The Info Underground

Behind The Mamdani "anti-Semitism" Debacle: New York's Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews
By Nation of Islam Research Group

Read the article here to connect to the links: https://noirg.org/articles/behind-the-mamdani-anti-semitism-debacle-new-yorks-secret-relationship-between-blacks-jews/

Quote"The most prominent Jewish leaders in New York, reflecting the city's strong southern attachments, were anti-abolitionist and, to varying degrees, proslavery."

—Howard B. Rock, Haven of Liberty

The reaction to Mayor Zohran Mamdani's "antisemitism initiative" was swift and brutal. He was portrayed as having capitulated to Jewish pressure[1] to acknowledge a phantom crisis of alleged "anti-Semitism" and pay $26 million of New Yorkers' hard-earned assets to pro-Zionist forces. Most ironically, Mamdani approvingly quoted the Jewish "holy book" Talmud, the most anti-Gentile, anti-Christian document ever committed to print. On the other hand, Jews of the Anti-Defamation League rejected Mamdani's 33-page plan as insufficient and  unworthy of support.[2] They instead demand that the New York mayor shield from criticism the nation of Israel—a foreign country 5,700 miles away.

Education about the Jewish history of New York is a key component of the Mayor's plan, but Black New Yorkers are not mentioned at all, even though the history of Blacks in New York is actually inseparable from the history of Jews. Mamdani says "Jewish New Yorkers should feel cherished and celebrated in the most Jewish city in America," but right from the start, New York Blacks have never "felt cherished" at all by the Jews.

So let's review this deliberately forgotten history to see if Jews need protection from "antisemitism," or whether Blacks (and others) need protection from Jews.

In 1654, Jews fled from Brazil, with 23 of them seeking to settle in New Amsterdam (now New York). But the colony's governor Peter Stuyvesant (Mayor Mamdani's historic predecessor) refused their entry, believing them to be a troublesome clan of grifters. But he wasn't the only one who objected. Rev. Johannes Gutwasser, a Lutheran preacher, complained bitterly about the Jews and "their blasphemous religion": "These people have no other God than the unrighteous Mammon." And in a prophetic foretelling of today's crisis of title theft of Black property in New York, Rev. Gutwasser continued, claiming Jews have "no other aim than to get possession of Christian property....[T]hese godless rascals...are of no benefit to the county."

Nonetheless, even over those strenuous objections the Jews were allowed to settle, but the dispute earned Stuyvesant the label of America's first "anti-Semite."



New York's Slave-Trading Jews


After the liquidation of the Original land owners—the Manhattes—the Europeans were desperate for free labor. So, in 1647, they turned to Jewish slave traders in Brazil—the very place where the vast majority of Africans were shipped into slavery. According to documents, Jews were known to "buy up the slaves for cash" at Brazilian auctions and then re-sell them to work the sugar plantations at an immense profit.[3]

Mayor Mamdani may want to visit the American Jewish Historical Society, at 15 W 16th St. Its top historian, Rabbi Dr. Marc Lee Raphael, wrote that in Brazil "Slave auctions were postponed if they fell on a Jewish holiday," and that throughout the Caribbean "Jewish merchants played a major role in the slave trade." The rabbi emphasized that "Jewish merchants frequently dominated."[4]

Is it just a coincidence that the first slave auction in the city took place in 1655, just a year after the Jews' arrival? And is it just a coincidence that when a formal "slave market" was established, it was located right in the center of the Jewish enclave at Pearl Street and Wall Street, not far from America's first synagogue on Mill Street?



Jewish professor Howard B. Rock stated plainly in his deceptively titled 2013 book— Haven of Liberty: New York Jews in the New World, 1654-1865—that "Jewish merchants took part in New York's slave trade, a trade that provided income for a few leading families..." And that's an understatement. Slave ship owner Moses Levy had 24 captive Africans in the early 1700s and "became probably the most prominent and wealthiest New York Jew." By 1743, according to New York tax records, 90% of New York Jews—that's 9 out of 10—were owners of Black human beings! In lieu of paying dues to the synagogue, Jews were known to send "a Negro slave to clean" the building, a telling precursor of the notorious 1930s "Bronx slave market."

In 1717 and 1721, two slave ships owned by Jewish merchant Nathan Simson sailed into the New York harbor with a total of 217 Africans chained in the ships' cargo holds. Jewish scholars admit that Simson's shipments were "two of the largest slave cargoes to be brought into New York in the first half of the eighteenth century." Thanks in no small part to Jewish slave traders, at one time 20% of the population of New York were African slaves.

