Ice Cube to speak at ZOA’s annual gala
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By David Ian Klein November 13, 2020
Miriam Adelson. Mort Klein. Ice Cube?
The first funds the Zionist Organization of America. The second leads it. And the third is a rapper known for longstanding antisemitism who this past summer formed a relationship with Klein, who reached out to him to discuss problematic tweets.
All three are speaking at the ZOA’s annual gala in December.
NEWS: Ice Cube will be a speaker at the ZOA’s annual gala this year pic.twitter.com/AoekPoLGvp
— Shira Hanau (@shirahanau) November 13, 2020
The press release, posted by ZOA on Friday included references to Ice Cube’s songs, “It was a good day” (1992) and “Check Yo Self” (1993), each footnoted at the bottom of the press release.
“’I gotta say it was a good day’ when my friend Cube readily and happily agreed to speak at our ZOA Gala,” Morton Klein, National President of the Zionist Organization of America, is quoted as saying. “When people found out I was meeting with Cube, some said ‘you better check yo self before you wreck yo self. But I got to know Cube as a man, a leader, a talented entertainer, and as a good friend.”
In June of this year, Ice Cube was criticized for a slew of now-deleted tweets filled with antisemitic themes, as well as for promoting Louis Farrakhan.
The Nation of Islam leader has called Jews termites, claimed that they control the media and orchestrated the 9/11 attacks.
As a musician he got his start in the 1980s group N.W.A. But after leaving the group, the lyrics to his 1991 song, “No Vaseline,” maligned N.W.A along with the group’s producer, Jerry Heller, who he called a “white Jew” and a “devil.”
This year, the ZOA, like most organizations, will be having its gala virtually due to COVID-19.
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