Warnock, the Democrat Senate candidate in Georgia, is already under fire over antisemitism and his hateful attacks on Israel. Even though his statements are on video and in print, he’s bafflingly denied making them.
Warnock had signed on to a statement falsely accusing Israel of being an apartheid state, falsely describing Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, as an “occupied” territory oppressed by Israel, and falsely claiming that “Jewish” people engage in “segregation”.
The letter signed by Warnock also ranted that, “Israeli fear… begets hatred” and demanded an end to weapons sales to Israel.
“We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey. And I don’t care who does it, it is wrong,” Warnock ranted. “And it’s no more antisemitic for me to say that than it is anti-white for me to say that Black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.”
But radical apples don’t fall far from poisoned trees.
Raphael Warnock, the Democrat challenging Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) in the U.S. Senate special election that is going to a runoff, served as an assistant pastor at a church that hosted and celebrated the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in 1995…
C-SPAN footage of Castro’s speech at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem shows an exuberant crowd chanting “Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!” as Calvin Butts — still the church’s senior pastor — praises the dictator. Sister Rosemari Mealy, who belonged to the National Alliance of Third World Journalists, also prompted applause at the event when she introduced the “great, most honorable commandante, el jefe Fidel Castro.”
At the time, The Miami Herald reported that Castro “blast[ed] the United States with the vigor that was missing from his speech to the United Nations earlier in the day and winding up the evening with a rousing rendition of the socialist hymn Internationale.”
Warnock’s campaign is claiming that he didn’t have decision making powers at the church. But that’s not an argument. He was a pastor at an extremist church and that was a choice he made.
It’s not like this was an unusual thing for Butts.
Here’s the brief Discover the Networks summary on Calvin Butts and his ministry.
Following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Butts joined a group of rioting students from Morehouse College in firebombing a local business in Atlanta…
Later in 1987, Maddox and Mason infamously joined with Al Sharpton in perpetrating a massive hoax in which they falsely claimed that a black teenager named Tawana Brawley had been raped and brutalized by a gang of whites. Praising the three Brawley advisors, Butts suggested that “what they are doing now is in the best interests of Tawana Brawley and in the best interests of black people. In order to do this, like in Howard Beach, they have had to take some fairly drastic action…
In 1992, Butts, angry over the fact that black New Yorkers were patronizing Korean-owned businesses that allegedly disrespected black customers, called for blacks to “disrupt business-as-usual” by means of “massive civil disobedience.”
In October 1995, Butts honored Cuban dictator Fidel Castro with a huge, standing-room-only ceremony at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. “It is in our tradition to welcome all who are visionaries, revolutionaries and who seek the liberation of all people,” the pastor declared. Five years later, Butts and his church again held a rousing tribute to Castro, who was greeted with a ten-minute standing ovation and thunderous chants of: “Fidel! Fidel! Viva Fidel!” Butts, for his part, said: “God Bless you, Fidel.”
And circling back to Israel…
He also took a swipe at Israel, saying that “occupying land in the name of God” was “religious terrorism.”
On this point, the Reverend Butts concurs and feels strongly that it is time for both sides to let go of the incendiary rhetoric. “The Hasidim believe in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and they believe in assigning the blame and getting justice… . I don’t think that justice will do anything,” he says, quoting Dr. Martin Luther King, “but leave us blind and toothless.”
If you want to understand where Warnock is coming from, Butts is a good place to start.
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