Lewis and Mordecai Gomez were New York synagogue officials and the owners of the slave ship Greyhound, which imported "merchandise and negroes" into New York in late 1722. Lewis, in his will, left his wife "with as many of my slaves as are necessary to attend her." Mordecai bequeathed to his sons Isaac and Jacob "Equally to be divided between Them my Two Negro Men Slaves..." There are multiple examples of Jewish New Yorkers mentioning in their wills ownership of black slaves.

And while New York was a boon to Jewish wealth, Blacks faced a life of terror and oppression. As the black slave population grew, lynchings, burnings-at-the stake, and other ghoulish tortures of Blacks and Native Americans became commonplace. It was reported that "The swaying corpses of such Negroes often remained suspended for several days after the execution to terrorize slaves into good behavior." In 1697, an African received a death sentence. He took his own life before the public execution, but officials ordered that punishment be inflicted on his dead body. Even suicide would not deprive early New Yorkers of their thirst for Black blood. When the slave cemetery was discovered in 1991, it had an estimated 20,000 graves.

Quote"They were stacked five deep and the bones told of starvation deaths, chronic infections, and unspeakable suffering. Muscles had been ripped from bone, necks had been broken, and spines jammed into skulls—all injuries from lives cursed with having to carry heavy loads. If they had not perished in infancy, they had lived just long enough to be worked to death." —Hidden History of New York

In 1741, Blacks were accused of plotting a massive rebellion, but the "plot" was a figment of white imagination; yet more than 200 innocent Blacks were arrested. 154 were cast into the dungeon—14 of them were burned alive, 18 were hanged, 1 was gibbeted (hanged alive and left to die of exposure, thirst, or starvation), and 71 were transported from the colony. Among the accused were five black captives of prominent New York Jews, namely Mordecai Gomez, Lewis Gomez, Samuel Myers Cohen, Jacob Franks, David Machado, and Judah Hays.



As is well known, Wall Street became the financial center of the world, but few know how cotton and slave trading built that wealth. Before the Jewish Lehman Brothers had grandiose offices at that prestigious New York address, they were slave-owning financiers of the cotton plantations of Alabama, an enterprise that enabled them to buy more Africans and expand their operations. Then at harvest time the Lehmans bought up the slave-picked cotton bales to sell on the world markets. By 1864, one of the Lehman Brothers was actually in charge of ALL the cotton produced in the state of Alabama! As much as 40¢ of every dollar in the sale of cotton went to New Yorkers who never had to see a plantation, plant a cotton seed, or beat a slave. The Lehman's trajectory to Wall Street provides an almost perfect historical blueprint for how many, many, many Jewish businesses built unprecedented wealth in America.[5]

By the time of the Civil War, New York Jews were heavily involved in every aspect of black slavery. As Prof. Rock points out bluntly: "In the 1850s, New York's Jewish leaders...openly supported the Southern cause, disdained the black race, and despised [Lincoln's] Republican Party." A New York Jewish newspaper denounced "that nigger" Frederick Douglass, and Jewish newspaperman Mordecai Manuel Noah was so viciously pro-slavery that the first Black American newspaper, The Freedom's Journal, was launched in response to Noah's racist propaganda.

The most outstanding rabbi in the country was New York's Morris J. Raphall, who delivered a sermon in which he authoritatively asserted that the slave trade and African slavery were perfectly moral and indeed ORDERED BY GOD! It was the most publicized sermon ever delivered by an American Jew up to that time. America's slave-owners were so delighted with the speech that they printed and reprinted this divine ruling from the leader of America's "Chosen People." Raphall's New York synagogue made their pro-slavery rabbi the highest paid clergyman in America.

This history review only scratches the surface of the troubling reality of the Black–Jewish relationship in New York. A few Jews may have advocated for "civil rights" but many more followed Jim Crow law and voluntarily practiced the harshest racial discrimination wherever they achieved power in this most Northern of cities.



- Adolph Och's New York Times rivaled the Ku Klux Klan in its racist attacks on Blacks.[6]

- Jewish administrators at Harlem Hospital refused to employ Black doctors and nurses, even though 90% of patients were Black and Latino.

- Jews used restrictive covenants to deny housing and property ownership to Blacks—in Black Harlem.

- New York Jews were instrumental in crushing the Marcus Garvey movement—the largest Black grassroots organization in history.[7]

- Jewish city planner Robert Moses did more to racially segregate New York than the KKK could ever hope for. He managed the largest construction project in world history—the building of New York City—yet he worked in concert with the Jewish "father of organized labor" Samuel Gompers to exclude Black skilled workers from those construction jobs.

