Right from Wrong: Ellen DeGeneres, George Floyd and Iyad al-Halak

SADLY, LOVE, peace and communication are far from the minds of the looters who have been destroying storefronts and stealing anything they can lay their hands on.

By RUTHIE BLUM
77th Golden Globe Awards - Arrivals - Beverly Hills, California, U.S., January 5, 2020 - Ellen DeGeneres (photo credit: MARIO ANZUONI/REUTERS)
77th Golden Globe Awards - Arrivals - Beverly Hills, California, U.S., January 5, 2020 - Ellen DeGeneres
(photo credit: MARIO ANZUONI/REUTERS)
World-famous television host Ellen DeGeneres could not have predicted what was in store for her this week when she posted a message of mourning over the brutal killing in Minnesota of hitherto unknown African-American George Floyd.
On May 30, five days after Floyd was dealt a slow and sadistic death blow by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin – while three of his fellow men-in-blue stood by and did nothing – DeGeneres tweeted: “Like so many of you, I am angry and I am sad.
People of color in this country have faced injustice for far too long. For things to change, things must change. We must commit ourselves to this change with conviction and love.”
DeGeneres is a brilliant comedian, but her followers did not find the tweet the least bit funny. Nor did they consider it appropriate. On the contrary, they took great offense to her wording.
“This statement is meaningless and a back door to All Lives Matter,” one person responded. “For things to change, we must first acknowledge specifically that #BlackLivesMatter.”
Another shot back, “Not people of color. George Floyd was black. Why are [you] being so cautious? Serious[ly]?”
DEGENERES MUST must have been startled by the angry comments. Was she not calling out America for its mistreatment of every person whose skin is not as lily-white as her own? It probably took her a couple of hours – and a bit of binging on some hearty vegan comfort food – to realize she had been utterly insensitive. She wondered how she could have been so stupid as to open “a back door to ‘All Lives Matter.’”
Beside herself with shame for making such an egregious error in political correctness – particularly as a gay-rights activist who should have known better – she tried to mend her ways. The first step in this process was deleting her wrath-arousing tweet. The second was to craft two others in its place.
The following day, she expressed her “support [for] the protesters who are exercising their rights and standing up against the horrible injustices that Black people in America face every day.” And she added the hashtag “#BlackLivesMatter.”
In a following post, she announced that she would be donating money to the George Floyd Memorial Fund, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Black Lives Matter and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Nothing like handing out wads of cash to curry favor. Oh, and to assuage a guilty conscience.
Clearly, this was not sufficient for DeGeneres. On June 1, she posted a video on Instagram, tearfully conveying her distress.
“So, I have been posting my stance on this, but I haven’t spoken directly because I don’t know what to say,” she begins in the clip that is going as viral as COVID-19. “I am so sad and I am so angry, and I know I’m not going to say the right thing.”
She goes on, “I know that there are going to be a lot of people who’re going to be in disagreement with what I say. But I have a platform and I have a voice, and I have always stood for equality. I have always wanted to be the voice for people who felt like they didn’t have a voice, because I know what that feels like. And maybe you don’t agree how it’s coming out, but… I’m just so sorry that it’s come to this. I really don’t know what to say other than this has gone on way, way, way, way too long. People have gotten away with murder, and that’s what’s happening. So we’ve got to see fairness and we’ve got to see justice for all, because right now, this is not a fair world. Not at all… And if you don’t understand this, then you’ve never felt like you weren’t heard or you weren’t equal. But if you’ve ever felt that, magnify it and see what’s happening. And let’s send a whole bunch of love out there, and try to find some peace and some communication in this.”
SADLY, LOVE, peace and communication are far from the minds of the looters who have been destroying storefronts and stealing anything they can lay their hands on, including from mom-and-pop shops owned by black people. But then, those involved in the rape of US cities do not care about the man in whose name they claim to be smashing windows and beating innocent people to a bloody pulp.
No, George Floyd is their excuse. And his last heart-wrenching words – “I can’t breathe” – is their adopted motto.
Nor do the anarchist agitators who turned the demonstrations into a full-fledged blitz – as part of an ideological campaign to destroy the country from within – care about black lives. On the contrary, they play the racism card in order to exploit and incite the very people they profess to champion.
The same is true of the Black Lives Matter movement itself, which launched on social media in the wake of the 2012 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida. But it took its violent activism to the streets of America in August of 2014, fomenting what came to be called the Ferguson “unrest” – more aptly described as riots.
THAT WAS the summer of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s war on Hamas and its terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. It was good timing for BLM, which had no clue about the conflict, but included a clause about Israel – an “apartheid state” that commits “genocide” against the Palestinian people – in its mission statement. Even many left-wing Jews who had been bending over backward to fawn over the virulently anti-American group were a tad nonplussed.
The campus organization Students for Justice in Palestine, on the other hand, was delighted. The two hate-based clubs bonded over their shared sense of victimhood at the hands of “oppressors.”
Both also pretend that their rhetoric and activism against the Jewish state have nothing to do with antisemitism.
The confusion surrounding their true motives – from the likes of DeGeneres and other unsuspecting liberals – stems from their collection of strange bedfellows. Yes, intersectionality is the perfect antidote to independent thinking, not to mention common sense, as it allows for the espousing of double standards and adherence to hypocrisy without apology or even an occasional blush.
It is thus that much of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the West supports BLM and SJP as kindred spirits in struggle, yet totally ignore the fact that non-heterosexuals in the Palestinian Authority are subjected to constant and severe persecution. The also disregard Israel’s legal and societal openness in this regard, refusing to acknowledge dozens of gay and transgender Palestinians have sought and received refuge in the Jewish state.
Perhaps DeGeneres, a proud lesbian who lives with her wife in the lap of California luxury, deserves some slack for not being aware of this.
THE SAME cannot be said of the 200 or so Israelis who waved “Black Lives Matter” banners outside the Tel Aviv branch of the US Embassy on Tuesday. Aside from the fact that the gathering supposedly was held on behalf of Floyd – with some participants holding “I can’t breathe” signs – the event focused on a mishmash of unrelated issues.
Among these was the fatal shooting in Kiriyat Hayim last June of 18-year-old Ethiopian-Israeli Solomon Tekah by an off-duty cop. Without going into the details of that case here, suffice it to say that racism played a small role, if any, in the tragic incident.
Another was the killing in Jerusalem on Saturday of 32-year-old Iyad al-Halak, a Palestinian on the autism spectrum whom Border Police mistakenly believed was carrying a weapon and behaving suspiciously. Naturally, Palestinian websites are rife with comparisons between Halak and Floyd, with one meme showing the latter’s image on Israel’s separation wall.
The irony is that the only thing the above cases actually have in common is the outpouring of public sympathy for the deceased. Indeed, nobody in the US has defended Chauvin, whose initial charge was increased to second-degree murder; and Israelis bemoaned the deaths of Tekah and Halak. It is also true that average Americans and Israelis recoil at crazed lawlessness. Those who overlook or support it by showing solidarity with “all people of color” gain no brownie points from the BLM crowd. As DeGeneres discovered, the feeling is not mutual. Like it or not, only certain lives matter to radicals on a rampage.


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