Promoters of Israel: Leo Terrell, Ghana, Floyd Mayweather, Van Jones

Deep dives by José Alberto Niño into some of the those carrying water for Israel. Four articles below: 

(1) Leo Terrell

By Josè Alberto Niño, Reposted from José Alberto Niño’s Substack, June 18, 2026

Leo James Terrell built his identity around the Democratic Party for most of his adult life before declaring in 2020 that he had always belonged on the other side. Today he directs the Trump administration’s scorched-earth campaign against American universities, wielding the threat to “bankrupt” any institution he believes has allowed antisemitism to fester.

His journey from civil rights attorney to MAGA enforcer represents a political transformation so thorough that Terrell himself turned it into a marketing strategy. The new version has a name: “Leo 2.0.”

Born February 1, 1955, in Los Angeles, Terrell graduated from Gardena High School in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood in 1972, where his classmates elected him student body president. He took his bachelor’s degree from California State University Dominguez Hills in 1977, added a master’s in education from Pepperdine University, and completed his law degree at UCLA School of Law before joining the California Bar on December 4, 1990.

He spent years in the classroom before he ever entered a courtroom, teaching history, geography, and economics at Gage Middle School in Huntington Park. He once remarked that he considers himself “a better teacher than a lawyer.” Donald Trump nominated him on January 21, 2025, as Senior Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.

With his bar card in hand, Terrell set up a civil rights practice out of a Beverly Hills tower at 8383 Wilshire Boulevard. He joined the NAACP in 1990 and took on pro bono work for the organization until a public break in 2003, when he resigned, accusing the group of pressuring him over his endorsement of a Republican judicial nominee. NAACP Washington director Hilary Shelton pushed back: “not an NAACP lawyer, not even a former NAACP lawyer…he’s done volunteer work for us, which we appreciate.”

National visibility arrived through his friendship with O.J. Simpson, whose criminal and civil trials he watched and publicly supported as a family friend and legal analyst. He then co-hosted the Los Angeles radio program Terrell and Katz alongside conservative former judge Burton Katz, premiering on June 3, 1996, on KMPC, before graduating to a regular presence on Fox News programs including Hannity, The O’Reilly Factor, and Hannity and Colmes, where he served as the liberal foil. He also turned up on Nightline, Larry King Live, Today, and Good Morning America.

A joint investigation by ProPublica and the Chronicle of Higher Education concluded that Terrell’s actual legal career was “dramatically at odds” with Trump’s portrait of a “highly respected” attorney with an “incredibly successful career.” Lawyers who worked in the same world dismissed him as peripheral. Connie Rice, former western regional counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, recalled that Terrell “was never at the table for the big cases that made impact. He loved holding press conferences.” Carl Douglas, a member of the Simpson defense team, put it more bluntly: “Leo was always a talker,” not “a baller.”

The paper trail told a similar story. Terrell faced two malpractice suits after accepting settlements without his clients’ knowledge. A federal appeals court characterized his management of the Edmond Logan criminal matter as “woeful,” and U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney wrote in 2017 that Terrell delivered “abysmal advice” that pushed Logan to turn down a plea deal and land a 35-year sentence.

His finances told the same story. The IRS filed 11 liens against him between 2004 and 2015, totaling nearly $400,000 in unpaid taxes. He sought Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in October 2010, disclosing $736,938 in liabilities, $304,650 in assets, and monthly income of $4,000, before the case was dismissed when he stopped attending required creditor meetings. More than a dozen small businesses took him to court seeking more than $170,000 in unpaid bills. His condominium went into foreclosure in 2013. When he filed his DOJ financial disclosure with $92,000 still owed to the IRS, he listed his liabilities as “none.”

The break came in July 2020. Terrell went on Fox News and announced he would cast his first-ever Republican ballot, pointing to Black Lives Matter’s grip on the Democratic Party, the push to defund police departments, and what he described as Biden’s condescending assumption that Black voters had nowhere else to go. He reinvented himself as “Leo 2.0,” moved red Trump-branded caps online, and landed a six-figure Fox News contributor contract.

The October 7 Hamas attacks gave Terrell a cause with a sharper edge. He declared that “No Jewish American in his or her right mind should vote Democrat,” trained his criticism on Black Lives Matter over antisemitism, and after October 7 compared the organization to ISIS.

