The Coalition for Jewish Values is out with a new ad Thursday calling on professional sports leagues to abandon support for Black Lives Matter (BLM).
The ad begins by featuring BLM Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors calling on activists to “step up boldly and courageously to end the imperialist project that’s called Israel.”
“When BLM was founded, they didn’t hide their antisemitism,” the narrator says. “Despite this, professional sports teams ignored their bigotry and elevated BLM, providing millions of dollars in publicity, including teams in cities with vibrant Jewish communities.”
The ad shows sports logos for several sports teams, such as the Chicago Bulls, the Dallas Mavericks, the New York Yankees, the Miami Heat, and the New England Patriots.
WATCH: The Coalition for Jewish Values calls on @MLB, @NBA, @NFL, and their franchises to end their support for #BLM. pic.twitter.com/7OBux12AL8
— Coalition for Jewish Values (@cjvalues) October 26, 2023
“Now their grassroots organization in Chicago chapter praised the massacre of Jews in Israel,” the narrator continued.
The ad featured an image published by BLM Chicago celebrating the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre with a poster of a paratrooper captioned, “I stand with Palestine.” During the surprise attack on Israel, Hamas paratroopers dropped into a music festival and killed about 260 people.
“[BLM] have called for the end of the only Jewish country in the world,” the narrator says in the ad. “Will the NBA, MLB, and NFL stop supporting and promoting a movement that advocates the murder of Jews?”
Major sports leagues escalated their support for BLM’s supposedly righteous crusade, marching under the banner of so-called social justice in 2020. That June, the NFL committed more than $1 billion over the next decade to “combat systemic racism and support the battle against injustices faced by African Americans.” The announcement was joined by a video from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who professed “Black Lives Matter.”
The NBA similarly pledged $300 million over the next decade to “the NBA family’s commitment to racial equality and social justice.” Games have also been played on courts painted with the slogan “Black Lives Matter.”
The MLB also made Black Lives Matter “center stage” in 2020 with “BLM” stamped on the pitcher’s mound on opening day. The baseball league committed more than $1 million to groups supporting Black Lives Matter, such as the NAACP and Color of Change, and now allows players to wear patches promoting leftist causes.
BLM activists have aligned with pro-Palestinian revolutionaries since the inception of the American movement. National Public Radio (NPR) reported two years ago on the “History Behind BLM’s Solidarity With The Pro-Palestinian Movement.”
“In the 1950s, Malcolm X was among the first Black activists to speak out for the ‘Arab cause’ in the Arab-Israeli conflict, beginning during his time with the Nation of Islam when he sometimes talked up antisemitic conspiracy theories,” NPR wrote. The activism of the mid-20th century icon would go on to inspire future generations of black activists now peddling antisemitic tropes.
Federalist Senior Contributor Benjamin Weingarten wrote about BLM’s commitment to Israel’s destruction in 2016 for Conservative Review, four years before BLM riots erupted nationwide.
“The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has found the real enemy, and it is the Jews,” he wrote, with a link to the organization’s platform, which states:
The US justifies and advances the global war on terror via its alliance with Israel and is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people. The US requires Israel to use 75 percent of all the military aid it receives to buy US-made arms. Consequently, every year billions of dollars are funneled from US taxpayers to hundreds of arms corporations, who then wage lobbying campaigns pushing for even more foreign military aid. The results of this policy are twofold: it not only diverts much needed funding from domestic education and social programs, but it makes US citizens complicit in the abuses committed by the Israeli government. Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people.
