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Black Israelis mobilized for their country — as soldiers, volunteers and social media warriors
(JTA) — Kalkidan Tegin wanted to get a few things straight in a recent TikTok video.
Yes, there are Black people who support Israel, the 20-year-old Ethiopian Israeli says emphatically to the camera. Yes, Black Jews like her exist. No, she’s not a convert or an adoptee.
She then responds to critics who claim that Israel mistreats its Black citizens.
“When my grandparents lived all the way in Ethiopia, they were literally hunted and chased and hated just because they were Jews, just because of their religion,” she says. “I lived here in Israel my whole life and I never felt hated. I never felt hunted just because I’m Black.”
In a mock American accent she adds, “It’s insane, right?”
Tegin, who has more than 25,000 TikTok followers, is part of a group of Black Israelis in their 20s and early 30s who have been vigorously defending Israel online — and in English — since its war with Hamas began on Oct. 7. They are an informal but increasingly visible part of Israel’s public diplomacy, known as hasbara, which seeks to defend Israel from criticism and burnish the country’s image overseas, and kicks into high gear during wartime. (TikTok, especially, has become a major online battleground, with a recent analysis showing that pro-Palestinian hashtags are massively outperforming pro-Israel hashtags on the platform.)
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In social media posts and TV appearances, they have shared stories about how they and other Black Israelis have been affected by the war. They have called out African-American critics of Israel, including those aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement. They have also pushed back against race-based, anti-Israel narratives spread by pro-Palestinian activists, such as that Israelis are white, European colonizers of land belonging to indigenous Palestinians.
In addition to Tegin, the most prominent Black content creators include Titi Aynaw, an Ethiopian Israeli model and former Miss Israel; Noah Shufutinsky, better known as the rapper Westside Gravy, an African-American Jew who immigrated to Israel last year; Ashriel Moore, a former contestant on Israel’s version of the reality show “The Amazing Race” and a Hebrew Israelite activist; Yirmiyahu Danzig, a Caribbean-American Israeli educator; and Lilaq Logan, an IDF commander with both Jewish and Hebrew Israelite heritage.
While they each have their own politics and communication styles, these creators said in interviews that they are motivated by a desire to raise awareness about Israel’s diverse population. All of them except Aynaw, who did not respond to requests for comment, said they are creating Israel-related content on their own initiative, and that the government is not paying them to do hasbara on its behalf. (Like all soldiers, Tegin and Logan receive wages from the IDF to perform their regular military duties.)
“I was looking to show the world that as strange as it may sound, there are also quite a few Black people in Israel, and we live good lives, so there is no need to use my skin color as an excuse” to criticize the country, Tegin, who lives in Haifa, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
There are more than 200,000 people of African descent who call Israel home, including about 170,000 Ethiopian Jews, 30,000 asylum seekers (primarily from Eritrea and Sudan), 3,000 Hebrew Israelites (Black people who identify as descendants of the ancient Israelites but are not recognized as Jews according to Jewish law), and an unknown number of Black Jewish immigrants from the United States and African countries. There are also people who identify as Afro-Palestinian who live inside Israel’s borders.
Besides the asylum seekers, all of these people trace their genealogical or spiritual roots to the Holy Land. “Most of us see our return to the land of Israel as prophetic,” Moore, who was raised in the African Hebrew Israelite community in Dimona, said in an interview. (The community, which considers Israel to be located in northeastern Africa, is not connected to the radical “Black Hebrew Israelite” groups in the United States whose members denigrate Jews and Israel.)
“Most people view Israel as a European white state, but they don’t realize that we are here as well, we are affected as well,” Moore, 32, said. “The rockets don’t discriminate between people, and those who seek to harm civilians don’t discriminate between us, either.”
