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Who Is Dan Bilzerian? The Israel-Obsessed, Jew-Hating Misogynist That Elon Musk Protects
American poker player, businessman, and social media influencer Dan Bilzerian’s recent contributions to the social media platform X have followed a disturbing pattern: a video of himself on a podcast denying the Hamas atrocities of October 7, a graphic filled with fake Talmud quotes, and a two-word reply to a post urging America to stand firmly against Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed terrorist group: “F*** You.”
Ah, the sparkling wit we’ve come to expect from the illustrious ranks of social media influencers who are using the Israel-Hamas war as an excuse to spew antisemitism.
Among these beacons of intellectual discourse, we find Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Jake Shields, and Jackson Hinkle — an impressive lineup of personalities united in their shared fondness for anti-Jewish bigotry.
But let’s refocus on Bilzerian.
Dan Bilzerian first stumbled into the spotlight during the rise of social media in the mid-2000s, where he generously shared an insight into his luxury lifestyle with impressionable young followers worldwide. His Instagram, boasting 32 million followers, sticks to a simple formula: a slew of staged photos featuring Bilzerian surrounded by scantily clad women.
Though Bilzerian claims to have amassed his fortune as a professional poker player, this claim — like much of what he says — is doubtful. Other professionals in the poker world dispute his supposed mastery of the game, and it’s far more plausible that his wealth stems from a hefty inheritance from his father, convicted fraudster Paul Bilzerian.
Yet, despite Bilzerian’s shaky relationship with the truth, his repugnant views on women, and his dubious financial history, the media inexplicably did, and continue, to try and elevate him into the echelons of stardom.
A Monster of the Media’s Making
Journalists from even the most reputable publications have helped Bilzerian build his brand over the years. Take GQ contributing editor Chris Ayres, for example, who penned a feature for the glossy men’s magazine in 2019 titled, “Instagram king, womaniser, and wannabe cannabis multibillionaire: we spend a day with Dan Bilzerian,’” where he sounded almost in awe of his subject.
Or the interview with Men’s Health in which Bilzerian was asked how he manages to live a “rock star lifestyle” while maintaining a “cover star body,” yet somehow wasn’t questioned about why anyone should be taking fitness advice from a man who admitted that cocaine and Viagra binges led to him having two heart attacks.
Of course, these are just a couple of examples in a sea of press coverage that initially gave a platform to what was then clearly an unpleasant individual — an individual who has recently revealed himself to be an antisemite and who now has a mega-platform from which to spread incitement against Jews.
Good job, media. Who could’ve seen that coming?
Joining the Ranks of Influencer Antisemites
The media really should have seen it coming, considering Bilzerian has been posting antisemitic comments on what was then Twitter as far back as 2011, including a tweet blaming Jews for the September 11th Al-Qaeda attacks.
However, like many other influencers, Bilzerian’s sudden interest in Israel only really ignited after the October 7 Hamas massacre that sparked the current war in Gaza.
This year, he’s posted dozens of disturbing comments about the Jewish State, including conspiratorial claims that Israel murdered US soldiers, that Israel’s Mossad controls the US government, and that Israel orchestrated October 7 as a pretext to seize land in Gaza.
The latest antisemitic social media trend that Bilzerian has latched onto involves using either fake or manipulated quotations from the Jewish Talmud to supposedly “prove” that Jews are evil, thereby “contextualizing” the war in Gaza.
One such thread he reposted on August 22 was written by notorious Islamist Daniel Haqiqatjou, who has a history of posting violent antisemitic content online, which he claims “helps us better understand Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.”
The thread, which has been reposted and liked by tens of thousands of other users, has been thoroughly debunked by others, including Substack writer @shevereshtus, who describes himself as a “writer of the Rabbinic variety.”
While we’ve shared the full takedown, some highlights are worth showcasing — if only to underscore how antisemitism is flourishing online post-October 7, and to demonstrate its real-world consequences.
Debunking the antisemitic Talmud quotes meme promoted by @DanBilzerian and boosted by @RealCandaceO and her ilk
A thread. pic.twitter.com/dUd8TeCPLu
— shevereshtus (@shevereshtus) August 18, 2024
The thread is worth reading in full, as it thoroughly debunks false claims such as the Talmud allegedly encouraging Jews to kill all non-Jews, particularly women and children; a deliberate mistranslation suggesting it condones sexual relations with non-Jewish minors; and the citation of an entirely fabricated text called “Gad Shas 2:2” as a supposed authority.