The passion Terrell now brings to fighting antisemitism stands in sharp contrast to a history of near-total absence from the cause. ProPublica’s investigation concluded that before his MAGA conversion, Terrell had “little previous engagement with Jewish causes.” Jewish Insider noted in February 2025 that “Terrell does not have many connections to advocates in the Jewish community who work on the issue,” and seasoned antisemitism activist Ken Marcus said he had “never met Terrell.” In any substantive sense, his involvement with Jewish causes began only around 2020 and deepened through 2023 before reaching full intensity with his government appointment in early 2025.

That appointment positioned him as chair of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism starting in February 2025. Pro-Israel institutions wasted little time in embracing him. Zionist Organization of America president Morton Klein proclaimed that “Leo Terrell will go down in history as one of the best friends the Jewish people ever had.”

Awards from organized Jewry soon followed. On January 25, 2026, Aish bestowed its King David Award on Terrell at the Dan Family Aish World Center in Jerusalem, citing his work defending Jewish students and the State of Israel. The Israeli government added its own tribute, conferring the Beacon of Truth Award for the Fight Against Antisemitism at a separate Jerusalem ceremony that praised his “moral clarity” and “tangible, on-the-ground impact.”

In office, Terrell has governed the way he argued on television. Appearing on Fox’s Life, Liberty and Levin, he vowed that “We are going to bankrupt these universities. We are going to take away every single federal dollar,” and added the direct threat: “If these universities do not play ball, lawyer up, because the federal government is coming after you.”

Columbia absorbed the opening blow, which consisted of an immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts, which the task force described as the opening salvo.

Terrell announced in a press release on March 7, 2025, that “Canceling these taxpayer funds is our strongest signal yet… This is only the beginning,” and when reports emerged in July 2025 that a settlement might be in reach, he shut the door publicly: “I will not ‘SELLOUT’ Jewish Americans. NO DEALS!”

Harvard became the next target. On March 31, 2025, the task force notified Harvard that it was reviewing more than $8.7 billion in federal grants across the university and its hospital affiliates. Days later, the administration moved to freeze $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts. Harvard sued in federal court, and in September 2025 U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs issued an 84-page ruling ordering the administration to restore the frozen funds.

Burroughs wrote that “there is, in reality, little connection between the research affected by the grant terminations and antisemitism” and that “defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities” in violation of the First Amendment and due process protections. The Trump administration appealed in December 2025, sending the case to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Rather than retreating after the legal setback, Terrell vowed to expand the offensive nationwide. Terrell mapped out an aggressive national expansion, promising he expects “massive lawsuits” against “Jew-hating” universities, which include Harvard, the University of California, Los Angeles, among others. On the question of international students, he drew a hard line on Israeli media outlet N12: “We will chase after the campus inciters, and those that are here with a student visa — goodbye. You are here by grace; if you create a mess, crime or discrimination against Jews, you will find yourself outside.

In 2026, Terrell unveiled a 15-city National Awareness and Action Tour alongside a new civilian Antisemitism Advisory Committee and a “social media alert system” built to “expose and shame cities that fail to take action.” He was emphatic that the committee would not be one “that’s going to write a report that collects dust,” describing it as a vehicle for on-the-ground solutions at the local level where, he argued, most official inaction on antisemitism occurs.

The posture stands in striking contrast to a January 2020 version of Leo Terrell who held Trump personally responsible for a surge in antisemitic violence. For someone whose conversion to the cause traces in any meaningful way only to 2020, the material returns have been considerable. His government salary is $167,603. His speaking fees run between $50,000 and $100,000. His personal X account has roughly 2.6 million followers. And the awards from pro-Israel organizations show no sign of stopping.

Rather than reading his transformation as a change of heart, look at the bottom line. Terrell is simply buck-dancing to secure his next round of shekels from the pan-Judah.

*Additionally*

(2) Floyd Mayweather

By José Alberto Niño, reposted from José Alberto Niño’s Substack, May 27, 2026

Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired with an undefeated professional record of 50-0, ranked by BoxRec as the greatest pound-for-pound boxer and greatest welterweight of all time. He won world titles in 5 weight classes and earned over $1 billion in purses and pay-per-view royalties during his career. Beyond his athletic achievements, Mayweather has emerged as one of the most prominent non-Jewish celebrity advocates for Israel, with connections to the Jewish community stretching back decades and deepening dramatically in recent years.