Ben Ammi Ben Israel celebrating New World Passover with his followers in Dimona, Israel, May 2013. (Andrew Esensten)
Among the 1,200 Israeli civilians and soldiers slaughtered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 were several Ethiopian Israelis, including Israel Chana, a security guard who was killed while defending the southern town of Ofakim. Soldiers and reservists from the Black Jewish and Hebrew Israelite communities are currently serving in the IDF, and some have been deployed to Gaza. Two Ethiopian soldiers, Aschalwu Sama and paratrooper Yehonatan Yitzhak Semo, have died after being injured in combat.
The war has affected Black communities in other ways. Dozens of African-American Jews who live together in the southern city of Ashkelon were forced to evacuate due to incessant rocket fire from Gaza.
“We came from America seeking to fully express our Judaism,” Monica Terry, who immigrated from Kansas City in 2011 and works as a pharmacist, says in a video Moore posted Oct. 17 to Instagram, where he has more than 80,000 followers. “We’re in Ashkelon, right by Gaza, so we’re used to the occasional missiles and firing. But this time it was different.”
According to Moore, members of Terry’s community were temporarily housed at a school in Herzliya and then hosted by Israeli families. Terry never considered returning to the United States. “This is home to me,” she says in another video. “I’m staying here, regardless of what’s going on, regardless of how close [the war] gets.”
The Hamas assault sent shockwaves through the entire Israeli population. For Black Israelis, the psychological pain has been compounded by seeing rising Palestinian solidarity among Black Americans, including in some cases seemingly pro-Hamas responses shared online by those aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement.
A few days after the Oct. 7 assault, an independent BLM chapter in Chicago posted a meme on X (formerly Twitter) with an image of a figure wearing a parachute above the words “I Stand with Palestine.” It was widely interpreted as glorifying the terrorists who infiltrated Israel on hang gliders. Other BLM-affiliated social media accounts posted messages framing Hamas’ assault as a justifiable act of resistance.
In response to the BLM Chicago post, which the group deleted, Aynaw, the first Black Miss Israel, shared an emotional response on Instagram, where she has 113,000 followers. “I remember you screaming in the streets, ‘I can’t breathe,’” she says in the video, echoing the slogan chanted at racial justice protests, including those in the summer of 2020 following the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer. She concludes by saying, “Pray for Israel, because we can’t breathe.”
The video led to an invitation to appear on Fox News, where Aynaw, 31, called Black Lives Matter supporters who refused to condemn Hamas “hypocrites.” “They say they care about Black people, they say they care about human rights,” she said. “What about my rights as a Black woman in Israel?”
Many Israelis have viewed the decentralized BLM movement with skepticism since at least 2016, when the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of 60 Black-led organizations, released a platform accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians and being an apartheid state. Israel was the only country mentioned in the foreign policy section of the platform, and Jewish groups across the political spectrum condemned it.
Shufuntinsky, the rapper who grew up in San Diego and now lives in the central coastal city of Hadera, said he supports the principles behind BLM but not any particular organization. Since Oct. 7, he has been angered by the “false equivalency” some activists have drawn between the racial justice movement in the U.S. and the Palestinian national struggle.
“You can’t say Black Lives Matter and then look at the two sides of this conflict and support the side who is killing Black people,” he said in a WhatsApp message.
In a new song he released on Dec. 7, the two-month anniversary of the attack, Shufuntinsky, 24, calls out BLM supporters who are “supposed to be my allies” but who ignore the plight of Israelis like him. “Black Lives Matter sometimes, is what you telling me,” he raps. “My Black life could’ve ended and you’d never mention me / Why? Cause I’m the wrong type of Black / This ain’t got nothing to do with no Republican and Democrat.”
Instead, he raps, it has to do with the perception that “Jews are white.”
The second verse flips the narrative about Jewish colonization of Israel by referencing the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the seventh century. The song, he told JTA, is meant to “expose this myth of settler colonialism” and “shine a light on the Black Jewish community,” which he called resilient and “overwhelmingly Zionist.” (Shufutinsky works as the education and outreach manager at the pro-Israel group StandWithUs, but he records and releases music independently.)
