Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.



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After black nationalist gunmen opened fire in a Jewish market in his state, Senator Cory Booker issued a statement that did not mention Jews, but did mention fighting “gun violence”. A secondary joint press release with Senator Bob Menendez, the other politician representing the state in the Senate, did mention "rising anti-Semitism" before shifting over to the need for, “lifesaving gun safety reform.” "There is no room in our communities or in our hearts for this evil," the press release concluded.The Senator from New Jersey doesn’t give himself enough credit. There is plenty of room for this evil in his heart. The Democrat politician has repeatedly quoted Stokely Carmichael in his speeches. The black nationalist also known as Kwame Ture would have approved of the Jersey City market shootings.“The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist we must take a lesson from Hitler,” Ture had once declared. “I’ve never admired a white man, but the greatest of them, to my mind, was Hitler.”David Anderson, the Jersey City gunman, had obsessively listened to the ravings of Louis Farrakhan.Cory Booker had tweeted a photo celebrating Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March which featured a photo of Farrakhan. Like Stokely, Farrakhan believes that Hitler is a “great man.” Earlier in the campaign, Booker had flip-flopped over whether he would agree to meet with Farrakhan, after saying, “I have heard Minister Farrakhan’s speeches for a lot of my life.” Ultimately, Booker decided to nix the idea.But, much more significantly, Booker had worked to nix the FBI’s monitoring of black nationalist terror.Earlier this summer, Booker had grinned at a Senate grilling of FBI Director Christopher Wray. “So, you no longer use the term Black Identity Extremism,” he had gloated. “That's great news.”“So nobody is being investigated or surveilled under black identity extremism?” he demanded.Nobody. Including David Anderson, the Black Hebrew Israelite hate group member, who had loaded up a U-Haul van with guns and explosives before setting out to kill Jews in the name of his racist hatred.Had the FBI defied Senator Booker, the people at the JC Supermarket might still be alive today.The end of the BIE category was great news for Booker who, along with Senator Dick Durbin, had waged a relentless crusade against the FBI for warning against the rising terror threat from black nationalists like the ones who murdered Detective Joseph Seals, Moshe Hersh Deutsch, Leah Mindel Ferencz, and Miguel Jason Rodriguez in the wave of brutal violence by Black Hebrew Israelite terrorists in Jersey City.And it was bad news for those who lost their lives to the terrorists whom Booker was protecting.After the hearing, Booker issued a press release urging “Director Wray to issue updated guidance notifying law enforcement agencies about the elimination of this misleading designation.”The lack of awareness by local law enforcement in Jersey City, particularly by Detective Joseph Seals, who was unaware of the danger he faced when approaching the U-Haul of the black identity extremists, may have proven fatal not only to Seals, but the three people shot in the Kosher market, as well as to the two police officers wounded in the fighting. If Seals had understood the danger he was in, the entire attack could have been headed off at the Bayville Cemetery where the detective had confronted them.At the Senate hearing, Booker followed the same talking points as other defenders of black nationalism did, objecting to Director Wray’s suggestion that racist violence was coming from both sides of the spectrum. “That language you said, both ends of the spectrum, the murders at synagogues, the murders we've seen motivated,” he rambled. “You said both ends of the spectrum, as if there actually is a movement of black identity extremism: it's almost creating this reality.”Less than a year later, the reality that Booker was pretending didn’t exist hit home. The likely target, according to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop, was a Jewish school and synagogue next door to the store.Anderson and his girlfriend had opened fire on the glass front of the store while 50 children were trapped in a school and worshipers in a synagogue in the much less visible building next door.The attack came from the black identity extremists whom Booker had been avidly protecting."The Trump Administration is conjuring up the idea that 'Black Identity Extremists' are a threat to our communities, particularly the safety of the brave men and women who serve in law enforcement. There is just one problem though: there is no such movement. No serious journalists or academics have written about or even found that 'Black Identity Extremists' exist," Booker had posted on Facebook.That was in 2017. That same year, black nationalists Micah X. Johnson and Gavin Long, had murdered 8 police officers in mass shootings. These were some of the crimes that Senator Booker claimed didn’t exist.And he wasn’t alone.Booker, along with Senator Kamala Harris, Senator Dick Durbin, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and Senator Richard Blumenthal had sent a letter to Attorney General Barr this year claiming that "so-called 'Black identity extremists'" was a "fabricated term based on a faulty assessment of a small number of isolated incidents."A letter by the Congressional Black Caucus had also taken issue with the BIE category. Rep. Donald M. Payne Jr, who represents the district in which the Kosher market shooting happened, is a CBC member. In his press release, Payne failed to mention the ideology of the gunmen, repeatedly describing the killings as “senseless” and blamed Republicans for not supporting Democrat gun control proposals.“I will continue to encourage my House colleagues to support my Safer Neighborhoods Gun Buyback Act to help me get guns off the streets,” his press release boasted.The Democrat House member failed to explain how buying back guns would have stopped a black nationalist terrorist who had stocked up on guns in order to kill police officers and Jews.The FBI’s response to the rise in black nationalist violence was the right one.You don’t stop terrorist attack with gun buybacks, but through monitoring and surveillance. Senator Cory Booker went to war to cripple the FBI’s ability to monitor and to warn local police departments of the threat of black nationalist terror. He shamelessly lied by repeatedly claiming that it didn’t exist.And there is no reason to think that he will admit the truth now.In between praising Greta Thunberg and touting his own political prospects in the 2020 election, Booker tweeted, "We won't be silent in the face of bigotry & hate. Sending love & prayers to the victims, their families, our Jewish neighbors & the JCPD."The victims didn’t need Cory Booker’s love or prayers. Nor did the JCPD which lost one of its own, while two others were sent to the hospital, it needed to have the information to stop that from happening.For the last two years, Booker had the opportunity to stand with police officers and the victims. Instead he chose to cover up for David Anderson and other racist black nationalist terrorists.The people of New Jersey paid the price.Senator Cory Booker was not only silent in the face of bigotry and hate, he silenced the FBI. His silencing enabled the terror attack in Jersey City. And his response to a terror attack in his own state by the very black identity extremists whom he claimed don’t exist, was this perfunctory sending of “love & prayers.”President Trump has been repeatedly asked about his ties to white nationalists. Imagine if President Trump had repeatedly quoted an admirer of Adolf Hitler who had called for the murder of Jews. Imagine if he had played a major role in shutting down surveillance and monitoring of the KKK and Neo-Nazis. And imagine if nobody in the media were willing to report on it or ask him about his motives.It’s time Cory Booker were asked, as he aspires to Trump’s job, why he covered for black nationalists.And whether, after the bodies were removed from the floor of that small Jersey City market while he rushed between fundraisers and campaign events, he has any regrets.