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And he was a leader of the civil rights movement. In many pictures of 1960s civil rights protests, including the famous one in Selma, the Reverend and Rabbi marched close together in the front line. The two great men of faith forged a close alliance between African American and Jewish national Leadership.
But after Dr. King was assassinated, the Leadership of the black community began to feel that American Jews were their competition for getting into the “middle class” and began to spew Antisemitism.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
“At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The Exodus began, but is far from having been completed.”
Those were the words with which Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel opened his address at the 1963 National Conference on Race and Religion in Chicago. At that same conference, Rabbi Heschel first met the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the keynote speaker at this national gathering. The two became close friends and allies, working together to achieve equality for their communities.
“Theologically as well as politically, King and Heschel recognized their own strong kinship. For each there was an emphatic stress on the dependence of the political on the spiritual, God on human society, the moral life on economic well-being. Indeed, there are numerous passages in their writings that might have been composed by either one. Consider for example, Heschel”s words: ‘The opposite of good is not evil, the opposite of good is indifference,’ a conviction that he translated into a political commitment: ‘In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.’ King writes, ‘To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system.’ In so doing, he went on, ‘the oppressed becomes as evil as the oppressor.’ Not to act communicates ‘to the oppressor that his actions are morally right.'”
Reverend King knew that the only way his dream would ever be realized was to invite people of all colors and beliefs to join him. Rabbi Heschel knew the struggle for civil rights was a holy one, and participation was required by Jewish law. The two prophets of different faiths soon became fast friends and allies. When Dr. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, he and his family were scheduled to be guests at Rabbi Heschel family”s Passover Seder eight days later.
Sadly after Reverand King was assassinated, some of the African American leaders who replaced him felt the Jews were not their allies but their competition. That competitiveness quickly morphed into Antisemitism.
The Civil Rights movement”s Leadership was inherited by people like Jesse Jackson, who saw the Jews as their competition for achieving middle-class status. Unlike Reverend King, who was a believer in the Zionist mission&mdasha Jewish State in their eternal homeland Black leaders such as Jackson, Andrew Young, and Louis Farrakhan went public with anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel comments. As the Antisemitism spread, the hatred didn”t infest all Black Americans but became popular with some of the Black leaders on the liberal side of the aisle.
Aided by the resentment of a Jewish middle class, the hatred preached by many liberal African-American community leaders like Jackson and Farrakhan spread, and mistrust began to permeate between the two communities” Leadership.
The fraying of the relationship became evident soon after Dr. King was Killed. In May 1968, a new community-controlled school board in the mostly Black BlaOcean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn summarily dismissed 18 white teachers and administrators. In September, the school board”s action led to a series of citywide teacher strikes led by the Jewish UFT (United Federation Of Teachers) Leader Albert Shanker.
The issue in the job action was the random firing of AFT members, not faith. However, the atmosphere surrounding the strike was poisoned by African-American Antisemitism directed at the many Jewish members of the UFT. Especially the AFT president Albert Shanker. Anti-Semitic catcalls were shouted by protesters and appeared in newspapers put out by the Afro-American Teachers Association.
A student”s anti-Semitic poem was read on the radio. The poem was called “Antisemitism: Dedicated to Albert Shanker” and began with the words, “Hey, Jewboy, with that yarmulke on your head / You pale-faced Jew boy – I wish you were dead.”
Making the nascent mistrust between the two communities expand were the leaders of the South African anti-Apartheid movement. They traveled throughout the United States as conquering heroes, which they were, but at the same time spread Jew-hatred. A leader of this hatred was Bishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu publicly complained about American Jews, saying Jews exhibited “an arrogance&mdashthe arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin, November 29, 1984).
Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.”
The Affirmative Action movement further divided the two former allies. In the 1970s, Blacks began seeking ways to build on the civil rights act by pushing policies that support their disadvantaged group members. Jews fought against Affirmative Action believing everything should be based on merit only and that they would be the ones who would be losing jobs and college placement. The famous Supreme Court Affirmative Action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke in 1978. Many Black and Jewish leaders took public stances–fighting on opposite sides.
In 1979, Andrew Young, then Jimmy Carter”s ambassador to the United Nations, violated administration policy and met with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Almost immediately, Young was gone. By most accounts, he was asked to resign because he had deceived the State Department&mdashbut African-American Leadership saw a Jewish conspiracy. Young”s dismissal, said Jesse Jackson, was a “capitulation” to Jews. Other Blacks castigated Jews. An article in Commentary called The Andrew Young Affair outlined the PLO incident plus anti-Semitic comments and other acts by Young.