Danzig, another American-raised Black Israeli, is a multilingual content creator with more than 46,000 Instagram followers. He educates about Jewish history and Zionism in English and Arabic, and he has called out American celebrities, including rapper Kid Cudi, for describing Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as a “genocide” in an Instagram post.
“Kid Cudi doesn’t care about justice,” he says in a Nov. 6 video. “He’s a pawn in Hamas’ explicit attempt to have an actual genocide [of Jews] between the river and the sea.”
Danzig, 28, also posts people-on-the-street interviews with Palestinians, whom he refers to as his cousins. In one exchange, a Palestinian man calls him an “occupier” in Arabic. He responds, “My great-grandfather was born in the Old City [of Jerusalem]. I’m here since way back!”
The son of an Israeli father and a Guyanese mother, Danzig made aliyah in 2014 and founded an organization last year for Caribbean, West African and African American Israelis called Shachar (“Dawn”). One of the goals of the organization, he said, is to amplify the voices of members of those groups in the media.
Yirmiyahu Danzig, front right, with members of Shachar, a group he founded last year for Caribbean, West African and African American Israelis. (Courtesy)
“When people discuss Israelis, our triumphs and our tragedies, they’re talking about Israelis of color, even if they don’t realize it,” he told JTA.
Critics of Israel have left comments on recent videos by Danzig and other Black creators questioning why they would defend a “racist” country. It is a sensitive issue for these creators, who belong to communities that, for different reasons, have faced discrimination and struggled to be fully accepted.
In a poignant contrast, Sama, one of the soldiers killed in Gaza, had previously appeared in an Israeli newspaper — back in 2009, when Israeli schools balked at admitting a recent Ethiopian immigrant first-grader.
Ethiopian Israelis have taken to the streets in recent years to protest racism and police brutality. In July 2019, tens of thousands of Ethiopian Israelis protested for several days following the death of 18-year-old Solomon Tekah, who was shot by an off-duty police officer in Haifa. Some held “I can’t breathe” signs at the protests. This past August, Ethiopian Israelis blocked a highway in Tel Aviv to demand justice in the death of Raphael Adana, a 4-year-old Ethiopian Israeli boy who was struck and killed by an elderly driver in Netanya. Moreover, economic disparities persist between Ethiopian and non-Ethiopian Israelis, with Ethiopian households earning less than the average household.
Israeli protesters compare police violence against African Americans to the killing of Ethiopian Jews, June 2, 2020. (Sam Sokol)
Meanwhile, the African Hebrew Israelites have been battling the Israeli government for more than two years to prevent the deportation of dozens of community members who do not have legal status in the country. Since they are not recognized as Jews, the African Hebrew Israelites are not eligible to receive citizenship under the Law of Return. In 2021, the government threatened to deport those who had entered the country as tourists and stayed illegally. Some received temporary residency last summer, while others are still in limbo. (Most community members hold permanent residency, and the youth are required to enlist in the IDF; the government has extended citizenship to soldiers and their relatives.)
As for the African asylum seekers, the government has held thousands of them in detention centers and sought to deport them en masse. Since Israel considers them to be economic migrants, very few have received refugee status and the rights that come with it. In a rare move last month, Israel’s Interior Minister rewarded Molugata Tsagai, a native of Eritrea, with residency for helping to save the life of an IDF officer who was shot in Sderot during the Hamas invasion.
Prior to Oct. 7, many Black Israeli creators were posting videos about their grievances. Now they are striking a different tone.
“We recognize and speak openly about Israeli society’s flaws,” Danzig said. “None of that justifies the genocidal and racist call to destroy Israel. We will defend our home, because it’s the only home that the Jewish people have.”
Offline, Israel’s Black communities have rallied to support emergency efforts across the country. Asylum seekers have volunteered to harvest food and sort donated goods for those displaced by the war.
The African Hebrew Israelites, who are renowned for their healthy lifestyle, have hosted sound healing sessions in Dimona for Israelis who fled homes near Gaza. Yair Israel, a community member who runs a vegan food manufacturing company, Otentivee, has been delivering free meals to IDF bases for vegan and vegetarian soldiers.
Yair Israel, who runs a vegan food manufacturing company, has been delivering free meals to vegan and vegetarian IDF soldiers. (Courtesy)
“You can’t have a good soldier fighting for you if you don’t feed him right,” Israel said. “I’ve been all over this country taking the people food.” He estimated he has delivered more than 2,000 meals and is raising money to keep the program running.
Logan, the IDF commander who was born to a Jewish father and Hebrew Israelite mother, said she has felt a strong sense of unity in Israel since Oct. 7. But it’s a different story on Instagram, where she has more than 27,000 followers. The 24-year-old said that responding to some pro-Palestinian commenters is “like arguing with a wall.”
Nevertheless, she has been regularly recording reflections on the war in her IDF uniform and red braids. On Dec. 18, she denounced Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King, who has accused Israel of committing genocide and claimed to have helped free two Americans held hostage by Hamas. (The family of the hostages disputes his account of his involvement.) “Are you really for Black Lives Matter? Are you really for human rights? Or are you on the next trend?” Logan asks in a video.
In one of her most viewed videos, she talks about being dismissed by social media users over her identity. “I didn’t really want to get personal with it, but I got a lot of comments talking about, ‘You’re Black, sis, you don’t even belong [in Israel], sit this one out,” she says.
She told JTA she refuses to be quiet. “People are commenting without knowing what it feels like to be attacked in your own home,” she said. “I’m fighting for a greater cause.”
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The post Black Israelis mobilized for their country — as soldiers, volunteers and social media warriors appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Brown University Reactivates Students for Justice in Palestine Following Suspension
Illustrative: Brown University students gathered outside University Hall. Photo: Amy Russo of USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Brown University has reinstated Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a notorious anti-Zionist group widely recognized as a leading driver of campus antisemitism, following a suspension related to its conduct at anti-Israel demonstrations last year.
“Brown leaders have continued to work to ensure that all members of our campus community understand the expectations and community standards for demonstrations and protests on campus,” university spokesman Brian Clark told The Brown Daily Herald, which first reported the story on Tuesday. “While Brown’s policies make clear that protest is an acceptable means of expression on campus, it cannot interfere with the normal functions of the university.”
Brown University first launched investigations into its anti-Israel groups and individual students following their riotous conduct during a protest of the Brown Corporation that was held in October 2024.
Staged outside the Warren Alpert Medical School to inveigh against the corporation’s recent rejection of a proposal to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which aims to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — the demonstration saw the Ivy League students engage in harassment and intimidation, according to a community notice obtained by The Algemeiner. The protesters repeatedly struck a bus transporting the corporation’s trustees from the area, shouted expletives at them, and even lodged a “a racial epithet … toward a person of color.”
Other trustees were stalked to their destinations while some were obstructed from entering their bus, according to the missive by Russell Carey, Brown’s interim vice president for campus life and executive vice president of planning and policy. The official added that the students — many of whom are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has links to terrorist organizations, and its spin-off, Brown Divest Coalition (BDC) — harmed not only the trustees but also the university as an institution of higher learning.
Speaking to The Herald, anti-Israel activists denied any wrongdoing and accused Carey of inciting an “attempt to attack and defame student protesters holding the corporation accountable to their decision to continue to invest in companies enabling genocide and apartheid.” Framing themselves as victims, the students added that the Brown Corporation should be “deeply ashamed.”
Brown went on to suspend SJP, stripping the group of its recognition and privileges.
According to The Herald, the university has terminated the suspension and re-recognized SJP despite finding it guilty of “disruption of community” and “harm to persons.” However, the group is on probation until the end of this academic year.
An SJP operator acknowledged that political pressure may have contributed to the group’s reinstatement, noting that a local American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) chapter demanded that the university lift its suspension in January in a letter which lodged allegations of free speech violations.
