The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Monday issued a lukewarm response to the apology by rapper Kanye West for his past antisemitism.
West, who calls himself Ye, had taken out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal in which he attributed his actions to his prior health conditions.
“I lost touch with reality. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people," he claimed in the ad.
In response, the ADL said in a statement, “Ye’s apology to the Jewish people is long overdue and doesn’t automatically undo his long history of antisemitism - the antisemitic ‘Heil Hitler’ song he created, the hundreds of tweets, the swastikas and myriad Holocaust references - and all of the feelings of hurt and betrayal it caused."
“The truest apology would be for him to not engage in antisemitic behavior in the future. We wish him well on the road to recovery," the statement added.
West has a lengthy history of posting antisemitic comments on social media. In 2022, the rapper threatened to go "death con 3 on the Jews" in an apparent antisemitic rant on X, which was then called Twitter. West followed this up by claiming that he can't be antisemitic "because black people are actually Jew."
Last year he bought a Super Bowl ad to promote T-shirts with swastikas on them, then released a song titled “Heil Hitler," which a group of far-right antisemitic influencers, including Nick Fuentes, recently played at a Miami nightclub in a viral incident.
West’s antisemitic comments caused a host of companies to cut ties with him, including Adidas, the Creative Artists Agency, Foot Locker and Apple Music.
The Journal ad marks the latest in a series of apologies for Ye, which also included a May 2025 declaration that he was “done with antisemitism" and apologizing in-person to an Orthodox rabbi in November.