Rapper and actor Ice Cube has been getting a chilly reception, including from Jewish and pro-Israel groups, for sharing on Twitter anti-Semitic images amid the backlash over the death of 46-year-old African-American George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.
On June 6, as part of expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Ice Cube (whose real name is O'Shea Jackson) posted to his 5.3 million Twitter followers the caricature of a group of white-skinned older men, some with large hooked noses, sitting around a Monopoly-like game board with a fully-bearded man counting dollar bills. The board is on top of bowed, naked backs of a group of mostly black men.
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The image first appeared in mural form in London, igniting controversy in 2018 following then-British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn expressing support for the artist Mear One (Kalen Ockerman). Corbyn later apologized, and the image was removed.
The caricature is identical to "anti-Semitic propaganda used by Hitler and the Nazis to whip up hatred that led to the massacre of millions of Jews. This extends to the table these figures are sat at, resting on human bodies, as the Nazis also depicted," according to journalist and filmmaker Michael Segalov.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the tweet in a reply to it: "Shame, two years ago we met with @icecube to turn a new page. Now when it counts, instead of using his notoriety to promote peace in a fractured America he regresses to classic #antiSemitic tropes."
Shame, two years ago we met with @icecube to turn a new page. Now when it counts, instead of using his notoriety to promote peace in a fractured America he regresses to classic #antiSemitic tropes.
— SimonWiesenthalCntr (@simonwiesenthal) June 9, 2020
On June 10, Ice Cube tweeted a photo that appeared to suggest that the "Black Cube of Saturn," which conspiracy theorists claim to be a magical symbol, is within the Star of David.
That same day, the rapper posted on Twitter an image of hieroglyphics portraying dark-skinned ancient Israelites in slavery in Egypt. A caption above the picture reads, "Hebrew Israelites slaves in ancient Egypt," followed on the bottom with "Clearly they are a black people."
— Ice Cube (@icecube) June 10, 2020
In a tweet on Wednesday, Ice Cube stood by his posts.
"This is CUBE. My account has not been hacked. I speak for no organization. I only speak for the meek people of the earth. We will not expect crumbles from your table. We have to power of almighty God backing us all over the earth. NO MORE TALKING. Repent," he tweeted.
This is CUBE. My account has not been hacked. I speak for no organization. I only speak for the meek people of thee earth. We will not expect crumbles from your table. We have to power of almighty God backing us all over the earth. NO MORE TALKING. Repent.
— Ice Cube (@icecube) June 10, 2020
Jewish leaders must 'publicly condemn these anti-Semites by name'
Jewish and pro-Israel groups vehemently criticized Ice Cube's string of anti-Semitic tweets.
"At a time in this country when we need to pull together, bigoted imagery on the Internet is the last thing we need," B'nai B'rith International told Jewish News Syndicate. "Promoting hateful stereotypes is not the answer to the national crisis we are in."
The tweets exemplify Ice Cube's anti-Semitic history.
Ice Cube's 1991 song "No Vaseline" include lyrics such as "It's a case of divide-and-conquer/'Cause you let a Jew break up my crew" and "Get rid of that Devil real simple / Put a bullet in his temple / 'Cause you can't be the N*gga 4 Life crew / With a white Jew telling you what to do / Pulling wools with your scams / Now I gotta play Silence of the Lambs."
The rap group, N.W.A., which Ice Cube was a member of, had a manager named Jerry Heller, who was Jewish. Heller died in 2016 at the age of 75.
In 2015, Ice Cube, after a rabbi he allegedly bumped into outside a Detroit casino told the rapper to watch where he was going, allegedly told his entourage to assault him. The rabbi accused Ice Cube of uttering anti-Semitic epithets for wearing a kipah.
On May 11, Ice Cube posted a picture of him and Louis Farrakhan, and wished the Nation of Islam leader a happy birthday.
Farrakhan has an extensive history of making anti-Jewish remarks such as "I'm anti-termite," and that Hitler was "a very great man."
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Zionist Organization of America president Mort Klein told JNS that he was concerned, as all people should be, with "Ice Cube's ugly Jew-hatred, combined with the pro-BDS Black Lives [Matter] group calling Israel a genocidal apartheid state."
He said that "Jewish leaders and rabbis who have been silent must immediately and publicly condemn these anti-Semites by name."
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