Mayweather’s earliest and longest-standing tie to the Jewish community was through Bob Arum, founder of Top Rank Boxing and one of the most powerful figures in the sport. Arum has spoken publicly about the role of Judaism in his life and his involvement with the Chabad movement. Arum promoted Mayweather from 1996 until 2006, when Mayweather left to found Mayweather Promotions. Their relationship was famously contentious, with Mayweather accusing Arum of underpaying him, but it placed Mayweather in close professional proximity to a prominent figure of the Jewish community for years. Arum promoted Yuri Foreman, a Belarus-born, Israel-raised professional boxer who held the WBA super welterweight title from 2009 to 2010. Foreman affectionately referred to Arum as “my other rabbi.”

The Jewish world that surrounded Mayweather’s professional career eventually drew him into direct contact with Israel itself. After his exhibition fight in Dubai against YouTuber Deji, Mayweather arrived in Israel in November 2022 for a surprise visit. He visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem and prayed there, strolled through Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda Market asking fans for shawarma recommendations, and attended the Tel Aviv basketball derby between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Tel Aviv as a guest of his friend Xavier Munford—a former Hapoel Tel Aviv point guard. He also visited Aish HaTorah’s headquarters in Jerusalem, where he met with Aish leadership including Rabbi Steven Burg, Aish’s CEO, beginning what became a lasting relationship with the organization.

The Aish connection deepened over the following months and became central to Mayweather’s public identification with Israel. In March 2024, Mayweather returned to Aish’s Jerusalem headquarters — overlooking the Western Wall—where Burg presented him with the Champion for Israel Award, “a special honor reserved for those who continue to advocate against hate and antisemitism and stand up for Israel.” Mayweather told the assembled crowd: “Aish has welcomed me and my team in Jerusalem before, and it is very exciting to be back. This place is amazing. Everyone should come and visit here.”

The same period that brought Mayweather closer to figures like Burg also brought him into contact with associates of a far more controversial kind. One of Mayweather’s most controversial connections to the Jewish community involves Jona Rechnitz, a Jewish businessman who became a close associate and friend. According to legal documents from a 2026 lawsuit Mayweather filed against Rechnitz alleging fraud, Rechnitz began developing a relationship with Mayweather around 2017 through a mutual acquaintance. Rechnitz had previously pleaded guilty in 2016 to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud involving bribing NYPD officials, and later accompanied Mayweather to Israel in March 2024.

Whatever controversies later emerged from the Rechnitz relationship, Mayweather’s public alignment with Israel reached its peak in the months following October 7, 2023. Within days of the Hamas attack, Mayweather dispatched his private jet—”Air Mayweather”—to Israel loaded with over 5,000 pounds of supplies including food, water, and bulletproof vests for both IDF soldiers and civilians. He also posted on Instagram: “I stand with Israel against the Hamas terrorists… I stand with Israel and Jews all around the world. I condemn antisemitism at all cost.”

In December 2023, he was honored with the “Champion of Israel” award at an American Friends of Magen David Adom gala in Miami Beach, where the event raised $4 million. In March 2024, he traveled to Israel again, visiting the Dan Family Aish World Center in Jerusalem, where he received the Champion for Israel Award from the Orthodox outreach organization Aish, presented by Rabbi Steven Burg. He wore a Star of David hat and necklace, sang songs in Hebrew, and met with students. Also during the March 2024 trip, he visited United Hatzalah headquarters in Jerusalem and toured their Dispatch and Command Center, and separately visited Magen David Adom’s Marcus National Blood Services Center in Ramla, where he dedicated a fleet of ambucycles—the motorcycle-based emergency response vehicles—dubbed the “Floyd Fleet,” in the words of AFMDA CEO Catherine Reed: “The Floyd Fleet will save thousands of lives in record time and wouldn’t have been possible without him.”

The honors and visits soon translated into more substantial financial commitments. In October 2024, he donated $100,000 to United Hatzalah specifically for the purchase of 100 bulletproof vests for volunteers responding under fire. In December 2024, he donated $1 million to United Hatzalah at the organization’s annual Miami Gala, which raised $14 million total. He also launched the “Mayweather Israel Initiative,” a charity program aimed at giving free birthday presents to every Israeli war orphan, delivered via a van called the “Floyd Mobile.”