Even with the group restored to good standing, its activity remains restricted. It may not “hold rallies or demonstrations for the remainder of the academic year” and is barred from holding “teach-ins and speaker events until November,” the Herald said.
Anti-Israel and far-left activity has caused Brown to incur exorbitant financial penalties imposed by the US federal government.
In July, Brown agreed to pay $50 million dollars and enact a series of reforms put forth by the Trump administration to settle claims involving alleged sex discrimination and antisemitism, the school’s president, Christina Paxson, announced.
“The university’s foremost priority throughout discussions with the government was remaining true to our academic mission, our core values, and who we are as a community at Brown,” Paxson wrote. “This is reflected in key provisions of the resolution agreement preserving our academic independence, as well as a commitment to pay $50 million in grants over 10 years to workforce development organizations in Rhode Island, which is aligned with our service and community engagement mission.”
The resolution made Brown University the latest higher education institution at the time to accede to US President Donald Trump’s demands for policies that would pull academia back from what he has described as an ideologically leftward drift that has precipitated racial hatred against Jews and violations of the rights of women designated as female at birth. The government is rewarding Brown’s propitiating by restoring access to $510 million in federal research grants and contracts it impounded.
Per the agreement, shared by Paxson, Brown will provide women athletes locker rooms based on sex, not one’s self-chosen gender identity — a monumental concession by a university that is reputed as one of the most progressive in the country — and adopt the Trump administration’s definition of “male” and “female,” as articulated in a January 2025 executive order issued by Trump. Additionally, Brown has agreed not to “perform gender reassignment surgery or prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to any minor child for the purpose of aligning the child’s appearance with an identity that differs from his or her sex.”
Regarding campus antisemitism, the agreement calls for Brown University to reduce anti-Jewish bias on campus by forging ties with local Jewish Day Schools, launching “renewed partnerships with Israeli academics and national Jewish organizations,” and boosting support for its Judaic Studies program. Brown must also conduct a “climate survey” of Jewish students to collect raw data of their campus experiences.
Another major provision shutters any Brown initiatives which may advance the aims of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement.
“Brown shall not maintain programs that promote unlawful efforts to achieve race-based outcomes, quotas, diversity targets, or similar efforts,” the agreement stipulated. “Brown will cease any provision of benefits or advantages to individuals on the basis of protected characteristics in any school, component, division, department, foundation, association, or element within the entire Brown University system.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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New MIT Accuser Comes Forward With Harrowing Antisemitism Allegations
Illustrative” A pro-Hamas encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 6, 2024. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is being accused by another alleged victim of refusing, as de-facto policy, to quell antisemitic discrimination which violated rights guaranteed by Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act.
The complainant, a male researcher, came forward to join a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed in June, which required its being amended to include him. According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, he endured psychological torment, having been swarmed by “masked” pro-Hamas activists clamoring for the destruction of Israel and students who “interrogated” his Jewish identity, pelting him with slurs and threatening to “prevent” his reproducing to bring “more Jewish children” into the world.
While administrators received formal complaints describing in harrowing detail the severity of the bullying being perpetrated against the student, they allegedly took no action. Left to stand alone, the student resorted to concealing his Jewishness on a campus which purports to be one of the most inclusive in the country.
“Antisemitism continues to persist at MIT, ultimately allowing the abuse to escalate until a promising Israeli researcher was forced from his lab. This not only deeply impacts this individual, but an entire campus and the communities this researcher, and other like them, could help through their work over the course of their careers,” Brandeis center founder and chairman Kenneth Marcus said in a statement. “MIT has had countless opportunities to stop this harassment and protect their Israeli and Jewish students and faculty. Instead, antisemitism has only worsened at MIT — an outcome made possible by the administration’s continued negligence.”
As previously reported, the other plaintiffs, Lior Alon and William Sussman, allege that MIT became inhospitable to Jewish students after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, as pro-Hamas activists there issued calls to “globalize the intifada,” interrupted lessons with “speeches, chants, and screams,” and discharged their bodily fluids on campus properties administered by Jews. Jewish institutions at MIT came under further attack when a pro-Hamas group circulated a “terror-map” on campus which highlighted buildings associated with Jews and Israelis and declared, “resistance is justified when people are colonized.”
The suit added that Alon — who lived through both intifadas, or periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels, as a citizen of Israel and lost his childhood friend to the Hamas Oct. 7 massacre — has personally been victimized by campus antisemites. During anti-Israel encampment protests in spring term 2024, Alon was prohibited from entering the Kresge Lawn section of campus, through which he needed to pass to access his office. The edict allegedly came down from pro-Hamas activists and was enforced by an MIT police officer, who became an accessory to the group’s usurpation of school property.
Later, Alon was allegedly harassed by Michel DeGraff, a tenured linguistics professor. According to the suit, DeGraff posted videos of Alon on social media, replete with his “personal information, including details of his Israeli military services,” as well as spurious accounts of his life which portrayed him as sinister. The productions inspired misfits to approach him in the streets, as they showed up at “the grocery store and his child’s daycare.”
All the while, MIT’s administration allegedly refused to correct the hostile environment.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, MIT has allegedly ignored dozens of complaints of antisemitic discrimination. Discrimination there has been described in harrowing testimony provided by students at hearings called by the US Congress, in social media posts, and in comments to this publication. Only last year, MIT student Talia Khan told members of Congress that attending the institution “traumatized” her, charging that it has “become overrun by terrorist supporters that directly threaten the lives of Jews on our campus.”
Khan went on to recount MIT’s efforts to suppress expressions of solidarity with Israel after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, which included ordering Jewish students to remove Israeli flags from public display while allowing Palestinian flags to fly across campus. She described the double standard as a “scandal” alienating Jewish students, staff, and faculty, many of whom resigned from an allegedly farcical committee on antisemitism. Staff were ignored, Khan said, after expressing fear that their lives were at risk, following an incident in which a mob of anti-Zionists amassed in front of the MIT Israel Internship office and attempted to infiltrate it, banging on its doors while “screaming” that Jews are committing genocide.
“These incidents demonstrate what happens when antisemitism is allowed to flourish in the absence of leadership and accountability,” Jonathan Polkes, global co-chair of legal practice White & Case, the law firm partnering with the Brandeis Center to litigate the suit, said on Wednesday. “Through its inaction, MIT allowed a tenured professor to use his position of power to persecute Jews without consequence — breaking both federal and university laws in the process. Our clients are taking a courageous stand against injustice, and we are proud to represent them.”
Commenting on the lawsuit, MIT has previously said, “MIT will defend itself in court regarding the allegations raised in the lawsuit. To be clear, MIT rejects antisemitism. As President Kornbluth has said, ‘Antisemitism is real, and it is rising in the world. We cannot let it poison our community.’”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Charlie Kirk’s Producer Debunks Anti-Israel Conspiracy Theories Pushed by Lawmaker, Podcasters, Pro-Iran Propagandist
US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) talks with reporters after a meeting of the House Republican Conference at the Capitol Hill Club, Washington, DC, Sept. 9, 2025. Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Sipa USA) via Reuters Connect
Last week’s assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has animated a wave of anti-Israel conspiracy theories, inspiring voices on both the far right and far left to join together in promoting an assortment of unsubstantiated claims inflected with conventional antisemitic tropes.
On Monday, Kirk’s producer and a billionaire supporter of Israel both rejected the allegations fueled by Max Blumenthal, a fiercely anti-Israel journalist promoted by Iranian state media who carries a long record of smearing the Jewish state.
Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone website, published claims from anonymous sources that Kirk had been pressured at a Hamptons gathering hosted by billionaire Bill Ackman weeks before his death. Kirk was reportedly “hammered” over his views on Israel by Ackman and other pro-Israel advocates, leaving him to feel blackmailed.