The thread’s underlying theme is the baseless claim that Israel is committing atrocities in Gaza, allegedly justified by Jewish law, with the overarching conclusion being that Jews endorse violence against all non-Jews. It falsely asserts that Jewish religious texts permit atrocities in warfare, including the killing of civilians and the use of rape as a weapon — a grotesque distortion of Jewish law and ethics. The Talmud’s discussions on warfare are grounded in the historical realities of ancient Israel and bear no relevance to practices in the modern Israeli state.
Elon Musk’s Deafening Silence
Bilzerian and his crew of social media-famous antisemites are just a small part of a much bigger issue: how they continue to spread such vile hatred online, unchecked.
In the past couple of months alone, Bilzerian has called Israel a “parasite” that shouldn’t exist, claimed Jewish people killed US presidents, including JFK, and stated that the world would be safer without Israel.
If this isn’t incitement, encouraging everyday people to commit violence against Jews, then what is?
And yet, he’s still on X, with the media giving him oxygen in stories that overlook his appalling views.
In January, X owner Elon Musk promised to do more to combat antisemitism on the platform, which had surged since the Hamas attacks. He admitted he had been “naive” in thinking antisemitism wasn’t a major problem, saying, “In the circles that I move, I see almost no antisemitism.”
More than six months later, nothing has changed. The hate keeps spreading, and Musk’s silence is deafening.
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Who Is Dan Bilzerian? The Israel-Obsessed, Jew-Hating Misogynist That Elon Musk Protects first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Palestinian Authority Restructures ‘Pay-for-Slay’ System, but Questions Remain About Whether Move Is Genuine
The Palestinian Authority has restructured its so-called “pay-for-slay” program, which rewards terrorists and their families for carrying out attacks against Israelis, in an effort to push the United States to repeal punitive legislation against the PA for its long-standing policy.
The Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund makes official payments to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the families of “martyrs” killed in attacks on Israelis, and injured Palestinian terrorists. Reports estimate that approximately 8 percent of the PA’s budget is allocated to paying stipends to convicted terrorists and their families.
On Monday, however, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree revoking the “laws and regulations related to the system of paying financial allowances to the families of prisoners, martyrs, and the wounded,” according to the official PA news agency WAFA.
“All families that benefited from previous laws, legislation, and regulations are subject to the same standards applied without discrimination to all families benefiting from protection and social welfare programs,” WAFA reported.
The decree means that the PA has changed its system such that payments to Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorist attacks and their families will be based on their social economic status, not the acts they committed. Under the now-revoked program, Palestinians would receive more money for more severe terrorist acts — a policy that, according to critics, incentivized more terrorism.
However, Israeli journalist Lahav Harkov argued that the PA is “just restructuring the mechanism through which they pay terrorists so that they can claim it’s not them, it’s an ‘independent’ foundation doing it. An ‘independent’ foundation funded by the PA and whose board is appointed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas.”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Monday saying, “This is a new fraudulent trick by the Palestinian Authority, which intends to continue making payments to terrorists and their families through other payment channels.”
Palestinian officials told Axios they hope Abbas’s decision will improve relations with the Trump administration and with the US Congress in order for Washington to resume US financial aid to the PA.
Along with its policy change, the PA reportedly asked the US to repeal the Taylor Force Act, a 2018 law which prohibits US funding to the PA so long as it maintains its pay-for-slay program.
Critics therefore doubt the sincerity of the move. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank, noted that the PA has deceptively used “pay-for-slay” reform as a beginning chip in the past.
“The PA president … promised ‘pay-to-slay’ reform in 2020 to try to convince then incoming President Joe Biden to revoke 1987 legislation designating the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) ‘and its affiliates’ as terror groups,” FDD wrote.
Aaron Goren, a research analyst and editor at FDD, wrote in response to Monday’s news that “pay-to-slay reform is certainly welcome at face value and demonstrative of the Trump administration’s power in negotiations. However, American officials should be wary of the PA’s steadfast tactic of leveraging pay-to-slay reform to get concessions from the United States and Israel. The PA is likely to make serious demands from both nations in exchange.”
The post Palestinian Authority Restructures ‘Pay-for-Slay’ System, but Questions Remain About Whether Move Is Genuine first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Super Bowl Halftime Show Dancer Gets NFL Lifetime Ban for Displaying Palestinian Flag During Performance
A dancer in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show has been banned for life from all National Football League stadiums and events for waving a combined Palestinian-Sudanese flag with the words “Gaza” and “Sudan” during the rapper’s performance on Sunday night at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
The NFL said the African American protester, who has not been identified, concealed the flag and unveiled it without prior knowledge by the show’s production team.
