Billy Joel Wears Yellow Star of David at New York Show Amid Rising Neo-Nazi Activity

[grossproffit]

Billy Joel made a strong statement against the growing neo-Nazi and white nationalism movement on Monday night, taking the stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden wearing a yellow Star of David.

The 68-year-old hitmaker, who was born to Jewish parents and describes himself as culturally Jewish, donned the patch on both the lapel and back of his suit blazer — a reference to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust.

It was a surprisingly political statement from Joel, who previously told Rolling Stone that he found being lectured about political views at a concert to be a turnoff.

Joel appears to have a change of heart as the neo-Nazi, alt-right movement has only gained more visibility — uniting much of the nation in outrage earlier this month after the tumultuous “Unite the Right”‘ rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia left one counter-protester dead.

Jews across Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe were forced to wear yellow stars or armbands signifying their faith and culture in the run-up to World War II. The public identification by the yellow star preceded mass-murder in Nazi concentration camps, which led to the deaths of six million Jews.

http://people.com/music/billy-joel-wears-yellow-star-of-david-at-new-york-show-amid-rising-neo-nazi-activity/

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R ......for visibility..nt

[MyOwnPeace]

2. Guess Orange Cheat-o

will have to book Ted Nugent again since Billy Joel will definitely NOT be on the White House performers list!

[Bob Loblaw]

3. Two pieces of flair

Isn't that like, the minimum?

[flibbitygiblets]

4. Yeah, doesn't he want to really express himself?

[PennyK]

5. Friend of mine was there

She and a buddy were upgraded to front-row seats by a guy called Front Row Joe. He said he gets tickets to hand out to 'true fans' because Billy likes them to be up close. Proud of my fellow Long Islander...there sure seem to be some terrible ones in the news these days.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. What?

Why did you make this comment, especially in the Jewish Group? I don't understand your comment.

[LiberalArkie]

11. What I was trying to say that at least the Jewish people and most sane people around

the world have been able accept what the Nazis did to the Jewish people, but we have never fessed up to what we did to the native Americans. We as whites can apologize to the blacks for the slavery that took place here in the states. But for the Native Americans it still goes on because no one as every acknowledged what we did.

It helps for a society to acknowledge what has happened so that people can heal.

I am sorry I did not notice what group I was in..

[EllieBC]

14. Look. We have people regularly ignore or whatabout

our struggle. As an American in Canada, I am well aware of the destruction of First Nations communities and cultures and the lack of meaningful reconciliation. And I never pull a whataboutism when being educated on those issues.

But when it comes to my people, it's always whatabout. And it's getting old.

[grossproffit]

10. Whataboutism --- Responding by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.

[LiberalArkie]

16. Sorry, I did not mean to offend.. I will delete it..

[Behind the Aegis]

17. Thank you.

I appreciate your show of respect.

[EllieBC]

19. I appreciate it too.

Thank you.

[Gothmog]

7. I saw on MSNBC that some protesters were wearing yellow stars

[Behind the Aegis]

9. Good for him.

More of us need to do it. Time to get in people's faces about anti-Semitism.

[dembotoz]

12. saw him in concert and slept thru it...wonderful gesture

[tclambert]

13. Billy Joel opposes Nazis? Doesn't he know some of them are "good people?"

I heard some celebrity say that recently on the TeeVee. That makes it true, right?

[Lunabell]

15. Usually he is quite silent about politics.

But it isn't politics anymore. It's life or death.

[DFW]

18. When he was in the Soviet Union

He wrote a tribute song to the Russian people ("Leningrad" ) and then closed his show there with "don't take any shit from anybody," a tall order in the Brezhnyev era.

This gesture is a major one for Joel, who rarely tended to make any kind of statement beyond his music, though he often addressed contemporary themes in his songs, like the dying rust belt ("Allentown" ), the dying out of professions and people being priced away from their homes ("Downeaster Alexa" ), Vietnam Vets ("Goodnight Saigon" ), depression ("Only Human" ), etc.

[grossproffit]

20. Billy Joels father was in Dachau concentration camp"

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, “Billy Joel’s father was in Dachau. If anyone has the right to use the Yellow Star as a gesture of solidarity to victims of the Nazis and in defiance of latter-day Nazis in Charlottesville and elsewhere around the world, it would be Billy Joel. Kol hakavod [‘Good going’], Billy!”

http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Billy-Joel-wears-yellow-star-at-concert-503084

I didn't know this.

[Mosby]

21. Not according to him

Billy Joel: Yeah. My father was a classically trained pianist. He grew up in Nuremberg, Germany, and he also went to school in Switzerland. His father was quite well off. They had a mail-order textile business, Joel Macht Fabrik, so he had to learn to play the piano. It was a very musical family. He could play Chopin. He could play all the great stuff. He should’ve become a musician. He became an engineer. He worked for G.E. and then he was in promotion, but he was never really happy because he didn’t become a musician.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120806054134/http://www.wnyc.org:80/shows/heresthething/2012/jul/30/transcript/


William Martin Joel was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949,[9] and was raised in a Levitt house in a section of Hicksville, New York, that was located in the town of Oyster Bay.

Joel's father, Howard (born Helmuth) Joel, a classical pianist, was born in Germany, to a Jewish family, the son of a merchant and manufacturer, Karl Amson Joel. Howard emigrated to Switzerland and later to the US (via Cuba, as immigration quotas for German Jews prevented direct immigration at the time) to escape the Nazi regime.[10] Joel's mother, Rosalind, was born in Brooklyn to Jewish parents, Philip and Rebecca Nyman originally from England. Rosalind and Howard Joel divorced in 1957. Howard Joel moved to Vienna, Austria. Billy Joel has a sister, Judith, and a half-brother, Alexander Joel, a classical conductor in Europe, who was the chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig from 2001 to 2014.[11][12]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Joel