Town to remove ‘unauthorized’ $100,000 mural celebrating accused antisemite Louis Farrakhan

Justine Brooke Murray, DCNF

The town council of Greenburgh, New York, vowed to remove an “unauthorized” image of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan from their taxpayer funded mural, according to CBS News.

A $100,000 taxpayer funded mural in Greenburgh, celebrating the Black Lives Matter movement, includes an image of Farrakhan, CBS News reported, who has praised Hitler, called Jewish people “Satan” and “termites” and blamed them for American slavery, chanted “Death to Israel” and publicly denied the Holocaust. The town council claimed they “never approved” the image and promised to remove it, but community activist Clifton Abrams who led the project is contemplating raising funds to keep it up, according to ABC 7.

A spokesperson says it “does not match what was submitted in its original permit request,” according to CBS News.

“The Black Lives Matter Manhattan Avenue Mural Subcommittee therefore voted to remove the unauthorized imagery. The artist has agreed that Louis Farrakhan will be taken off of the mural and the image will be removed this week,” the town council added in their statement on Aug. 25.

Abrams, however, said that he is meeting with Black political leaders to possibly pay for it with private funds.

“Louis Farrakhan is a vile and rabid antisemite. The hatred he spews against Jewish people should be universally condemned,” Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin and New York gubernatorial candidate told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Anyone who has called Hitler ‘a very great man’ should not be celebrated, especially at taxpayer expense.”

Farrakhan has a long history of inflammatory statements regarding Jewish people.

“The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters. … The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress,” Farrakhan once said at the 1990 Savior’s Day Speech in Chicago, according to The Southern Poverty Law Center.

The mural is plastered on the Manhattan Avenue underpass of the I-287 highway and includes images of Bob Marley and Mohammed Ali.

The Westchester Jewish Council called Farrakhan’s imagery hurtful, stating that “his long public history of anti-Jewish and other bigoted comments makes his inclusion in this project completely improper,” ABC 7 reported.

The town council of Greenburgh did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. Farrakhan could not be reached for comment.

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