Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has issued a statement in Hebrew on his Instagram expressing regret over his antisemitic comments over the past year.
That includes recent statements allegedly made in Las Vegas earlier this month, and caught by live streamers in attendance, invoking Hitler and Jesus Christ alongside himself, and addressing his loss of brand sponsorships and partnerships during a Vultures album event, as reported by Rolling Stone.
Set to release on Jan. 12, the album’s title track, which features Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Durk and Bump J, seemingly addresses previous criticism of Ye, with the rapper stating, “How I’m antisemitic? I just fucked a Jewish bitch.”
Ye, who deleted all his previous Instagram posts leaving only his recent apology, wrote on Tuesday that he regretted his “unplanned outburst,” seemingly alluding to the Vegas event, as translated by The Jerusalem Post.
“I sincerely apologize to the Jewish community for my unplanned outburst caused by my words or actions, it was not my intention to hurt or disrespect, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused. I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future. Your forgiveness is important to me, and I am committed to making amends and promoting unity.”
During the Vegas event, Ye was caught on video addressing the likes of Drake, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Balenciaga, Ari Emanuel and Adidas — the latter of which was among a number of companies, including JP Morgan, which dropped the rapper over his antisemitic comments last year.
He pushed back on people who have called his previous statements “episodes” before declaring the Jewish Zionist community controls institutions like hospitals and private schools. (An educational consultant for Ye’s unaccredited K-8 private Christian school, who had ties to two Jewish educational institutions, resigned in October 2022 following his previous, widely condenmed statements.)
Attacking the companies who dropped him, Ye at one point shouted, “Jesus Christ, Hitler, Ye — third party, sponsor that, n—-. Bring your sponsorships to that.” At another point in Ye’s rant, he directly addresses Emanuel, WME CEO. “I put up one tweet and then Ari Emanuel put, ‘Oh we gotta drop this n—- and all n—– just watched,” he said.
These latest statements come amid rising fears of antisemitism in Hollywood and beyond amid the Israel-Hamas war, and are far from the first antisemitic commenst the rapper has given in the past several years.
Before the Vultures event, Ye faced industry-wide criticism, with many cutting ties with the rapper, for numerous antisemitic statements he made on social media, in videos, and in interviews. Much of that sprung from his threat to go “death con 3” on the Jewish community after he alleged, using an antisemitic trope, that he had been “toyed with” and blackballed by unnamed Jewish people in power.
Gap, CAA, MRC, Peloton and more severed relationships with the rapper, with Twitter and Instagram both locking Ye’s accounts following his statement. UTA’s Jeremy Zimmer called for a boycott of the rapper, while celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis coming out against his “abhorrent” X post. While MRC pulled the plug on a doc about the rapper, Spotify’s CEO Daniel Ek criticized Ye’s statements, but declined to remove his music from the streaming platform unless Ye’s label requested it.
In October, Drink Champs did pull an episode with Ye in which he shared conspiracy theories around the death of George Floyd, in addition to repeating antisemitic conspiracies throughout the interview. That came less than a week after LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s The Shop podcast pulled its episode with the rapper before it aired over his use of “hate speech.” The team declined to reveal what Ye said in the conversation, which had been booked and recorded weeks before.
That same month, in an interview for Piers Morgan Uncensored, Ye — who repeated George Floyd murder and antisemitic conspiracies during his appearance — says he’s “absolutely not” sorry about his “death con 3” statement when Morgan asks if he is. Ye repeatedly points to Jewish industry members he says have harmed him, before the rapper backtracks.
“I will say I’m sorry for the people that I hurt with the death con [comment], the confusion that I caused. I felt like I caused hurt and confusion. And I’m sorry for the families of the people that had nothing to do with the trauma that I have been through.”
At a later point in the interview, during which he also addressed his hopes for a 2024 presidential run, Ye adds, “I just want to say that it’s wrong to hold an apology hostage and I gotta let go of that, and free myself of the trauma and say, look, I’m just gonna give it all up to God right now. And say to those families that I hurt, you know, I really want to give you guys a big hug.”
But in December 2022, Ye appeared in a different interview with Alex Jones in which he stated, “I see good things about Hitler,” and adding that “there’s a lot of things that I love about Hitler” and that Nazis “did good things, too.” Shortly after, President Joe Biden released a statement on Twitter denouncing Holocaust denialism.
“I just want to make a few things clear: The Holocaust happened. Hitler was a demonic figure,” Biden posted on X, the platform then known as Twitter, in his statement, which didn’t mention Ye by name. “And instead of giving it a platform, our political leaders should be calling out and rejecting antisemitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”
Ye’s public antisemitic statements stretch back as far as 2013, when he told The Breakfast Club in an interview that, “Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people,” adding, “we ain’t Jewish. We don’t get family that got money like that.” In response to criticism at the time, Ye told a Chicago radio station that he didn’t mean it as an insult. It was just an “ignorant compliment,” according to Haaretz.
“I thought that I was giving a compliment, but it came off more ignorant,” the rapper reportedly told B96. “When I said this comment about Jews having money, and blacks not having money, I think it was, like, a ‘ignorant compliment.’
“I don’t know how being told that you have money is, like, an insult,” he added.
