Ice Cube Denies Report He Ordered Entourage to Beat up a Rabbi

Above the letter he wrote “Don’t play with me. This is just phase one.”

[additional-authors]

Marcy Oster, JTA

July 1, 2020

Simon Wiesenthal Center Associate Dean Rabbi Abraham Cooper and rapper, actor and event emcee Ice Cube. Photo by Marissa Roth

Ice Cube is having some issues with journalists, including CNN’s Jake Tapper for calling Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan an anti-Semite, and the rapper called them out on social media.

On Monday, Tapper tweeted that “Farrakhan is a vile anti-LGBTQ anti-Semitic misogynist. Why is a Fox channel airing his propaganda?”

The Jewish anchor’s post was in response to the announcement that Fox Soul TV would be broadcasting a speech by Farrakhan on July 4. The channel has since canceled the broadcast.

In response, Ice Cube tweeted the same day, “Watch your mouth Jake.”

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, he posted an image of a cease-and-desist order against journalists Charles Nash of Mediaite and Marlow Stern of the Daily Beast for publishing “outrageously false unverified, and disparaging allegations regarding Ice Cube,” whose given name is O’Shea Jackson. Above the letter he wrote “Don’t play with me. This is just phase one.”

The letter sent from a Los Angeles law firm specifically refers to “the ridiculous, false accusation that Ice Cube ordered his ‘entourage to beat up a rabbi,’ was sued for it, and that he is anti-Semitic.”

Last month, the Daily Beast published an article by Stern titled “Ice Cube’s long, disturbing history of anti-Semitism.” In an article published Monday on the Mediaite website, Nash repeated the claims, citing the Daily Beast article.

“The idea that Ice Cube is anti-Semitic is laughable, as anyone who knows the man can attest,” the lawyer letter says. “Ice Cube has no biases against any race, creed, color, ethnicity, religion or gender. His tolerance for all peoples is exactly why he was invited to be the emcee at the national tribute dinner of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in April 2017.”

Also in June, Ice Cube tweeted a mural some have called anti-Semitic, and days later tweeted images associated with multiple conspiracy theories against Jews, including that they control the world.