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SUPER BOWL ADS TO PROMOTE ISRAEL  
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Dave Zirin
February 7, 2024
Real News Network
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_ New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft buys $7 million pro-Israel
Super Bowl ad during Gaza genocide. The billionaire, personal friend
and financier of Trump, has a long record of business deals and
political support for Israel. _

, Real News Network

 

Super Bowl LVII in 2023 was the most-watched US telecast in history,
and with well over 100 million people expected to tune in on Feb. 11,
Super Bowl Sunday will provide one of the biggest platforms on Earth
for pro-Israel groups to attempt to justify Israel’s ongoing
genocidal war on Gaza. The Foundation to Combat Anti-Semitism, which
is owned by Robert Kraft, the billionaire owner of the NFL’s New
England Patriots, has purchased a $7 million TV ad spot on Super Bowl
Sunday to  “Stop Jewish Hate.”  Kraft’s ties to Israel run
deep, from hefty donations to AIPAC to a long history of business
deals in the country. _Edge of Sports_ host Dave Zirin
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Zionism in professional sports in this special edition of “Choice
Words.”

Transcript

DAVE ZIRIN:  Welcome to _Edge of Sports_, brought to you by The Real
News Network. I’m Dave Zirin, and I have some choice words about New
England Patriots owner, Bob Kraft, and a $7 million Super Bowl ad that
I am not looking forward to seeing.

Okay, look, New England Patriots’ 82-year-old owner, Robert Kraft,
writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine
AIPAC. But his ties to Israel run far deeper than the occasional
donation. The multi-billionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel
in 1963 when Kraft, then just 22, was older than the nation itself.
Together, Myra and Robert set up numerous business, athletic, and
charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on
the Kraft company website.

In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its Touchdown in Israel
program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations
to see the Holy Land and come back to spread the word about the only
democracy in the Middle East. Kraft also attends fundraisers for the
Israeli defense forces who currently, in an open view of the world,
are committing war crimes in Gaza.

Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza, Kraft is again
flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the
indefensible. His Foundation of Combat Antisemitism, or FCAS, will be
spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled “Stop
Jewish Hate” that will be seen by well over 100 million people.

Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda
campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people
are consuming on social media. Without a sense of irony or the horrors
happening on the ground, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his
own money to the Foundation Against Antisemitism because hate leads to
violence — Just not violence against Palestinians, apparently.

Let’s be clear. What Kraft is doing politically and what he’ll be
using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to
think that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For
Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling
for a ceasefire and a free Palestine that are part of the problem. And
Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC
agenda is antisemitism.

There is a Red Sea of distance, as I’ve written, between
antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Antisemitism is the pernicious hatred
of a beautiful religion and culture that has been with us for over
5,000 years. Anti-Zionism means opposing a once negligible
125-year-old colonial project in the Middle East.

Zionism was a minor strain in Jewish life until the Holocaust, where,
in a state of unspeakable trauma, Zionism rose triumphant after World
War II with a new state built on the backs and land of the Palestinian
people, a new outpost of what columnist Bari Weiss, with shameless
racism, calls the West, albeit located in the Middle East. Now, for
Kraft and Bari Weiss, building a highly militarized nuclear state
built on stolen land is the only true hedge against another Holocaust.

Cementing this idea that to be anti-Zionist means that you are
anti-Semitic has also been the lifelong project of Israel’s corrupt
prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu attempts to shame anyone
on the left who dares criticize Israel as crypto antisemites. Even the
rabbis calling for a free Palestine are not free from this slander.

But right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish
state existing alongside their conviction that we’re all going to
hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition.

And the greatest foghorn of this evangelical, right-wing, love Israel
hate the Jews perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. And let’s
talk about Robert Kraft and his relationship with Donald Trump.

You see, Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the
Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of
Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, counts Donald Trump as a close friend,
and even donated $1 million to his 2016 presidential inauguration.

To be clear, one who provides cover for the most powerful and public
antisemite in the history of US politics should never be taken
seriously on how we can best fight antisemitism. And no one who funds
AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a ceasefire amid the carnage should be
allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. 

But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind
patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth,
perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than
Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we
don’t have a choice.

For The Real News Network and_ Edge of Sports_, I’m Dave Zirin.

MAXIMILLIAN ALVAREZ:  Thank you so much for watching The Real News
Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you
care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work. So
please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to The Real News
Network. Solidarity forever.

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