The people behind Israel’s official Twitter account have responded to a Kanye West tweet in which he said the Hebrew word “Shalom”, which is the rapper’s first tweet since re-joining the social media platform after he had been banned. West tweeted the post on Monday this week.
“Shalom” means “peace” in the Hebrew language, and seeing as it is likely that West is using the term ironically, the official Israel Twitter account commented on his post saying, “ “We would very much like to be excluded from this narrative.” This comes shortly after a tirade of Kanye comments in which he appeared to offer antisemitic views.
The rapper and business mogul said that he would “go death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE” last month, although he backed the comment up by claiming that he is indeed Jewish, “I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because Black people are actually Jew also”. West quickly had his social media accounts blocked.
Then West appeared in a highly publicised interview with Piers Morgan in which he denied antisemitism as being “not factual” before giving a half-arsed apology: “I’m sorry for the people that I hurt with the ‘death con’… I feel like I caused hurt and confusion”.
The ex-prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, said that Israel had more significant problems than West’s comments and seemed to dismiss them as mere “stupidities”. He said, “We’ve dealt with bigger problems than these stupidities. But, you know, the communists blame the Jews for being capitalists; the capitalists blame the Jews for being communists. You have a problem; blame the Jews. It’s old stuff. It shouldn’t have any place in civilised discourse.”
West then had a number of his collaborative ties cut with a number of companies, including Balenciaga, Adidas and even Kano Computing, who devised the Stem Player on which you can listen to Kanye’s Donda albums.