Black Hebrew Israelites support Kyrie Irving at NYC march
Hundreds of members of a Black Jewish Israelite group chanted “we are the real Jews” as they descended on Brooklyn’s Barclays Center during pro-Kyrie Irving marches, videos show.
A massive line of followers, all donning shirts of the group “Israel United in Christ,” were captured Sunday bellowing “we’ve got some good news” and “we are the real Jews,” according to footage posted on social media, which has since gone viral.
Separate footage also shared to social media Monday shows a sea of purple shirts marching towards the Brooklyn Nets’ arena.
“Black Hebrew Israelites out in force today, chanting ‘we are the real Jews’ and ‘time to wake up,’ as they marched toward the Barclay’s Center in support of Kyrie Irving’s return,” Ari Ingel, director of the pro-Israel organization Creative Community for Peace, tweeted alongside the clip.
The group also handed out flyers outside arena that claimed to share the “truth about anti-Semitism,” according to the Jerusalem Post.
One of the handouts said the group’s heritage was removed “through the monstrous holocaust known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade.”
The group was there in support of Irving, the Nets point guard who was suspended after he posted a link on social media to a Holocaust-questioning movie called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake up Black America.”
Members of the Israel United in Christ also protested at Barclays during Irving’s suspension, with a deacon telling saying “Kyrie Irving himself understands that not only are we Semitic ourselves, but it is contradictory and hypocritical to say someone is anti-Semitic when they are Semitic.”
The Israel United in Christ was founded in New York and now has 71 locations in the US, with claims that blacks and other people of color are the “children of Israel,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
The group’s march appears to have coincided with Irving’s return Sunday in a game with the Memphis Grizzlies following a brief suspension and an apology from the hoopster.
The viral videos in Brooklyn over the weekend sparked prompt backlash on social media, with the American Jewish Committee saying the “we are the real Jews” was a “troubling anti-Semitic trope with dangerous potential.”
“We cannot allow this supremacist ideology to spread and gain greater acceptance,” the group said in a statement.
“Claiming Jewish people are ‘Not the Real Jews’ perpetuates antisemitism around the world,” the statement added. “Sometimes, a vocal minority with fringe beliefs dominates the conversation simply because no one speaks up.”
Flyers obtained by the Jerusalem Post handed out by the demonstrators proclaimed: “You are the children of the Slave Trade,” and said “the prophets warned us that if we broke God’s commandments, we would be punished as a people.”
Another flyer quoted by the newspaper said there is a “pattern of enslavement, systemic oppression, bullying, legal manipulation and anti-black political lobbying, including silencing black voices” in media outlets.
“The biblical Israelites are targeted and accused of hate day and night without rest,” the flyer said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“Our knowledge of our heritage and laws has been systematically removed from us through the monstrous holocaust known as the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They may lie to the world and deny us of our birthright, yet Jesus the Christ, our Black Messiah, confirms the truth of who we are. We are not antisemitic, we are Semitic.”
Boston Celtics star Jaylen Brown in now-deleted tweet wrote “Energy” in a retweet of the video of the demonstration, but later said he had mistaken the group for an African-American fraternity.
An NYPD spokesperson said there were no arrests on file from the demonstration and couldn’t provide a crowd estimate. The Post has reached out to a Barclays Center spokesperson.
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