A TV ad produced by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism which aired during yesterday's Patriots-Jets game was in part, a response to rapper Kanye West, and Patriots owner Robert Kraft said that this is the “first in a series of steps he plans to take to fight the issue,” according to Peter King of NBC SPORTS. Banners supporting West's recent antisemitic remarks “hung on overpasses” in L.A. and Jacksonville, and an “electronic ‘Kanye is right about the Jews’ flashed on the outside" of TIAA Bank Field in Jacksonville after Saturday's Georgia-Florida game. Kraft, who founded the FCAS in 2019, on Saturday said doing the ad was a "way to make non-Jewish people understand what’s happening." He noted Jewish people make up only 2.2% of America’s population, "and we get 57 percent of the hate crimes in America. It's rising." Kraft: "In the late thirties and forties, what was going on in Germany is going on now in America. The Kanye West thing has brought it to a head. ... We need all people, not just Jews, to speak out. When I saw that sign on the (Los Angeles) highway, it turned my stomach. It’s just not good for America. I hope that people who aren’t Jewish understand it’s in their interests, in all of our interests, to preserve the basic values of our country" (NBCSPORTS.com, 10/31).
PUT A STOP TO IT: In Orlando, Natalia Jaramillo wrote the Univ. of Florida and the Univ. of Georgia yesterday issued a joint statement "condemning an antisemitic message that was displayed" at TIAA Bank Field during the schools' football game. Antisemitic messages written on banners "hung from a Jacksonville overpass” days before the game. Jaguars owner Shad Khan on social media said that he was "'personally dismayed' by the rhetoric," calling it, “hurtful and wrong.” Khan: “It has to stop. I’m asking everyone to make it their mission to end the ignorance and hate. Let’s be better” (ORLANDO SENTINEL, 10/30).