This sustained pattern of giving eventually drew recognition from the most prominent Jewish political organization in American politics. In November 2025, Mayweather attended the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, where he received the “World Champion for Israel” award. He declared on stage, “I’m not with you guys 10 percent, 50 percent. I will always be the voice for the people in Israel. I will always stand behind the country of Israel.” The RJC honored him specifically for his financial donations, visits to injured IDF soldiers, and vocal opposition to antisemitism.

Unsurprisingly, Mayweather has publicly aligned with President Donald Trump—one of the most pro-Zionist presidents in American history—on multiple occasions. He attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 and posed for photos with Trump and Donald Trump Jr. In early 2025, Mayweather appeared on Fox Business’s Making Money and declared, “I think Trump is a great president, actually he’s the best president in my eyes. He’s the best president we ever had. Great businessman, and that’s what it’s about.” Elon Musk reposted the video.

Outside the ballrooms and award galas, Mayweather’s buck-dancing for Israel has also exposed him to direct hostility. In December 2024, while at Hatton Garden jewelry district in London, Mayweather was confronted by a crowd after declaring he was “proud to support the Jews.” A member of the crowd took a swing at him; his security team evacuated him. Mayweather denied being “punched or touched in any way” in an Instagram statement.

Mayweather’s transformation from a ring general to a performative puppet for Jewish causes serves as a jarring reminder that even the most celebrated athletes can be molded into buck-dancers for Zion, who eagerly trade their dignity for the hollow approval of Jewish oligarchs that treats them as little more than a temporary prop in a grander project of subversion. Being a shabbos goy is a problem that transcends color lines. As long as public figures of all racial backgrounds and confessions are incentivized to submit to an agenda that is not their own, we will remain trapped beneath the suffocating grip of organized Jewry that requires our total cultural surrender to survive.

There’s no bobbing and weaving your way out of this dilemma.

*Additionally*

(3) Tracking Van Jones’ Slavish Devotion to American Jewry

By José Alberto Niño, reposted from José Alberto Niño’s Substack, May 4, 2026

When popular leftist streamer Hasan Piker told his massive audience that Hamas is “a thousand times better than Israel” and that he would “vote for Hamas over Israel every single time,” Van Jones did not dismiss him or call him names. He wrote a Substack essay engaging with the argument directly. Published under the title “Breakdown: Is Hasan Piker Right About Hamas?”, the piece argued that simply writing Piker off accomplishes nothing because the streamer is “emerging as one of the major voices of his generation.”

Jones characterized Piker’s core claim as asserting that “the Israelis have been so brutal to the Palestinians, have treated them so badly and have prosecuted the war in Gaza with such violence — that pretty much anything Hamas does pales in comparison.”

While Jones acknowledged having personally witnessed Palestinian suffering in the West Bank and Gaza, and agreed that “the Gaza war was prosecuted too aggressively,” he fundamentally rejected Piker’s position on Hamas. His central critique focused on means: Hamas “has spent the past 10 years firing rockets at innocent Israeli men, women, children, babies, hospitals, schools and nurseries,” Jones wrote, and the only reason those rockets had not murdered tens of thousands of Israelis was the Iron Dome. Jones also noted that while Israel has killed more Palestinians since October 7th than Hamas has killed Israelis, this is “not for lack of trying on Hamas’s part.”

The Piker essay is only the latest expression of a transformation that has unfolded since October 7, 2023, when Jones reinvented himself as the Jewish community’s most reliable Uncle Tom in the progressive world.

Jones did not arrive at this position of servitude to Jewish causes. It is rooted in his childhood and in a formative relationship with Dorothy “Dottie” Zellner, a Jewish civil rights activist who served as a staffer and newsletter editor for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the 1960s. Jones has recounted how Zellner threw herself into the civil rights movement after being inspired by the student sit-in movement of 1960. This relationship shaped Jones’s lifelong view that Black and Jewish communities are bound together by shared struggle and shared democratic values.

Jones has articulated this philosophy repeatedly. “We had 300 years of slavery, 100 years of Jim Crow terror, and a bunch of crazy Black and Jewish kids went down one summer and broke the back of Jim Crow. The reason this country is a democracy at all is because Black and Jewish people have loved each other and helped each other and supported each other,” Jones said during a 2022 speech at the Wall Street Dinner, hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York, a charitable organization focused on uniting diverse groups to bolster Jewish communities.

