Report: Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s running mate celebrated the Oct. 7 attack on Israel
Butch Ware is a virulent critic of Israel on social media
Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a pro-Palestinian protest in front of the White House June 8. Photo by Mattie Neretin/Getty Images
(JTA) — The Green Party’s vice presidential nominee has celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, according to a report from Jewish Insider.
Rudolph “Butch” Ware, an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is running alongside Jill Stein, the Jewish Green Party presidential candidate who Democrats fear could spoil a close election,
Ware is also part of a hip-hop duo, Slum Prophecy, that over the summer released an 11-track album titled “Aqsa Flood,” a variation on Hamas’ name for the Oct. 7 attacks, Jewish Insider reported on Monday.
Ware has removed links to the album, which had songs titled “Intifada” and “Kill Shot (Pick Them Off),” from social media sites, the news outlet reported. The songs are still available to stream on Spotify, where each has been played several thousand times. The album art features an inverted red triangle, the symbol Hamas used to mark Israeli targets in videos of the attack that has since been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
Ware and the Stein campaign did not answer Jewish Insider’s request for comment.
Stein has made opposition to Israel’s military campaign and U.S. support for it a centerpiece of her campaign. Campaign videos show her wearing a keffiyeh, or Palestinian scarf, and she recently shared a post by an account named “Kamala Harris is murdering Palestinian children.” On Monday, she posted, “A vote for Harris/Trump enables genocide. We can’t normalize the mass murder of children. As Gaza goes, we all go.”
Stein has sought to capitalize on disillusion among Arab and Muslim Americans with Harris’ support for Israel in its war against Hamas, campaigning in Michigan, a critical swing state. The Democratic Party is concerned enough about her campaign that it has targeted Stein with an ad playing up the endorsement she got from David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan who is one of the country’s most prominent antisemites and who reviles Israel. Stein has disavowed Duke’s endorsement.
Ware’s social media accounts feature a wide array of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel content, including content praising armed resistance against oppression. This year, on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, he posted a video of himself characterizing Hamas’ invasion of Israel, in which about 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 abducted, as “the modern equivalent of Nat Turner’s rebellion,” a reference to an 1831 slave uprising in Virginia. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates also compared the two events in a recent interview about his latest book, which is harshly critical of Israel.
On the day of the attack in 2023, Ware posted an image saying “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase that pro-Palestinian activists say is a call for freedom, but pro-Israel watchdogs say is antisemitic, with a caption that appeared to denigrate Jews. “Oppressors, whatever ‘faith’ they may claim, are doomed in this life and in the next,” wrote Ware, who also goes by Bilal Ware and preaches about Islam. Ware has a doctorate in history from the University of Pennsylvania and, according to his UCSB faculty page, focuses on race, religion and revolutionary thought.
This is not the first time in Stein’s career of running long-shot campaigns that she has had a running mate who has stirred controversies about Jews. In 2016, her running mate had contributed to a book of conspiracies compiled by a Holocaust denier.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
