An online white supremacy group duped Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre and other celebrities into recording YouTube videos that used coded alt-right language to promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

ANTISEMITISM IS EXPRESSED AS HOSTILITY TOWARD OR DISCRIMINATION OF JEWS AS A RELIGIOUS, ETHNIC, OR RACIAL GROUP.

By Eileen Fleming

In 2018 Brett Favre, the former N.F.L. quarterback spoke at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games and teamed up with a group that trains shelter dogs and places them with veterans struggling with post-combat stress and anxiety.

Favre was also among several celebrities who were recently targeted on “Cameo”, a platform on which fans pay celebrities for personalized video messages, often for birthdays or other special occasions.

Favre and others recorded messages at the request of the “GDL,” or “Goyim Defense League,” which uses the Yiddish word for non-Jews as it mocks the Anti-Defamation League’s acronym.

The GDL requested Mr. Favre read:

You guys are Patriots in my eyes… keep Waking ‘em UP! Don’t let the Small get you down… Keep up the Fight… and never forget the USS LIBERTY and all our service men that passed away that day.

Favre charges $500 for a Cameo and said he was appalled when he learned the message he read had come from an anti-Semitic group, which reposted the video with commentary implying Favre endorsed their mission.

Favre said, “Nothing could be further from the truth,” adding, “I am sickened by what these groups stand for and concerned about their role in fueling today’s negative political climate.”

On Monday The New York Times reported:

The U.S.S. Liberty was an American ship that was attacked by Israel — inadvertently, the Israelis said — in 1967. It is a source of conspiracy theories and has become a “rallying cry” among anti-Semites, according to Heidi Beirich, who monitors hate groups and extremists for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

She said the request also included other veiled references to anti-Semitic messaging: “patriots,” which refers to those who are supportive of the anti-Semitic cause, and “small,” which is a reference to a yarmulke, the traditional skullcaps worn by Jewish men. “The person who wrote this message obviously was putting it in coded enough language so that people who were in on the joke would get it but the celebrity wouldn’t,” Ms. Beirich said.

“We must never forget the holocaust, however, in concert, it is equally important for the future of the United States to never forget the USS Liberty”– Ernie Gallo, current and 3-time president of the USS Liberty VETERANS Association/LVA.

As an Honorary crew member of the USS Liberty VETERANS Association/LVA [and granddaughter of a German Jew] I have been attacked and slandered by Liberty ‘supporters’ who are more interested in stirring up hate against Israel and Judaism and NOT about helping to end LBJ’s cover-up that every President since has colluded in.

For the 50th commemorative reunion of the USS Liberty Veterans Association attended by their families, friends and this supporter of Liberty [with Jewish DNA] I created the YouTube “We Americans and the USS Liberty” to help the Liberty Veterans share their eye-witness accounts because Congress continues to fail to act on the LVA’s decades of pleas for an open transparent investigation into what happened on 8 June 1967. The video begins with Commander David Ed Lewis talking about LBJ’s cover-up:

Previously Mr. Lewis had informed me:

Rear Admiral Lawrence Geiss was in charge of the USS Saratoga and USS America. He swore me to secrecy until his death, which happened about nineteen years later. What he told me I kept secret until I learned of his death at the first reunion and twenty year anniversary of the veterans of the USS LIBERTY. He told me that as soon as he got the word of our distress he launched aircraft and notified D.C. and immediately heard from McNamara to recall the aircraft. He said he assumed it was because some idiots in Washington thought that he was launching nuclear weaponry. He reconfigured and then re-launched aircraft without nuclear capabilities. Admiral Geiss notified Washington of this and once again the immediate response that came from McNamara was the order to recall the aircraft. Admiral Geiss challenged the order and pleaded that people are dying! LBJ was heard to say, ‘I don’t give a damn! I won’t embarrass an ally.’

I contend it would have been much better to have embarrassed that ally than reap today’s increase in Hate crimes against Jews in America, which rose by more than a third last year and accounted for 58 percent of all religion-based hate crimes, according to data released by the FBI in Nov. 2018.

Hate crimes increased by 17 percent in 2017, with 7,175 hate crimes reported, up from 6,121 in 2016.

The number of hate crimes based on religion is the second highest ever, behind only 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

The FBI report noted a 23 percent increase in religion-based hate crimes in 2017 to 1,564, representing about 20 percent of all hate crimes.

There were a total of 938 hate crimes committed against Jews in 2017, up from 684 in 2016.

I knew nothing of the LIBERTY until 2007, when I began interviewing some of those survivors of The Six Day War such as the only doctor who had been onboard, Dr. Richard Kiepfer.

Kiepfer’s Silver Star Medal Commendation states that with complete disregard for his own personal safety he “exposed himself to overwhelmingly accurate rocket and machine gun fire…administered first aid…treated [171 wounded] men for pain, shock…[and] conducted a major surgical operation.”

Six weeks after boarding the LIBERTY, fifteen minutes into the attack, and while operating on a sailor to control his bleeding, Dr. Kiepfer received eleven shrapnel wounds into his abdomen, a gun shot to his leg, burns and a broken knee cap.

During my interviews with Doc, I had many questions but utmost was what was left out of the Court of Inquiry: such as how could the deck log which documents the hours during the attack be so neatly written and list all the dead and wounded in alphabetical order within the hours of noon to four PM but make no mention of the many Israeli over flights that occurred during the morning before the attack?

Dr. Kiepfer explained, “The deck log was not written during the attack. Captain McGonagle signed off on the Log and that makes it legal, but not authentic. McGonagle was concerned that he would be blamed for the LIBERTY being in troubled waters. I told him, ‘Over my dead F#@$&*! body!’

“Israel did identify the ship six hours before the attack. Israel did know that the ship was American and admitted to our government that they knew the ship was American; Israel claims only that the attacking forces failed to get the word.

“Modern diplomacy simply does not permit one to embarrass a ‘friendly’ nation, even when that nation is caught red-handed with its torpedo in one’s ship…