Al Sharpton is not a lifelong fighter for justice

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In August 1991, after City College professor Leonard Jeffries ranted that “everyone knows rich Jews helped finance the slave trade” and that “Russian Jewry had a particular control over the movies, and their financial partners, the Mafia, put together a financial system of destruction of black people,” Sharpton rushed to his defense, threatening: “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.” Days later, a Jewish driver accidentally struck and killed a black 7-year-old named Gavin Cato in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. That set off three days of rioting, in the first hours of which a group of African Americans chanting “Kill the Jew” did just that, beating and stabbing an Orthodox Jew named Yankel Rosenbaum, who died of his injuries.

But Sharpton was only warming up. He led crowds in shouting for “justice” — pay attention here, Sen. Warren — as rioters wantonly beat Jews in the streets to chants of “Heil Hitler.” At Cato’s funeral, Sharpton poured out every last drop of gasoline he had left: “Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism; the issue is apartheid. … All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no kaffeeklatsch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’.”

Nor was that an isolated incident. In 1995, Sharpton and his National Action Network colleague Morris Powell agitated against Fred Harari, a Jewish shop owner in Harlem. “We are not going to stand idly by and let a Jewish person come in black Harlem and methodically drive black people out of business up and down 125th Street,” Powell said. Sharpton added: “We will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business on 125th Street.” A few months later, a gunman entered the store and set it ablaze, killing seven and then shooting himself. When the shop reopened, Powell was back at it, warning, “Freddy’s not dead.”

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