from doing
business, hindered their education, injured their families, sullied or desecrated their synagogues.
"You will not find one," declares Farrakhan, who then asks: "on what basis do you charge me and us as being
'anti-Semitic'?" Quite the contrary, Farrakhan avers, "we could now charge you with the most vehement anti-Black
behavior in the annals of our history in America and the world. We could charge you with being the most deceitful
socalled friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy." Farrakhan could also dwell on the
fact that Jews are "sitting on top of the world in power, with riches and influence, while the masses of my people here in
America, in the Caribbean, Central and South America, and elsewhere in the world are in the worst condition of any
member of the human family."
He could make these points, he notes, but he chooses not to: "I do not write this with vitriol, hatred, bitterness, or a
spirit of vengeance." Instead, he hopes to establish ties with Jews: "I have pleaded with you over the years for a
sensible, intelligent dialogue. You have rejected me." Despite prior failures, the publication of these two books inspires
Farrakhan to try anew: "I again ask you for a dialogue."
For Farrakhan, dialogue equals reparations. Because Jews "are in a position to help me in the civilizing work that The
Honorable Elijah Muhammad was given to do by Allah (God)." More specifically: "This is an offer asking you and the
Gentiles whom you influence to help me in the repair of my people from the damage that has been done by your
ancestors to mine." In other words, after years of unsuccessfully demanding reparations for blacks from the U.S.
government, he is now looking to Jews to make amends for their alleged past injustices.
Farrakhan presents this moment as both a unique opportunity for Jews ("This is a wonderful way of the present
generation of Jews to escape the Judgment of Allah") and as an ultimatum: You may either gather your forces for an
all-out struggle against me, the Nation of Islam, and the truth that I and we speak and write, or, as an intelligent and
civilized people, we can sit down and carve out a way forward that can obliterate the stain of the past and render us,
Jews and Blacks … in a new, honorable, and mutually respectful relationship.
Should Jews spurn this offer, Farrakhan threatens "disgrace and ruin": Should you choose to make our struggle to
our people more difficult, then I respectfully warn you … that the more you fight and oppose me, rather than help me
to lift my people from their degraded state, Allah (God) and His Messiah will bring you and your people to disgrace
and ruin and destroy your power and influence here and throughout the world.
He signs off with "Respectfully and Sincerely Submitted, The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, Servant to the
Lost-Found Nation of Islam in the West."
COMMENTS:
(1) In a major speech on June 26, Farrakhan announced having sent these books to more than the named Jewish
leaders:
"We have published Volume No. 2 of The Secret
Relationship Between Blacks and Jews. … I sent
this book, and another one that is printed called
Jews Selling Blacks, to Mr. Abraham Foxman
of B'nai B'rith [sic], and to all the leaders of the major
Jewish organizations. I sent it to President Obama, to
Rahm Emanuel, to David Axelrod, to Timothy Geithner,
to Larry Summers, to Ben Bernanke."
(2) According to Farrakhan's publication, The Final Call, none of the Jewish leaders responded to his letter,
other than to denounce it.
(3) The "Nation of Islam Historical Research Team" (note the absence of individuals' names) produced the first
volume of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews in 1991. In brief, the first volume was akin to
The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, not a scholarly tome, but an artifact of conspiracist propaganda
intended solely to spawn hatred against Jews. Harold Brackman began to demolish its scholarly pretensions in
Ministry of Lies: The Truth behind the Nation of Islam's "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews"
(Four Walls Eight Windows, 1994) and Saul S. Friedman finished the job in Jews Selling Blacks: Jews and the
American Slave Trade (Transaction, 1998).
(4) Attempts to blame the trans-Atlantic slave trade on Jews reminds one of conspiracy theories blaming 9/11 on
Jews: in both cases, Jews are brought gratuitously into a story overwhelmingly about Muslims.
(5) Farrakhan relies on obvious but clever duplicity in his letter: "we could charge you" with a host a charges but
will not do so. We are offering you a deal, but, if you turn it down, "disgrace and ruin" await you. The letter
amounts to an unsubtle attempt at extortion.
(6) It also offers a perverse example of benign anti-Semitism, whereby a person hopes that Jews will use what he
imagines to be their power to help him – in this case appealing for help with "the Gentiles whom you influence."
(7) One might think that, with Barack Obama in the U.S. White House and Africa enjoying high economic growth
rates, Farrakhan would stop focusing on Jews to "lift my people from their degraded state."
(8) The letter fits a pattern of anti-Semitism on Farrakhan's part that goes back to his re-establishing the Nation of
Islam in 1978. In contrast, under Elijah Muhammad, who died in 1975, Farrakhan and the NoI more generally evinced
little interest in Jews.
(9) Klein of ZOA calls this letter "a veiled call for violence against Jews" and he is right: Farrakhan full well knows he
would not get the reply he demands.
(10) Farrakhan has praised Obama as "the hope of the entire world," the "one who can lift America from her fall," and
as one sent by "the Messiah." Obama's Presidency has apparently emboldened him to renew his attacks on Jews.
(11) Where are the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim
American Society, and the Muslim Public Affairs Council? One awaits their condemnations of Farrakhan.
© Daniel Pipes 2010
Originally Published in National Review Online, July 13, 2010
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, July 13, 2010
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/8616/farrakhan-demands-reparations-from-jews
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Jews & Anti-Semitism
Ethnic & Racial Politics in the U.S.A.
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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