“We commend security for quickly detaining the individual who displayed the flag,” the NFL said in a released statement. “He was a part of the 400-member field cast. The individual hid the item on his person and unveiled it late in the show. No one involved with the production was aware of the individual’s intent.” The league added that the individual “will banned for life from all NFL stadiums and events.”
Toward the end of Lamar’s performance — after his track “Not Like Us” and right before his final song “TV Off” — the dancer waved the flag while standing on top of a car used as a prop in the performance. The car, a Buick Grand National GNX, inspired the name of Lamar’s latest album, “GNX,” and it was a key prop in the rapper’s halftime show performance.
“Sudan” and “Gaza” were written on the white sections of the flag held by the protester. A heart was drawn next to “Sudan” and a solidarity fist was depicted next to the word “Gaza.” The dancer, who wore a black ensemble matching the other dancers on stage, also jumped off the car and fled the stage while still displaying the flag. He waved it while standing on the ground near other dancers before security personnel tackled and detained him. He was then removed from the field and escorted from the stadium. New Orleans police told USA Today that as of Monday, the performer has not been formally arrested or charged.
The incident took place a day after three more Israeli hostages were freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza, as part of a ceasefire agreement in the war between the terrorist organization and Israel, and while a civil war rages on in Sudan.
The New Orleans Police Department said it “continues to work with NFL and the halftime production team to ascertain any affiliation the individual may have had with the halftime show.”
The entertainment company behind the halftime show, Roc Nation, said in a statement that “the act by the individual was neither planned nor part of the production and was never in any rehearsal.”
The post Super Bowl Halftime Show Dancer Gets NFL Lifetime Ban for Displaying Palestinian Flag During Performance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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CAIR Accuses Israel of Moving ‘Genocide’ Into West Bank
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that purports to advocate for Muslim Americans, has accused Israel of “moving the genocide from Gaza to the occupied West Bank,” lambasting the Jewish state for committing a litany of alleged human rights abuses in recent days.
In a Monday statement, CAIR accused Israel of displacing thousands of Palestinian civilians, destroying Palestinian neighborhoods, murdering a pregnant woman and her baby, and unjustly raiding a Palestinian bookstore.
“The radical Israeli government is clearly trying to move its genocidal campaign of slaughter and destruction from Gaza to the West Bank, where Israeli occupation forces are driving thousands of Palestinians from their homes, destroying entire neighborhoods, kidnapping hundreds, and randomly shooting others, including an eight-months pregnant woman and her baby,” CAIR said in its statement. “Indicted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is a sociopath leading an army of war criminals, and our government must stop spending American taxpayer dollars on his latest campaign of murder, ethnic cleansing and destruction in the West Bank.”
In the 16 months following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s cross-border invasion of and massacre across southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, the Jewish state has ramped up operations to uproot terrorists in the West Bank.
These efforts intensified last month, when Israel launched a counterterrorism effort in the West Bank coined “Operation Iron Wall”” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops, gunships, and drones operated in Jenin to extract Palestinian terrorists from the town and its adjacent refugee camps. Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that the operation was greenlit “on the directive of the security cabinet” with the aim of “bolstering security in Judea and Samaria [Israel’s preferred terminoloy for the West Bank].”
Jenin Mayor Mohammad Jarrar claimed that 150 buildings had been destroyed in the town as a result of the operation, suggesting that Israeli officials approved the operation with the intent of driving out the Palestinian population from the West Bank and annexing the territory.
Israel has long accused Iran of supplying armed factions in Jenin, particularly its refugee camp, with weapons. Palestinian terrorists have long been active in the city. Israel has been especially alarmed by the rise of the Jenin Brigades, a new armed group.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN body responsible for Palestinian refugees, alleged that Israel inflicted “forced displacement” on some 40,000 Palestinians. The Israeli government and research organizations have publicized findings in recent months showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in Hamas’s Oc t. 7 atrocities, while many others openly celebrated it.
CAIR’s latest accusation against Israel was not its first time stepping into controversy. In the 2000s, the organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago last November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
CAIR has accused Israel of committing atrocities beyond Gaza and the West Bank. In December, the Islamic group said the Jewish state was guilty of “ethnic cleansing” in Syria following the recent collapse of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime, despite the limited nature of Israel’s military operations in the neighboring country.
The post CAIR Accuses Israel of Moving ‘Genocide’ Into West Bank first appeared on Algemeiner.com.