Robert Kraft Foundation Has Message for Anti-Israel Campus Demonstrators With NBA Playoffs TV Ad: ‘Don’t Bring Hate’

An advertisement purchased by Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) that aired on Tuesday night during an NBA playoff game urged students protesting the Israel-Hamas war on college and university campuses across the US to leave antisemitism out of their demonstrations.

“Scream until you’re red in the face. But don’t scream at the Jewish kid walking to class,” stated the 30-second ad that aired during the NBA game between the Boston Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers. “Threaten to change history, but don’t threaten your Jewish neighbor. Draw a line in the sand, but don’t draw a swastika. Because bringing more hate to anyone brings more hate to everyone.”

The ad also featured photos from various anti-Israel protests that began after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel. Images shown in the video included burnt Israeli flags and banners held by protesters that read “Hitler should have killed the Jews” and “stuff some into the oven,”  a reference to the gas chambers used at Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. The video ended with the message “Don’t bring hate to the protests” and displayed the blue square emoji that is the icon for the foundation’s StandUpToJewishHate campaign.

Kraft, the Jewish owner of the New England Patriots, started the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019. FCAS purchased a Super Bowl ad and an ad that aired during the Academy Awards this year to also highlight the rise in antisemitism.

Kraft was a graduate of Columbia University and a major donor to the New York school until April, when he announced that he would pull his funding over the treatment of Jewish students and faculty at the campus during pro-Hamas protests.

Kraft penned an op-ed for the New York Post in April in which he expressed profound disappointment for the situation taking place at Columbia and how Jewish students are being targeted by anti-Israel student protesters. “The Columbia I loved is no longer a place I know,” he said.

Kraft also wrote an open letter recently in which he condemned antisemitism taking place at universities and colleges across the US, and criticized faculty at those schools for not doing more to protect their Jewish student body. He also said people on campus who intimate and attack their Jewish peers need to be held accountable and “cannot be pardoned for what they have done.”

“The leadership and faculty of so many of our leading educational institutions have failed their students,” he wrote. “Shouting vile, hate filled labels at students while hiding behind masks is not free speech — it is cowardice. Instead of colleges and universities teaching the core principles of free speech and debate our country was founded on, they are emboldening hate that is tearing their campuses, and our youth apart.”

He concluded by saying: “I encourage our nation’s university leaders to act with courage and wisdom so that knowledge, not hate, is what is being produced on our nation’s campuses.” The open letter was also published as a full-page ad in several newspapers.

Watch the latest ad by the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism below.