- Jewish retail businesses dominated the economy in Black Harlem but refused employment to Blacks and were widely reputed to cheat and overcharge Black customers for inferior goods.[8]

- Jewish housewives badly exploited Black women domestic workers in a system so wretched it was known as the "Bronx Slave Market."[9]

- Jewish "entertainers" on Broadway were the main pushers of hateful racial mockery known as blackface minstrelsy.

- The New York-based ADL was caught spying on hundreds of Black leaders and organizations.[10]

- A corrupt Jewish teachers' union led by Albert Shanker badly failed Black students in Ocean Hill-Brownsville and falsely charged Black parents with "anti-Semitism" when they organized for better schools.

- In 1991, seven-year-old GAVIN CATO was killed by a Hasidic driver; according to eye witnesses, the Jewish ambulance service attended to the Jewish driver and left the Black child for a city ambulance. Gavin later died of his injuries. The incident sparked massive protests.

- The ADL tried to "buck-break" New York professional athlete Kyrie Irving and attempted to destroy his career.[11]

- Hasidic swindlers flagrantly target the Black home owner in their title-theft of Black homes.[12]

- There is not a single Black leader or notable in the history of New York that HAS NOT been FALSELY charged with "anti-Semitism"!


Given this history, it should be no mystery why Blacks are fully sympathetic with the Palestinians as they fight against Israeli genocide. In his 33-page so-called "strategy to combat antisemitism" Mayor Mamdani writes that "Combating hate demands...confronting uncomfortable conversations and recognizing that many communities have been the stranger at different points in history." Mamdani plans to "increase...public school trips to the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the city's flagship Holocaust museum." But, as The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches Black people, "What can the slave master teach you except how to be a better slave?" The proposed curriculum will not teach the Jewish role in New York slavery, the massive role southern cotton plantations played in New York's economic growth; the Jewish opposition to Lincoln and Black emancipation; or the Jewish role in enforcing Jim Crow Law right here in New York City. The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews of New York demands the same 33-page treatment that Mamdani just gave to New York's first and most prominent slave traders.[13] He claims to be "Tackling Hate [and] Combat[ing] Antisemitism." Blacks of New York must now take charge of our own children's education, reject this "anti-Semitism" agenda, and insist that Mayor Mamdani tackle the historical Truth of New York racism.[14]

 

NOTES:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo3PoSwAFM

[2] https://x.com/ADL_NYNJ/status/2105683630316310705

[3] Yda Schreuder, Amsterdam's Sephardic Merchants and the Atlantic Sugar Trade in the Seventeenth Century (2019), p. 70.

[4] Highlights & Key Points of The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews, https://noirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SecretRelationship.HighlightKeyPoints.pdf; Marc Lee Raphael, Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, 1983), p. 14. See The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, vol. 1 (Chicago: Historical Research Dept. of the Nation of Islam, 1991).

[5] https://noirg.org/articles/new-book-blacks-picked-cotton-for-jewish-wealth/

[6] https://www.unz.com/article/a-dark-secret-the-alarming-black-jewish-history-of-the-new-york-times/

[7] https://www.unz.com/article/jews-targeted-black-self-help-long-before-farrakhan/

[8] James Baldwin, "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White," New York Times, April 9, 1967.

[9] https://noirg.org/articles/the-bronx-slave-market-the-crisis-naacp-september-1935/

[10] https://noirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/TatumBook.12.29.2023.FINAL_.pdf

[11] https://new.finalcall.com/2022/11/15/kyrie-irving-and-the-dangerous-knowledge-of-self/; https://noirg.org/articles/buck-breaking-the-black-man-a-jewish-tradition/

[12] https://newsone.com/6859068/nyc-deed-theft-black-homeowners/

[13] "TACKLING HATE: THE MAMDANI ADMINISTRATION'S STRATEGY TO COMBAT ANTISEMITISM," https://www.nyc.gov/content/dam/nycgov/mayors-office/downloads/pdf/press-releases/2026/2026-09-25-moca-report-interactive-5.pdf

[14] Tingba Apidta, The Hidden History of New York: A Guide for Black Folks (Roxbury, MA: Reclamation Project, 1998), https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-New-York-Guide-ebook/dp/B01LXH6BCI

For more on this topic, see the Nation of Islam book series The Secret Relationship Between Blacks & Jews. Download the free guide by clicking here.  https://noirg.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/SecretRelationship.HighlightKeyPoints.pdf