Source: NOI website
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The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22–25. As in years past, the event featured significant antisemitism, including from longtime NOI leader and keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan.
Farrakhan’s keynote address concluding the conference on Sunday, titled “What Does Allah, the Great Mahdi and the Great Messiah Have to Say About the War in the Middle East,” focused on the events of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent, ongoing war between Israel and Hamas.
Central to Farrakhan’s speech was his conspiratorial accusation that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had advance knowledge of and even a hand in Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. “[Netanyahu] already knew what Hamas was gonna do because he sanctioned it,” Farrakhan alleged. As supposed evidence of this conspiracy, Farrakhan claimed that a photograph published by Israel’s Government Press Office in April 2023 of Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant making a pre-Passover toast touting Israeli military unity was actually a photograph of them secretly “toasting sacrificial Jewish lambs” who were to be “martyred” on October 7 with Netanyahu’s approval.
Farrakhan further alleged that Netanyahu’s goal in allowing Hamas to attack was to preserve his power and to justify initiating a “second Nakba” that would cleanse Palestinians from not just Gaza, but the West Bank and East Jerusalem, so that Israel could gain control of oil in the region and eventually build a so-called “Greater Israel.” Farrakhan alleged that Netanyahu had a “vision…for Israel to conquer the whole Middle East.” Throughout the speech, Farrakhan compared Netanyahu to Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king notorious for his actions against the Jews in the ancient Kingdom of Judah.
Farrakhan predicted that Israel will no longer exist in the Middle East; citing verses from the Bible and Quran as supposed proof of this prophecy, he referred to scripture about “desolation” coming to Jerusalem and stated that God intends to return the land to the Palestinians. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” Farrakhan declared, repeating the rallying cry often used by anti-Israel voices.
Addressing Netanyahu and Jews living in Israel, Farrakhan stated: “You’re gonna have to think about returning to Europe, because you’re not gonna stay in the Middle East. You’re not going to stay there!” Speaking about terrorists who have attacked Israel, Farrakhan stated: “I'm not angry with the Palestinians who strap bombs on themselves, because they are sacrificing the only thing left for them. It’s their lives, and they were giving Israel hell.”
Farrakhan criticized United States President Joe Biden for supposedly “bowing down” to Netanyahu’s demands, alleging that this subservience was part of a larger pattern in which Jews and Israel have “manipulated” every American president for decades. “The whole world right now is enslaved — and America is the greatest enslaved nation — by the Synagogue of Satan,” Farrakhan stated, using the derogatory phrase often employed by antisemites to refer to Jews and Judaism.
Farrakhan shared other familiar claims regarding alleged Jewish power and control — claims which he has stated repeatedly in his 40-plus year tenure as the NOI’s leader — including allegations that Jews established the Federal Reserve to manipulate the U.S. government to serve Jewish interests.
Farrakhan connected his commentary about Israel and Palestine to allegations about the treatment of Black people in the United States. Farrakhan told the audience: “Now, some of you, my Black brothers and sisters, you are not concerned about the Middle East…[but] your extermination is being planned as well.” Echoing his previous conspiratorial claims about the COVID-19 vaccine, Farrakhan added: “The government put a great hit on us in a vaccine…They are trying to kill us softly with a vaccine.” Farrakhan also accused the Anti-Defamation League of “taking policemen out of the American cities to Israel to learn the techniques of how to break you into pieces…The ADL is bringing police and teaching them how to kill us. And they’re vicious murderers.”
Farrakhan also repeated familiar claims alleging that Jews aim to disrupt any attempts at Black unity in the U.S. and that Jews have exerted control over Black Americans via the establishment and continued control of the NAACP. He further stated that even though many Black people know the so-called “truth” about Jews, they stay silent for fear of losing their Jewish-controlled jobs and assets.
Commenting on supposed Jewish control of Black Americans, Farrakhan stated: “They have sentinels everywhere. And you know, a sentinel is a guard. You can’t be in medicine and not bow to Jewish power. You can’t be a lawyer and not bow. You can sing, right? You can dance. Oh man, you can play the instrument. But you need an agent. Who’s the agent? Uh-huh. Who is the person handling your finances? And when you look around, they’re arresting you for not paying your taxes, because the person you hired robbed you. But he can go free, but you can’t.”
As he has stated in past speeches, Farrakhan compared himself to Jesus: “[Jesus] beat the merchants out of the country, out of the Temple. And then he became hated by the Jews of that day, like I am hated by the Jews of this day.”
Farrakhan’s speech reflected the NOI’s decades-long history of making antisemitic, conspiratorial claims about Israel. Before Farrakhan delivered his live address on Sunday, NOI Student National Assistant Minister Ishmael Muhammad gave introductory remarks and set the stage for the afternoon by playing a video clip of Farrakhan’s 1985 speech at the Forum in Inglewood, CA in which he spoke about Jews and Israel: “It is because of your disbelief in God and your disbelief in the scriptures and your wicked hypocrisy that you could not wait, therefore you marshaled your own forces to steal land from the Palestinians…Don't I have a right to criticize Jewish behavior if I think it is incorrect?”