This philosemitic worldview took shape in the rural Tennessee community where Jones came of age. Anthony Kapel “Van” Jones was born on September 20, 1968, in Jackson, Tennessee, to a high school teacher mother, Loretta Jean, and a middle school principal father, Willie Anthony Jones. He described himself as a child as “bookish and bizarre.” He graduated from Jackson Central-Merry High School in 1986 and earned a Bachelor of Science in communication and political science from the University of Tennessee at Martin.

Jones then enrolled at Yale Law School, where his radicalization accelerated. The 1992 Rodney King verdict was a pivotal moment. Sent to San Francisco as a legal observer at a peaceful march on May 8, 1992 — a week after the riots had ended — Jones was swept up in a mass arrest, held briefly, and released with all charges dropped. While in jail he encountered young radicals who changed his life. “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th,” he said. “By August, I was a communist.”

After Yale, Jones moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and in 1994 co-founded a socialist collective called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which studied Marxist theory and organized around a vision of multiracial socialism. In 1996, he co-founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, focusing on economic empowerment and youth in the criminal justice system.

In 2009, President Barack Obama appointed Jones as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality. However, Jones resigned on September 6, 2009 amid a controversy driven largely by Fox News host Glenn Beck — who had a personal stake in the fight, as Jones had co-founded Color of Change, which was running an advertiser boycott against Beck’s show. Beck highlighted Jones’ past as a self-described communist, his involvement with STORM, a 2004 petition Jones signed that appeared to question the official account of 9/11, and a 2008 video of Jones calling Republicans “a**holes.” Jones denied being a 9/11 truther, but resigned, stating: “I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past.”

The White House exit did not slow Jones for long. Within a few years, he had reconstituted his career across media, advocacy, and policy institutions. After his departure from the White House, Jones became a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress in February 2010, leading its Green Opportunity Initiative on clean energy and economic equity. He joined CNN as a political commentator in 2013. He co-founded the Dream Corps in 2011, a social justice accelerator whose initiatives include #YesWeCode for tech training, Green For All for green economy advocacy, and #cut50 for criminal justice reform. Dream Corps played a vital role in passage of the FIRST STEP Act in 2018, bipartisan legislation the New York Times called “the most substantial breakthrough in criminal justice in a generation.” In reality, Trump signed legislation championed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation that reduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Tucker Carlson correctly characterized this as a jailbreak scheme rewarding criminals that undermined everything Trump promised about law and order.

By late 2022, Jones was prepared to deploy his expanded influence in defense of a community he had long considered an ally. Jones had served as the founding CEO of the REFORM Alliance, launched in January 2019 by Jay-Z, Meek Mill, Michael Rubin, Robert Kraft, and other founding partners to transform probation and parole systems, before moving to the organization’s board in 2021. In July 2021, Jones was one of the inaugural recipients of Jeff Bezos’ Courage & Civility Award, which came with a $100 million grant to support his philanthropic work.

The platform Jones built across criminal justice reform and bipartisan policy work soon turned toward a different cause. When rapper Kanye West made a series of antisemitic statements in late 2022, including praise of Hitler, Jones delivered the keynote address at the UJA-Federation of New York Wall Street Dinner on December 5, 2022. In his speech, Jones said: “I apologize for the silence of my community. The silence is over.” and: “You’re going to see a change going forward.” Forward senior political reporter Jacob Kornbluh, who reported the speech, later clarified that Jones “did not apologize for alleged Black silence about Kanye” — rather, “he stressed that many in his community are speaking out forcefully” and “said he was sorry that he and others didn’t do more before Kanye.”

Jones also published a Substack essay titled “Kanye West: Enemy of Blacks, Jews & Humanity” condemning West, writing that “Black people do not like Nazis” and celebrating the many Black leaders who had stood up against antisemitism. However, Jones’ speech at the UJA was controversial among many Black commentators and social media users, who objected to him appearing to speak for all Black people and apologize on their behalf for Kanye West’s behavior. TV personality Bevy Smith called his apology “bullshit” and accused him of currying favor with wealthy Jewish donors.

