Jewish Slave Owners and Similar Lies

One of the more common claims by the Afrofascist wing of the Moonbat 'hood and its leftist apologists is the claim that Jews were the main holders and traders in African slaves. FPM recently ran a piece on one the main inventors of the libel, Louis "Calypso Lou" Farrakhan, on the occasion of his being honored by Bill Clinton. In late 1991, Farrakhan's Nation of Islam published "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews," to indict, in effect, today's Jews for everything from the ownership of South American sugar plantations three centuries ago to Jewish participation in the Confederate war effort.

Similar claims have long been commonly made by people such as Leonard Jeffries. A.M. Rosenthal of the New York Times wrote that Jeffries "says in a public forum that the Jews financed the slave trade. That is not quite the equivalent of [the accusation] Christ-killer, but coming close, make no mistake." I asked Rosenthal too what actual role Jews played in black slavery. "There was none," he replied. "Except for the most peripheral way. If at all." Interestingly, similar claims have long been made by white supremecist neonazi groups such as "Jewish Tribal Review," as a way to fan hatred of Jews. Without a doubt, the largest number of slave holders in the Western Hemisphere were Hispanics! Interesting, isn't it, how Farrakhan, Jeffries, and their apologists have never targeted Hispanics in their campaign to demonize slave holders! How come they have never demanded that HISPANICS pay reparations or at least lose affirmative action preferences supposedly compensating victims of slavery? And how come Farrakhan and his ilk have nothing to say about the fact that the bulk of African slave capturing and trading was done by Arabs?

Such claims have been fed inadvertantly by whining Jewish liberals such as Prof. Ralph Austen from the University of Chicago, who writes about the guilt of Jewish slave holder sin such arenas as Ultra-Moonbat Tikkun Magazine. While conceding that the Jews were - at most - marginal in the world of slavery, Austen nevertheless insiusts that Jews must feel guilty and atone for that small role.

So just how many Jews were involved in the trade and ownership of African slaves in the New World? In his latest book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," Stanford professor and Hoover Institute author Thomas Sowell answers. The number of black slaves owned by Jewish slaveowners in the American south was fewer than the number owned by free blacks or the number owned by American Indians! (It goes without saying that it was far smaller than the number of Jews murdered over the years by black street criminals.) So much for the attempts to paint the Jews into the role of the "enslavers" and blacks as their victims. Afrofascist rage would be better focused against free-black and American Indian slave owners than against Jews.

Others have shown that the Jews played practically no role in the slave trade, such as "Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight," By Eli Faber. In the Middle Ages, when slavery was common in Europe (including enslaved Jews), some Jews did play a minor role as slave traders for white European slaves who had been enslaved in war or due to debts. They were sold mainly to other Europeans and sometimes to the Ottomans.