In January 1984, Jesse Jackson referred to Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown.” He commented during a conversation with a Black Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman. Jackson had assumed the references would not be printed because of his racial bond with Coleman. Several weeks later, Coleman permitted the slurs to be included far down in an article by another Post reporter on Jackson”s rocky relations with American Jews. Later that year, when Jackson ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination, the Jewish community, a significant voting bloc in the party, was his most fervent opponent within the party.
The die was cast. The love affair between Jewish and Black Leadership, fomented by two great men, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, was fractured by the Jew-hatred of Dr. King”s successors.
The next generation of successors seal the mistrust
Al Sharpton was a low-level civil rights leader looking to become “big time” by using Jews as his scapegoat. During the Twana Brawley hoax, he said that Brawley telling her story to the State”s Attorney General Robert Abrams, who was Jewish, would be “like asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler.”
Rev. Al Sharpton and Rabbi Marc Schneier
Courtesy of the Foundation For Ethnic Understanding
On July 20, 1991, Leonard Jeffries of City College, who had a history of anti-Semitic slurs, presented a two-hour-long speech slamming those”rich Jews.” He claimed Jews financed the slave trade, controlled the film industry (together with the Italian mafia), and used that control to paint a brutal stereotype of Blacks. Jeffries also attacked Diane Ravitch (Assistant Secretary of Education), calling her a “sophisticated Texas Jew,” “a debonair racist,” and “Miss Daisy.” [as in Driving Miss Daisy].
Jeffries” speech received enormous negative press, especially from the Jewish community leaders who wanted Jeffries fired for the bigotry. The Jewish argument worked, as Jeffries was fired as chairman of the Black studies program but allowed to stay on as a professor. His position of chairman was restored after he sued the school, but the Supreme Court made the lower court reverse the decision two years later.
With each new criticism of Jeffries, leaders in the New York African-American community rushed to Jeffries” defense. NYC”s two African American newspapers, as well as Black radio station WLIB, joined activists such as Al Sharpton, Colin Moore, C. Vernon Mason, Sonny Carson, and Lenora Fulani to showcase their approval of Jeffries”s “scholarship.” At the same time, they denounced the Jews who criticized Jeffries Antisemitism as race-baiters.
On August 18, 1991, speaking about the growing Jeffries controversy, Al Sharpton made his famous comment, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”
The Day after Sharpton told Jews to pin their yarmulkes back, a car in the Lububcher Rebbe Schneerson”s motorcade accidentally jumped the curb and killed a young African American child Gavin Cato. The local community that had been listening to their local media put down the Jews for a month didn”t trust that was an accident, and thus the Crown Heights riot began. Per the New York Times, more than 250 neighborhood residents went on a rampage that first night, mostly black teenagers, many of whom were shouting “Jews! Jews! Jews!”
Sharpton wasn”t there on the first night when a Jewish Yeshiva student from Australia named Yankel Rosenbaum was killed. But seeing the possibility of becoming a national leader, he exploited the riot, joined in on day two, and attacked the Jews.
Sharpton rode on the back of his constant scapegoating the Jews to become a national figure. What he left behind was furthering the mistrust between Jews and Blacks.
According to the liberal ADL, between 2007 and 2016, African American Antisemitism was almost twice that of the general community. While these numbers are frightening, it is essential to note that most African Americans are NOT anti-Semitic.
At the end of 2019, there was a rash of anti-Semitic incidents in the NY City metropolitan area conducted by African Americans. The worst cases were the machete attack in a Rabbi”s House during a Hanukkah Party in Monsey, NY.
Two weeks earlier, there was an Antisemitic shooting attack by two African Americans at a kosher grocery store in Jersey City. The shooting was followed by anti-Semitic comments by African-Americans in the Jersey City community, including one by a school board member.
In 2020 a female student from Israel took a New York subway and was assaulted by an African-American woman yelling anti-Semitic taunts at both her and an Orthodox Jewish man riding in the same car. The offending woman was arrested. Ed Morrisey reported that at Hot Air that the DA is refusing to charge the offender with a hate crime. Ed investigated the issue and published a report you can find by clicking here.
2020 saw a string of anti-Semitic comments made by famous African-Americans, including Nick Cannon, NFL wide receiver DeSean Jackson, rapper Ice Cube, author Alice Walker, former NBA player Stephen Jackson, the Black Lives Matter movement and others.
Basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar slammed their hatred.
Rafael Warnock was elected to the Senate in 2020. He was the senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the former congregation of Martin Luther King Jr. Warnock is the exact opposite of the Reverend King. Someone who spews that much hatred has no business preaching to any church! He is a Reverend who is more akin to Al Sharpton–a bigoted hater who has made many anti-Semitic comments and spewed other hatred.
How do we reverse the mistrust and hatred? How do the Jewish and African American communities go back to the days of Rabbi Heschel and the Reverend Dr. King?
The answer is Leadership!
I am not an expert on African American leaders. Still, I suspect the issue with Black leaders is similar to that of the Jewish leaders. Each of the communities is more grass-roots than nationally led, and neither is monolithic about politics or other attitudes. But it is the national and most liberal leaders who get the press coverage, and that uni-directed media coverage also contributes to the mistrust.
The majority of the American Jewish community leaders don”t care about Antisemitism. Their priority is pushing the progressive goals of the Democratic Party&mdashright or wrong. That”s why so many Jewish leaders kiss up to Al Sharpton, were silent about Barack Obama”s Antisemitism, didn”t force Hillary Clinton to address her anti-Semitic comments, and so on. Their only real fight against Antisemitism is a false one. Their mendacious contention that Donald Trump, the most pro-Jewish president in recent decades, was an anti-Semite.
I suspect that liberal Black Leadership that gets the most press is like the liberal Jewish Leadership who gets the coverage by putting progressive politics before their people”s needs. This enables Democratic and progressive leaders to take advantage of each group.
Grass-roots African American and Jewish voters are expected to back the most liberal candidates, no matter their positions. If they don”t, they are considered traitors to their communities. Remember when Joe Biden claimed that Black people who didn”t vote for him weren”t really Black? Because of that unbridled loyalty to Democratic and Progressive politicians, both groups are taken advantage of. Because they know they can do whatever they want–ignore each of those communities” needs and still get their votes.
If Jews demanded their Leadership addressed the needs of their people as a priority over liberal politics and African Americans demand the same from their Leadership, it would be one giant step toward bringing back the friendship of the 1960s when two men who called the other prophet, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, forged an alliance and friendship.
Jeff Dunetz is editor/publisher of the blog “The Lid.” The political columnist for The Jewish Star, and co-host of the weekly radio show, Host of The Lid Radio show on SHR Media, and is a Leader At Large of Herut NA-the Unapologetic Zionists!
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The indictment of eleven individuals associated with the “Oath Keepers” produced an immediate deluge of the postings that an insurrection had finally been established on the January 6th attack at the Capitol. The charges do not establish an insurrection. It does reveal how extremist groups show the protest as an opportunity and hoped that it might trigger greater unrest.
However, the indictment does not offer the long-sought proof of an insurrection to fulfill the narrative of many commentators and politicians. While I would not be surprised by additional charges against other co-conspirators and more details could emerge, the indictment does not support the prior allegations of a coordination or collusion with the Trump campaign. Here is a first take on what the indictment says and does not say.
Is this the Insurrection?
Before addressing the details of the indictment, it is important to state the obvious about this indictment and how it is already being spun as proof of an insurrection. It is not. These are charges of seditious conspiracy based on efforts to disrupt the proceedings. There was discussion among some of the defendants about the prospects of civil war, particularly after January 6th. However, the charge itself is much broader.
The provision in 18 U.S.C. 2384 has long been controversial because it is so sweeping and includes any effort to “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law”:
If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.
Most of us discussed the riot previously noted that there were people who clearly came to the Hill that day to commit violent acts and interrupt the legislative process. Indeed, most of us predicted that a small group of people would receive the more serious charges.
I have never had much sympathy for those who rioted or those who recklessly fueled such anger. Saying that this was not an insurrection does not mean that this was not a desecration of our constitutional process and values. I publicly condemned Trump’s speech while it was being given and I called for a bipartisan vote of censure over his responsibility in the riots.
The charges of a relatively small number of extremists in this large protest belies rather than supports the broader allegations of an actual insurrection. This remains a protest that became a riot — a view shared by the vast majority of the public. Over seven hundred people have been charged and most face relatively minor charges of trespass and unlawful entry. The fact that there were a small number of people intent on violence does not convert the intent or actions of the thousands in the protest into an insurrection.
FBI sources previously told the media that, despite months of intense investigation, they could find “scant evidence” of any “organized plot” and instead found that virtually all of the cases are “one-offs.” One agent explained: ”Ninety to 95 percent of these are one-off cases. Then you have 5 percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
This is clearly part of that five percent that the FBI and most of us have been discussing. Their views or intentions do not convert hundreds of defendants from trespassers into insurrectionists.
The same is true for rioters in prior summers. We have seen groups anarchist and extremist groups like Antifa come to protests to fuel violence. This small number of individuals often discuss (as did these defendants) a desire to see an overthrow of the government. They tried to further such objectives by burning police stations and trying repeatedly to burn down a federal courthouse. However, their intentions did not convert the thousands of other protesters into rioters or insurrectionists. Even these extremist groups have not been called domestic terrorists or seditionists by the media or Democratic politicians.
The Indictment and Likely Trial Issues
The indictment itself details the same extremist rhetoric and calls that we have seen from extremist groups on both the left and right in past years. It is an unsettling part of this age of rage. The defendants adopted pseudo military jargon and beat their chests about the coming civil war. It is important not to dismiss the danger that such groups pose. They come across at points as clowns but this is why clowns can be so scary. They are clowns who openly discussed storing weapons and fostering a civil war. The indictment details evidence that most of these men entered the Capitol and encouraged the rioting. Most of the charges are similar to those in other cases in that respect and seem well-based.
It is really the first charge that has drawn the most attention and is likely to draw the most litigation. However, as discussed above, keep in mind that a conspiracy requires only two people to conspire to hinder the executive of any law.
Nevertheless, the Justice Department works hard to reinforce the view of this group as launching a military attack, using their own military jargon. It divides the group into “stacks” that “marched” on the Capitol.
Thus, Stack 2 (composed of just three people) is described as not walking but marching around the crowded grounds: “[Stack Two] breached the Capitol grounds, marching from the west side to the east side of the Capitol building and up the east stairs.”
The defense is likely to question these characterizations in pre-trial motions. Each “stack” was composed of a handful of people. Stack 1 was composed of Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, and Jospeh Hasckett, and David Moerschel. Stack 2 was composed of just Joshua James and Robero Minuta. Then there is the ominous sounding “Quick Reaction Force,” which the indictment said was composed of only Thomas Caldwell and Edward Vallejo.
The indictment is strong on detailing the alleged violent rhetoric and machinations of the defendants. It shows men who speak of civil war and actively acquire weapons in the anticipation that they might be used.
However, as a criminal defense attorney, there are some gaps and disconnects that I expect could cause difficulties at trial on the sedition conspiracy charge. (The rest of the charges will be more difficult to contest on things like obstructing an official proceeding).
These are eleven people who were not armed with guns and some apparently never entered the Capitol. While the Justice Department discussed plans for river landings and arsenals of weapons and forces held in reserve, the individuals in Stack 2 were equipped with:
“battle apparel and gear, including hard-knuckle tactical gloves, tactical vests, ballistic goggles, radios, chemical sprays, a paracord attachment, fatigues, goggles, scissors, a large stick, and one of the Stack Two member’s 82-pound German Shepherd named ‘Warrior.’”
That is undistinguishable (and in some cases less lethal) than material seized from Antifa, Proud Boys, and other rioters in prior summer. Despite buying and storing weapons, they did not bring them to the Hill, did not use them, and left the Hill with many others. Only one, Joshua James, is charged with the broad offense of “assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers.” (Count 8). The rest are charged with the common crimes of trespass, obstruction, and unlawful entry.
The indictment details discussions of a civil war after the riot. On January 12, 2021, James messages “after this, … if nothing happens, its war … Civil War 2.0.” There was no apparent follow through after January 6th with an actual attack or rebellion against the government.
The indictment also does not allege the broader conspiracy often raised by politicians and pundits. The defendants themselves appeared to acknowledge that they were acting without coordination with the Administration or President Trump. Rhodes messages “All I see Trump doing is complaining. I see no intent by him to do anything. So the Patriots are taking it into their own hands. They’ve had enough.”
There may be more charges coming given the references to unnamed “co-conspirators.” For example, on page 18, Watkins is quoted in discussions with someone who is only referenced as a “co-conspirator.” It is not clear if that person is a cooperating witness or a soon-to-be-charged defendant.
There are other glaring issues for defense counsel, including the possibility that a couple of the defendants who did not even participate in the actual riot at the Capitol building. That does not mean that they cannot be guilty of a conspiracy but it contradicts earlier published accounts.
The government, for example, previously held Caldwell as a key organizer of the attack and claimed that he entered the Capitol with this co-conspirators. The indictment, however, omits that allegation and now lists Caldwell with the two-man “Quick Reaction Force.” A federal judge ultimately refused to continue to hold Caldwell over the objections of the Justice Department.
Those issues will have to be hashed out in the forthcoming criminal indictments. After such charges are brought, defendants are under overwhelming pressure to cooperate and reach a plea deal. We will have to see if that proves the case here or with any additional indictments.
Conversely, these defendants will be able to demand exculpatory evidence from the government. Indictments always look more ominous before they are subject to adversarial challenge. However, it will be difficult to rebut some of these charges on obstructing the process or damaging government property. It will be the seditious conspiracy count that will produce the greatest factual and legal challenges in the months to come.
Here is the indictment: Rhodes et al indictment
"Regardless of what they think of Mr Biden’s agenda, Americans have been left wondering why he can’t seem to get anything done" 
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