Whatever the controversy among Black commentators, Jones’s role as a public ally to the Jewish community would expand dramatically in the wake of the events of October 7, 2023. On November 14, 2023, roughly five weeks after the Hamas attacks, Jones spoke at the “March for Israel” rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., co-organized by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He was among the non-Jewish speakers at what organizers called the largest pro-Israel gathering in U.S. history, with an estimated 290,000 in attendance. In his speech, Jones cited what he said was the FBI’s reported 400 percent increase in antisemitic hate crimes in the weeks since October 7, stated that the Jewish community “stood with the civil rights movement, walking arm-in-arm, facing death, going to jail,” and called on both sides to stop the violence.

Jones said: “I’m a peace guy, I pray for peace. No more rockets from Gaza, and no more bombs falling down on the people of Gaza.” The ceasefire call prompted the crowd to break into sustained “No ceasefire!” chants and booing. In a moment of visible flustering as the crowd chanted, Jones said “Let’s take a stand against Muslims” rather than “against anti-Muslim bigotry” — a slip he attempted to spin on X: “My speech read: ‘Let’s stand against anti-Jewish bigotry here. Let’s stand against anti-Muslim bigotry here. Let’s stand against hate here.’ But the chanting crowd threw me off — and I misspoke. We need to stand WITH Muslims, and Jews, and everyone who is under threat. “

The criticism over the rally did little to alter Jones’s trajectory. If anything, his public characterizations of Hamas grew more hostile in the ensuing months. On October 29, 2024, Jones appeared on the “Being Jewish with Jonah Platt” podcast and delivered strident remarks condemning Hamas. “The Palestinians deserve all the support in the world,” he said. “Their cause is just, they want human rights, they want dignity, they want sovereignty — that’s beautiful. And it’s been hijacked by a Nazi organization called Hamas who are terrible.” Jones continued: “They are not freedom fighters. They are freedom takers. They are not interested in democracy, they are not interested in human rights. They are not interested in women’s rights. They are not interested in gay rights. They are not interested in anything we care about. And they are trying to destroy Israel way more than they’re trying to help the Palestinians. It’s a Nazi organization.”

Jones expressed deep personal identification with Israelis after Hamas’ resistance operation on October 7, 2023. “I’m a progressive, so Hamas attacked my people. Those are my people on the kibbutz — those are liberals, those are my people,” he said. He also acknowledged that his pro-Israel stance had cost him financially. “I’ve had people pull money out of things I’m a part of. But who cares? Nothing compared to what those kids went through at the Nova festival. Nothing compared to what the people went through at the kibbutz.”

Jones has translated this rhetorical solidarity into recurring institutional partnerships with American Jewry. Jones has been a recurring speaker and participant at the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft in 2019 (originally as the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, rebranded in October 2025). At the second Sports Leaders Convening on November 6, 2025 at Gillette Stadium, Jones moderated a session on Black-Jewish relations. He mentioned his travels with his Jewish godmother to Israel — including the Gaza Strip — in 2002 and 2004, noting that these visits gave him a clear sense of what Hamas represented.

The Kraft summits represent only one strand of Jones’s institutional engagement with Jewish causes. Jones has developed a deep partnership with the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation. In January 2025, he organized and led an AJCF-Exodus Delegation to Poland to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The delegation included prominent Black American leaders including billionaire philanthropist Robert F. Smith, Grammy-winning singer Victory Boyd, activist Malynda Hale, Pastor Carl Day, and entrepreneur John Hope Bryant.

In June 2025, AJCF honored Jones with its “Fighting Hatred Award” at the foundation’s 25th anniversary gala on June 11 at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan. The award recognized Jones “for his commitment to promoting tolerance, bridging communities and combating hatred in all its forms.”

Additionally, Jones was also a featured speaker at the 2025 JFN International Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, held March 23 through 25, 2025. He appeared on the opening plenary panel on allyship alongside progressive transgender activist Brianna Wu. The JFN is a major network of Jewish philanthropists and foundations with roughly 700 attendees from nine countries at this gathering.

Jones has supplemented these speaking engagements with initiatives he has built and led himself. The EXODUS Over Dinner initiative, founded by Jones, has partnered with the American Jewish Committee. As recently as March 2026, an AJC-hosted Exodus Over Dinner event took place in Dallas, Texas, per the AJC. In early 2026, Jones participated in a panel discussion at the 92nd Street Y in New York titled “Forming a New Alliance Between the Black and Jewish Communities,” alongside Mijal Bitton, author Abigail Pogrebin, and Tony Award-winner Ari’el Stachel.

