Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan has sent a three-page letter to the heads of 16 Jewish organizations seeking reparations from Jews in what a National Review writer terms “an unsubtle attempt at extortion.”
The letter dated June 24 identified Farrakhan as the “National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.”
It proclaims that two books he included with each letter — volume two of “The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews” 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 our people that continues to this very moment.”
Farrakhan tells the recipients of the letters, who include Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America and Lee Rosenberg of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee:
“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 so-called friend, while your history with us shows you have been our worst enemy . . .
“I have pleaded with you over the years for a sensible, intelligent dialogue. You have rejected me. I again ask you for a dialogue.”
For Farrakhan, “‘dialogue’ equals reparations,” Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, writes for National Review Online.
Farrakhan states that he makes the demand 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).
“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.”
Pipes observes: “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 warns that if Jews spurn his demand, Allah and “His Messiah will bring you and your people disgrace and ruin.”
Pipes declares: “The letter amounts to an unsubtle attempt at extortion.”
Morton Klein called the letter “a veiled call for violence against Jews,” and Pipes writes that “he is right. Farrakhan full well knows he will not get the reply he demands . . .
“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.”
Noting that Farrakhan has praised Barack Obama as “the hope of the entire world,” Pipes adds: “Obama’s presidency has apparently emboldened him to renew his attacks on Jews.”
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