https://chng.it/SgmS8T5rTC
I was a fan of #Matisyahu for many years, so it is with great sadness that I'm sharing this petition.
Excerpt: Matisyahu has, in recent months, become a prominent supporter of BETAR, a movement on the far-right of Zionist political spectrum. Matisyahu himself is featured prominently on the homepage of BETAR’s website, in a video playing the guitar and wearing a shirt with BETAR’s logo, and a headband with the logo of the Jewish Defense League. Matisyahu has also publicly posted about his support of BETAR and the other organizations mentioned all throughout his various social media channels. BETAR began as the youth wing of a right-wing Zionist group with fascist influence and a long-standing hostility to Arabs, critics of Israel, and to Jews and Israelis seeking peace and coexistence. In recent months BETAR has “rebooted” and has been actively threatening Jews, and non-Jewish officials, critical of Israel’s war in Gaza. In the spirit of Meir Kahane’s legacy they encourage violent confrontation when working through the censoring mechanisms of the state to deport critics are not available.
BETAR is heir to the legacy of far-right militias and movements which were inspired by European fascism and hypernationalism. One of BETAR’s most famous products was the late Prime Minister Menachim Begin, who, as a leader of the far-right Irgun, terrorized both the British and the local Arab populations. In 1948, as Begin was forming a right-wing political party in the new State of Israel, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, and other Jewish luminaries signed an open-letter decrying Begin’s fascist influences and the crimes of the Deir Yassin massacre. Like Einstein then we protest now the welcoming of a supporter of this latest iteration of far-right Zionism.