The depth of these institutional partnerships has occasionally drawn scrutiny from the progressive press. In October 2025, the progressive outlet Drop Site News reported that Jones was serving as a mentor in the newly launched Jacki and Jeff Karsh Journalism Fellowship, described as dedicated to “Jewish topics” and founded by Jacki Karsh, who has said the fellowship was created to help Israel win its “information war.” Jones forcefully denied the characterization, posting on X: “FAKE NEWS ALERT: This story is totally bogus. I agreed to give a one-hour, one-time talk to a handful of journalists next year — for free. I give more than 100 talks a year, covering all topics — speaking to people of all races, faiths and backgrounds.” Jones said the story misrepresented a routine speaking engagement.

Jones has shown a similar willingness to challenge his own political allies on questions of antisemitism. In August 2024, following Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro — who is Jewish — as her running mate, Jones publicly raised the possibility that antisemitism within the Democratic Party had influenced the decision. He said on CNN: “You also have anti-Semitism that has gotten marbled into this party. You can be for the Palestinians without being an anti-Jewish bigot, but there are some anti-Jewish bigots out there.” He added: “And there’s some disquiet now — and there has to be — how much of what just happened is caving into some of these darker parts of the party?”

In a similar vein, Jones wrote an extensive Substack essay titled “The Five Hs of the Black-Jewish Alliance” in which he warned that the historic Black-Jewish alliance “has been breaking down” since October 7 and that its collapse benefits “white nationalists” and “our geopolitical adversaries, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea.” He committed himself to fighting to preserve and rebuild that alliance, writing: “The Black community and the Jewish community have been together for 100 years… The best people in the Black community and the best people in the Jewish community and the best people who are both Black and Jewish have come together over and over again.”

Like a man who mistakes the walls of his master’s house for the borders of his own, Van Jones has surrendered his agency to the Jewish supremacist power configuration. In effect, he has chosen to spend his sunset years as the face of an unwanted and decaying alliance, forever tapping for the approval of Jewish political masters who view him as nothing more than a tool for their agenda to destroy gentile civilizations.

*Additionally* 

(4) Why Ghana Remains One of the Last Countries on Earth Where Israel Is Popular

By José Alberto Niño, reposted from José Alberto Niño’s Substack, June 11, 2026

The Pew Research Center released its annual survey of global attitudes toward Israel in June 2026, and the findings painted a picture of near universal disapproval. A median of 67 percent across all 36 countries surveyed held unfavorable views of Israel. Not a single country had a majority viewing Israel favorably. Confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had cratered worldwide.

Yet buried in the data was a remarkable exception. 49 percent of Ghanaians reported holding a favorable view of Israel, making Ghana one of only a tiny handful of nations globally where nearly half the population still supports the Jewish state. Sub-Saharan Africa was the only region in the entire survey where pluralities still held favorable views. Kenya came in at 50 percent favorable. Nigeria registered 47 percent despite a sharp nine point jump in unfavorable views from the previous year.

These numbers demand explanation. Why does Ghana stand so far apart from global opinion? The answer lies in a unique convergence of historical ties, evangelical theology, Israeli diplomatic strategy, and the explosive growth of Pentecostal Christianity across West Africa.

Ghana’s relationship with Israel predates Ghanaian independence itself. In 1956, Israel established a consulate in the Gold Coast while it was still a British colony. After Ghana achieved independence in March 1957, Kwame Nkrumah invited Israel to deepen ties, and Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African country to establish diplomatic relations with Israel.

The warmth of the early relationship was striking. Israeli Foreign Minister Golda Meir was the only foreign Cabinet official invited to participate in Ghana’s first independence anniversary celebrations in March 1958. Israel also helped establish the Ghana Air Force in July 1959, founding a flying training school in Accra staffed by Israeli instructors and technicians, with Indian advisers setting up the new service’s headquarters later that year.

Meir’s 1958 trip—her first to the African continent, taking in Liberia, Ghana, and other West African states—left her deeply moved by the challenges facing newly independent African nations. She personally championed the establishment of MASHAV, Israel’s Agency for International Development Cooperation, making international cooperation a signature element of her foreign policy. Meir stated that “human and economic development in Africa is a drive toward universal self-determination and justice,” articulating the humanitarian philosophy that would guide MASHAV’s work for decades.

The “golden years” proved fragile. At the January 1961 Casablanca Conference, