In an interview with the Israel-based news outlet JNS, Luc fils Jasmin, the human rights commissioner who complained about Jews complaining about antisemitism, apologized not once, not twice, but five times during the interview, then promised to make amends to the Jewish community (take note, Kanye).

Last week, a year-old video of a meeting of the Washington Human Rights Commission surfaced in which the pastor and Haitian immigrant said, “This word ‘antisemitism’ has been around since the Jews got trampled by Hitler, and it seems like the Jewish people keep on crying and crying and crying and crying — always crying over the antisemitism.”

He also said, “These people, the Jewish, are killing by the millions over there, the Palestinians and the Arabs,” using the word “Jewish” as a noun.

“I want to apologize to the Jewish community for what I said,” Jasmin told JNS. “It’s a line of idea that is not considerable given the position that I’m in.”

“I own my mistake,” he added.

Jasmin explained that after the meeting he also engaged with two members of the governor’s office and apologized to them. He said the closed session was never meant to go public, and he never intended for hurtful words to reach the Jewish community.

These discussions are “supposed to be in a room where the information is contained there,” Jasmin told the media outlet. “What is important is the decision at the end. I don’t know who leaked it. I would never, never leak information like that to the public to hurt Jewish people, because they’re nice people and what I said sounds really bad, and I’m really sorry about it.”

“I want them to know that I’m very, very sorry about the statement I did,” he added. “And if I could take it back, I would.”

“I wanted to put out that everybody should be treated the same,” he explained, referring to the resolution under discussion, which would define antisemitism. “The words came out very wrong. I realized that soon after that meeting. As a matter of fact, I was the first one who voted for the resolution.”

He also said that while he doesn’t recall his comment about Jews killing millions of Palestinians, it was wrong for him to conflate the Jewish people with the actions of the Israeli government.

He said he had grown up in Brooklyn and went to school with Jews. “We were never racist to them, and they were never racist to us,” he told JNS. “We didn’t have any fights, because in Flatbush Avenue in Utica, my friends — they were Jews.”

He said that in his first job, and indeed the jobs that followed, he worked for Jewish people.

“My first job was given to me by Jewish people,” he said. “My second one and my third one. As a matter of fact, the only people I’ve been working for, they are Jewish, all of them.”

“Jewish people are people that I love,” he said. “I’m serious.”

He also said that his son told him that Israel sent humanitarian assistance to Haiti after such disasters as earthquakes and that Jews had been supportive of Haitian immigrants.

After he spoke to his son, he watched the video and had a “what have I done” moment.

“What did I do? Oh my God,” he quoted himself as thinking upon viewing his comments.

Jasmin confessed that he hadn’t paid much attention to rising antisemitism in the state, a fact of life for Washington’s Jews since Oct. 7, 2023.

“Now I’m going to pay attention to that, and I’m going to make sure that people know about it, because that’s one way I could repay back what I did,” he said, vowing to make amends.

The apology was marred somewhat by his refusal to take a stand on whether Hamas is a terrorist organization, and he seemed confused about what he was hearing in the news.

“I have no access to the information of who they are,” he told JNS. “All I hear is in the news and what has got to me from the media. I do not know anything about this, and I don’t know if I should make a decision.”

He believed, from media reports, that Israel had killed millions, and that “goes to my subconscious mind,” he said. But after his comments were made public, he said he heard from “the people I Iove, that I’ve been with all my life, calling me to say, ‘What are you saying, Luc? I didn’t expect this from you,’ and all that.”

The lesson he took from this was to focus on “defending the rights of people in this state,” rather than paying so much attention to the news.

“To hear and not to talk so much, to not reflect on outside information so much and to look at what’s in front of me and to make decisions according to what’s in front of me,” he explained, saying that he will listen more and talk less.