Tamika Mallory insults Martin Luther King's legacy of combating anti-Semitism
As published in the New York Daily News
In what alternate universe does a public university select a bigot to speak at its annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King?
The University of North Carolina Ashville has invited the morally impaired Tamika Mallory, co-founder of the Women’s March, to give the keynote address honoring the great human rights icon.
King, stalwart preacher of tolerance and unity, warned against drinking “the poisonous wine of hate.” He unequivocally opposed Jew-hatred because “it’s wrong, it’s unjust and it’s evil.”
“We have consistently condemned anti-Semitism,” declared King at the 1968 Rabbinical Assembly convention. “We cannot be the victims of the notion that you deal with one evil in society by substituting another evil…. [For] the black man to be struggling for justice and then turn around and be anti-Semitic is…a very immoral course.”
According to a colleague, Mallory has said she doesn’t trust white people. Mallory reportedly claims Jews are exploiters of black and brown people and, according to the New York Times, insists, along with her colleague Carmen Perez, that “Jewish people played a large role in the slave trade and the prison industry.”
Perhaps Mallory should listen to King’s speeches. In his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, King yearned for the day when people are judged by their character and not their skin color.
Lest you doubt the intensity of Mallory’s anti-Semitism and racism, you need only look to her longstanding and vocal support for the blatantly anti-Semitic, anti-white, homophobic and misogynistic Louis Farrakhan, a man the Anti-Defamation League calls “the leading anti-Semite in America.”
Farrakhan presides at an annual Saviours’ Day rally of the Nation of Islam. Mallory’s social media posting of a photo with Farrakhan in 2015 has vanished from her Instagram, but is available here. During his 2018 Saviours’ rally, Farrakhan gave Mallory a public shout-outand she shared video and a photo with her followers. Mallory has called this hater of whites, Jews and gays and denigrator of women the “GOAT” (that stands for “greatest of all time”).
King, in sharp contrast with Mallory, earned a strong pro-Israel legacy, something many progressives choose to ignore.
After the 1967 Six Day War, in a September letter to the then-president of the Jewish Labor Committee, King opposed attacks on Zionism because “Israel’s right to exist as a state is incontestable.”
In a March 25, 1968, address to the Rabbinical Assembly, King said, “Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect her right to exist,” calling Israel “one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.”
King also understood that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism. At a dinner in Cambridge, Massachusetts in late 1967, he rebuked a black student who made an anti-Zionist remark, saying, “Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”
King’s support for Zionism and Israel is as indisputable as is Mallory’s animus. She claims the Jews stole Palestinian land to create their state, declaring that they “kill, steal, and do whatever it is you’re gonna do to take that land.” She labeled the founding of the State of Israel a “human rights crime.”
Because of public awareness of her loathsome beliefs and associations, the National Organization for Women is withholding financial support from Mallory’s national organization. Many local Women’s March groups have disassociated themselves from her. A regional chapter of Planned Parenthood and an Australian anti-poverty group withdrew their decision to have Mallory speak, and a German think tank rescinded a human rights award due to her anti-Semitism.
But UNC Asheville continues to defend its choice as a “commitment to free speech and open dialogue” and claims its invitation does not imply an endorsement of Mallory or her views. What, then, does it imply?
King was a great believer in free speech for everyone — including Tamika Mallory. But he would not wish her prejudice to besmirch his name. This university shouldn’t either.
Are school administrators so blinded by identity politics and progressive antipathy toward Jews and the Jewish nation that they don’t understand the obvious? Giving a bigot a keynote speaker’s platform for an event celebrating Martin Luther King is an insult to him and his lifelong battle against injustice.
