NJ state employee fired over anti-Semitic social media posts

Marcy Oster

(JTA) — A New Jersey state employee who is also head of a local NAACP chapter was fired over several anti-Semitic and racist social media posts.

Jeffrey Dye, president of the Passaic NAACP chapter, was fired Tuesday from his job as a state Labor Relations representative. He was hired in February by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s administration.

In one Facebook post Dye said that “the Jewish news media don’t want to show us black news,” and that he believes elections in Passaic are being stolen “with Jewish votes coming from Brooklyn,” according to Politico New Jersey.

Other posts, all removed after they came to light, criticized U.S. aid to Israel, calling it “a damn shame” and a “disgrace,” according to reports. He also wrote: “Jews at it again divide & conquering us.”

Dye has praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite, and minimized the Holocaust in comparison to the suffering of black people, according to Politico. “The black holocaust has been & continues to be the worst of them all even though white media wants to make you think it’s the Jews,” he said, according to a report about the now-deleted post.

He also posted a link to a post that alleged Israel sterilized Ethiopian Jewish immigrants without informing them. “Ya’ll keep thinking these people are harmless against blacks,” Dye wrote.

The city of Passaic is majority Hispanic and has a substantial Jewish and black population, according to Politico.

Assemblyman Gary Schaer, a Democrat who represents Passaic, said the Murphy administration had ignored his warnings about Dye when they hired him.