Why I refuse to stay silent as Jews are scapegoated by left and right
I am tired. My tiredness is not from the road that my Walk Across America has brought me to the beautiful city of Shreveport. I need to speak plainly about something that has been weighing on my mind and my heart for too long. My tiredness comes from watching Jewish people get attacked from every direction and seeing those attacks go unchallenged by people who should know better.
On the left, too many Black ministers have betrayed the Bible for a political and ideological worldview that casts Israel as the perpetual villain no matter what and ignores the barbaric slaughter of innocents, including Oct. 7.
On the right, some prominent voices traffic in antisemitism dressed up as populism. They protest that they are just asking questions. They lie that they cannot criticize Israel. We see through their disgusting grift.
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The Jewish people are being abandoned, scapegoated and demonized from both sides of the aisle, and I will not stand for it. I will not be silent anymore. I will not betray them.
That is a promise.
The Black church and the Jewish people share a bond forged in fire. Jews helped found the NAACP. They marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma. They died for Black voting rights. The names of Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner are forever linked in blood with their brother James Chaney.
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The Rev. Dr. King locked arms with Rabbi Heschel because they both answered the same prophetic call. The civil rights foot soldiers sang of Exodus deliverance because they recognized in the Jewish story their own. That alliance was not accidental. It was born of a shared and timeless yearning to be free.
That history demands something of us today.
Yet too many woke pastors in the Black church have blinded themselves to this biblical heritage. They have chosen to align with the Palestinian cause not through Scripture but through liberation theology stretched far beyond its proper purpose.
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Author James Cone's work on Black liberation theology drew from real suffering and real oppression, and in its proper context it carries weight. But there is very little of that context today. What we have instead is the collapse of entire nations and entire races of people into cartoon roles.
Israel is cast as the White supremacist oppressor because of its perceived whiteness. Palestinians, because of their brown skin, are cast as perpetual victims who can do no wrong, including on Oct. 7. That is not prophecy. That is ideology.
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Where was the outrage among these Black pastors over Oct. 7? Families slaughtered. Children taken hostage. Rapes. Mutilations. The most horrific massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. If any of them offered condemnation, it was done in passing before pivoting immediately to Israel's response. This is empathy dictated by politics, not by Scripture.
Jesus was a Jew in Judea. Bethlehem sits in the land promised to Israel. Genesis 12:3 does not bend to political fashion: "I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse." Psalm 122:6 does not offer an exemption: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem." These are not suggestions. God's covenant with the Jewish people is eternal — not conditional on perfect behavior and not suspended when the cultural winds shift.
Supporting Israel does not mean ignoring Palestinian suffering. It means refusing to demonize a people God has preserved through millennia of persecution, exile and genocide. It means seeing Israel's full reality as a diverse nation that includes Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews and people of every background who have faced their own oppression.
It means holding Hamas accountable for a charter that calls openly for destruction and refusing to let that truth be buried beneath a narrative decided before the facts were examined. It also means holding both the left and the right in America responsible for their lies about genocide, apartheid and colonialism.
I have always judged people and nations by character and actions, not by color. That standard does not change based on who is asking me to abandon it.
There is a reason the enemies of freedom have always come for the Jewish people first. Antisemitism is not just hatred. It is a warning sign. Every civilization that has turned on its Jewish citizens has turned on its own foundational values shortly after.
The same principles that gave birth to America — belief in human dignity, the rule of law and the protection of minorities against the mob — are the principles that demand we stand against this hatred today.
When we abandon the Jewish people, we do not just betray a community. We betray the idea of America itself. This is not only a biblical obligation or a civil rights legacy. It is a test of whether we still believe what we say we believe as a nation and as a civilization.
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To my Jewish brothers and sisters, I see what is happening. I see the attacks coming from pulpits that should know better. I see the attacks coming from political commentators who have dressed hatred in the language of free thought. I see you being made a target from the left and the right simultaneously, as though the oldest hatred in human history has simply found new hosts on both ends of the political spectrum.
I will not look away. I will not equivocate. I will not trade our shared legacy for a political moment.
As I walk across this country, I carry that commitment with every step. Return to biblical truth over trendy ideology. Reclaim the Black and Jewish legacy of resilience and solidarity. Stand with Israel because Scripture demands it, history proves it and basic human decency requires it.
Unity beats division every time. God bless you, and God bless America.