"The Jews cannot defeat me"

The roots of Black antisemitism can be traced to the 19th century, when the slaves adopted the Protestant culture of their white masters, with its antisemitic component. Some Black leaders of the early 20th century made anti-Jewish pronouncements. In the 1930s, the organization known as the Nation of Islam came into being. From the early stages, this organization regarded Jews as "whites of a special kind", blamed them for exploiting Blacks, and attacked Judaism. Louis Farrakhan, present leader of the Nation of Islam, began to preach antisemitism in 1984. He became a media star, and thus his stature rose among the Blacks. Some of the main antisemitic motifs propagated by the Nation of Islam are anti-Judaism, relativization of the Holocaust, and the accusation of Jewish slave-trading. Many Black leaders have declined to distance themselves from Farrakhan and his views. Pp. 37-45 contain excerpts from the book "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews" (published in 1991 by the Nation of Islam) and from some other Nation of Islam publications. (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism - The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)