The report named Natasha Hausdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel as among those who berated Kirk. Hausdorff confirmed to the New York Post that she attended the meeting but called the accusation “categorically untrue” and added that whoever said it “is absolutely lying.” Ackman also denied the charge, calling the claim “totally false.”
Blumenthal has long written articles sympathetic to Hezbollah, the former Assad regime in Syria, and Hamas. In 2013, he notably published Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, which Eric Alterman, media columnist for the leftist flagship magazine The Nation, described as “a propaganda tract” that could “have been published by the Hamas Book-of-the-Month Club (if it existed).”
The Grayzone report has since influenced Candace Owens, the podcaster who has been widely accused of antisemitism, and US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), among others, demonstrating a convergence between far-left and far-right figures in promoting antisemitic narratives and anti-Israel conspiracies.
Owens — who previously worked with Kirk before her shift to open, unapologetic opposition to Israel and promotion of antisemitic conspiracy theories, which resulted in her termination from her job as podcaster at The Daily Wire in March 2024 — claimed during a Monday monologue that pro-Israel forces staged an “intervention” with Kirk involving Ackman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She alleged Kirk, an outspoken supporter of Israel who often called out the dangers of antisemitism, was changing his views and offered “a ton of money” to remain pro-Israel, comparing the meeting to a “re-education camp.” Owens said Kirk refused the offers, warning her followers to be “very wary and suspicious of the people who are already telling us to stop asking questions about the Charlie Kirk assassination.”
The podcaster later clarified that she was not directly accusing Israel of orchestrating the murder but argued Kirk had faced “extreme pressure” over his views. Owens also shared social media posts criticizing Netanyahu, captioning one with “All will be revealed.”
Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, responded on X, saying Owens had “slandered” him by accusing him of staging an intervention and suggesting that he blackmailed Kirk. He denied ever offering Kirk or Turning Point USA, the political advocacy organization he started, any money, pressuring him on Israel, or threatening him. “In short, this was not an ‘intervention’ to ‘blackmail’ Charlie Kirk into adopting certain views on Israel,” Ackman wrote in his statement. He described his interactions with Kirk as cordial and said he admired him.
Ackman said he and Kirk first connected on Zoom in June, then worked together to organize a conference of conservative influencers in Bridgehampton in August. He said about 35 influencers attended, collectively reaching more than 100 million followers, and that discussions included a range of issues such as economics, dating, immigration, and Israel. He added that participants expressed varied views on Israel and US support for the country.
Andrew Kolvet, executive producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” corroborated Ackman’s account. In a statement, Kolvet said he had spoken with three Turning Point staffers who were present at the gathering in question and that “Bill never yelled at Charlie, never pressed him on Bibi [Netanyahu], never gave him a list of Charlie’s offenses against Israel.” Kolvet added that Kirk himself had told him he had a “cordial relationship” with Ackman and that the event was “productive.”
Despite those denials, the conspiracy theories gained further traction on the far right. Greene wrote on X that supporters should “believe Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson” over “Bibi Netanyahu (a foreign country’s leader),” before warning: “Do not allow a foreign country, foreign agents, and another religion tell you about Charlie Kirk. And I hope a foreign country and foreign agents and another religion does not take over Christian Patriotic Turning Point USA.” She described Kirk as a “Christian martyr” and suggested Jewish influence threatened his movement.
On July 28, Greene accused Israel of engaging in a genocide in Gaza.
The New York Post reported that Owens’ comments relied in part on Blumenthal’s Grayzone article. In addition, Owens suggested law enforcement had intentionally allowed Kirk’s killer to evade capture, though police have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson of Utah with the shooting.
Authorities have not presented any evidence linking Israel or pro-Israel figures to the crime. Rather, the alleged shooter’s animosity toward Kirk’s positions on LGBTQ issues appears to have inspired the attack, according to prosecutors.