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Kanye West Accuses Jews of Conspiring Against Him, Admits He ‘Was Drinking’ When He Wrote 2022 Antisemitic Tweet
Candace Owens and Kanye West in a video interview that Owens shared on YouTube on Aug. 7, 2024. Photo: Screenshot
In an interview with far-right political commentator Candace Owens that was published on Wednesday, rapper Kanye West admitted that he was under the influence when he wrote his notoriously antisemitic tweet in 2022 about wanting to physically harm Jews.
In the same interview, the “Heartbreak” rapper, 47, further made numerous claims against his “Jewish doctor,” “Jewish trainer,” and the “Jewish media” conspiring to hospitalize him in 2022 when he was admitted to the UCLA Medical Center for exhaustion.
Owens premiered on her YouTube channel this week an interview she did with West, who now legally goes by the name Ye, for her podcast “Candace” that took place on Oct. 17, 2022. During their conversation, Ye said a “Jewish doctor” diagnosed him with bipolar disorder “and the information was put out there by a Jewish Hollywood trainer to the Jewish media.” He also said his “Jewish trainer” saw him reading the Bible, “put [me] in hospital, and then put it in the press.” He later accused “Jewish media” of “controlling the Black voice” and said “Jewish media – I have their attention. They love me. They always love me.”
Earlier in October 2022, West tweeted about wanting to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” referring to the US military’s DEFCON system for rating how alert the armed forces should be at a given moment in the face of a threat. “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” West wrote in the since-deleted post. “The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic [sic] because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda.”
As a result of the tweet, which the platform deleted, West’s account was temporarily locked, and he lost a number of brand partnerships including Adidas, which ended its lucrative partnership with West’s Yeezy line of footwear. Not long after West praised Hitler in an interview with the far-right talk show host Alex Jones and promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories and stereotypes during an interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
“I definitely was drinking when I put up the DEFCON tweet,” the rapper said in the newly-shared 2022 interview with Owens. “You wanna know what alcohol I had inside me? Hennessy. It turns us gray. The demons [come out].” When Owens asked him why he didn’t admit that he was intoxicated when he received backlash for the tweet, West said he didn’t want to “discredit” what he wrote because he still considered the comments to be fact and his “truth.”
He added, “How can I hate Jews if I consider myself to be Jew?”
Numerous times during his interview with Owens, West reiterated his previous claims that “Black people are actually Jew[s].” He repeatedly referred to Black people, including himself, as “darker Jews” and told Owens, “if people can be transgender, why can’t they be transrace?”
At one point during the interview, West attempted to further explain his intent behind the “death con 3” tweet. He told Owens: “Everyone’s like, ‘Why are you calling [Jews] out specifically?’ When I said ‘death con 3,’ I didn’t get an opportunity to say what that meant. But it meant — I’m going to call out all these things that have been done to me specifically by Jewish people, that so happen to be businessman or businesswomen. But, still, it was done by Jewish people to me — to the darker Jew.”
“The reason I said it like that was just to say, ‘I know you guys are going to call this anti-semite [sic].’ Now, I’m not afraid of that title. I’m going to lean into that title. So call me whatever you want,” he added. He also said, “Jewish businessman are the ones who have done the things to me to hurt me and my friends.”
West repeatedly brought up Jewish people throughout the interview. At one point, while trying to discuss the high abortion rates in the Black community, he told Owens: “I think the Jewish people will always tell you about the drama and the Holocaust. Our Holocaust museum is Planned Parenthood. We’re still in the Holocaust. Six million Jewish people died in the Holocaust. Over 20 million darker Jews, Black people, have been aborted.”
He then claimed that “probably 80 percent but over 50 percent of the media is run by Jewish executives and they allow all of this abortion-driven content … and it affects the darker Jew, the Black people, more than any other race.”
He also asserted that “what Jewish people love best out of me is [to] make music and make people really happy.”
On Thursday, Owens posted about her 2022 interview with West on social media. “The threatening and controlling of the black voice when we ordain to speak out against people that are abusing us across various industries needs to stop,” Owens wrote in a post on X/Twitter. “I will not be bullied into Zionist talking points.”
West is currently facing a number of lawsuits for alleged antisemitic and discriminatory behavior, which include comparing himself to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and creating a hostile work environment.
Meanwhile, Owens in recent weeks has spent a curious amount of time focusing on Jews and Israel. Last week, she claimed on her show that the Star of David originated from an evil pagan deity and has only become associated with Judaism within the past few hundred years. In June, she argued that the US “is being held hostage by Israel” and suggested that Zionists were behind the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy. Weeks later, Owens promoted a series of talking points downplaying the atrocities of the Holocaust and said experiments by Nazi doctor Joseph Mengele performed on Jews during World War II sounded “like bizarre propaganda.”
Two weeks before Owens recorded the 2022 interview with West, the two of them stirred controversy when they were photographed at West’s fashion show in Paris wearing shirts that had the message “White Lives Matter.”
The 2022 interview was filmed the same day West was a guest on Chris Cuomo’s NewsNation show, during which the rapper claimed a “Jewish underground media mafia” was controlling musicians. “There’s so many Black musicians signed to Jewish record labels and those Jewish record labels take ownership … of the culture itself,” he told Cuomo on air. “It’s like a modern-day slavery, and I’m calling it out.”
The post Kanye West Accuses Jews of Conspiring Against Him, Admits He ‘Was Drinking’ When He Wrote 2022 Antisemitic Tweet first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.