“To all these hateful people … I pity you,” UFC fighter Natan Levy said after a victorious match this week, adding, “Kanye West, if you’ve got a problem with me or my people, come see me, bro.”
By United with Israel Staff
Natan Levy is not a rapper who talks tough on records, but can’t back it up in real life.
The 31-year-old Israeli competes in the Ultimate Fighting Championship league, a mixed martial arts competition for actual tough guys, not big-mouthed celebrities.
While Levy usually lets his fists do the talking, he had some choice words for antisemitic rapper Kanye West this weekend.
After defeating Genaro Valdez in a unanimous decision at UFC Orlando, Levy delivered a blunt message to West.
“I think life is too short to hate, so to all these hateful people, it sucks for you. I pity you,” Levy commented to MMA Fighting.
“Kanye West, if you’ve got a problem with me or my people, come see me, bro,” he added.
Levy continued, “I get a lot of ‘lovely’ DMs all the time. I am Jewish, it’s what I am, it’s what I was born, I’m very proud of it and I will fight for it. I will fight for my people in the Octagon or wherever need be. And I will not stand for antisemitism, I won’t stand for any racism—not around me. Don’t bully anybody around me, or I’m gonna find you.”
Levy made his comments a few days after West gave an interview with unhinged conspiracy theorist Alex Jones Thursday on the far-right Infowars site. During the interview, West said he likes Hitler.
“I see good things about Hitler,” West said, alongside Holocaust-denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes. He was responding to Jones’ comment that West isn’t a Nazi, “so you don’t deserve to be demonized.”
Last month, CNN reported that West had wanted to name his 2018 album “Hitler.”
CNN cited several anonymous sources close to West, including a business executive who said he “would praise Hitler by saying how incredible it was that he was able to accumulate so much power and would talk about all the great things he and the Nazi Party achieved for the German people.”
Levy, for his part, is an outspoken proponent of confronting people like West head on.
In an interview with the UK’s Jewish Chronicle (JC) in September, Levy opined, “People don’t attack people who look confident.”
As the only Israeli in the UFC, Levy knows a thing or two about toughness.
“If you learn martial arts, no one bullies you,” Levy continued, urging Jews around the world to learn self-defense.
Levy also lamented the plight of Jews in his country of birth, France, which the young fighter left when he was only a few months old. In Europe, Levy’s cousins were assaulted and robbed for being Jewish. Levy said he responded by finding bullies in Paris and “striking back.”
The UFC added Levy to its roster in 2020, five years after the Israeli started training in mixed martial arts.
According to Levy, one of his goals when he enters the cage to fight is “show[ing] that Jews are brave, that we can fight and take care of ourselves.”
“I don’t officially represent Israel and the Jewish people,” he clarified, adding, “I feel I do in the way I behave and present myself.”
To that end, Levy waved an Israeli flag in the cage when he won his first match in April, brushing off the “free Palestine” comments he receives from detractors.
According to Levy, “Every Jew in the world should learn the art of self-defense. … Don’t let anyone tell you what you can and cannot do.”
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