Acclaimed rapper Kanye West appeared to threaten Jewish people in a tweet posted Sunday, shortly after his Instagram account was restricted for content viewed by some users as antisemitic.
“I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” he wrote, in one of his first tweets in two years.
The post was later removed by Twitter for violating its rules.
“Death con 3” appears to be a mistaken use of the US military heightened alert status DEFCON 3.
He also posted against Meta’s Jewish founder Mark Zuckerberg for the Instagram restriction.
“Look at this Mark,” West wrote, sharing a photo of the two of them together. “How you gone kick me off instagram.”
West — who now goes by Ye — had not posted on Twitter since the 2020 US elections, only returning once his Instagram account was restricted after he posted screenshots of an argument with hip-hop star Sean Combs, also known as Puff Daddy or Diddy.
In one of the messages, West said: “Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me.” West captioned the Instagram post “Jesus is Jew.”
The statement was part of an argument between the two about West wearing a “White Lives Matter” shirt at a Paris fashion show. The controversial slogan has been described by the Anti-Defamation League as a “white supremacist phrase.”
It wasn’t clear who West was referring to in the message, but the comments drew criticism from the American Jewish Committee.
“Kanye West has had a streak of rants this week that is remarkable even by his standards. Ye needs to see that words matter, especially a vicious antisemitic comment that recently surfaced on social media,” the organization said.
“If he wants to have any credibility as a commentator on social issues, let alone as a musician, maybe he can start by figuring out how to make a point without fomenting hatred of Jews,” the statement said.
On Thursday, West claimed that former White House senior adviser Jared Kushner brokered the Abraham Accords peace agreements between Israel and several Arab nations in order “to make money,” during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
West claimed that Kushner and his brother Josh, who are both Jewish, were acting like a “handler” to former US president Donald Trump and claimed that “they love to just look at me or look at Trump like we’re so crazy and that they’re the businessman.”
“After talking to them, and really sitting with Jared and sitting with Josh… I was like, ‘Wow, these guys have really been holding [former US president Donald] Trump back and being very much a handler,’” West told Fox News as he reflected on his relationship with the Kushners.
Kushner has come under scrutiny from Democrats over the investment fund he set up after leaving the White House, which accepted $2 billion from the Saudi Public Investment Fund controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kushner and the crown prince forged a close relationship while Trump was in office.
Bin Salman is believed to have been more open to the Abraham Accords than other officials in the Saudi kingdom. Analysts say that Bahrain would not have agreed to normalize relations with Israel in 2020 along with the UAE without a green light from Riyadh.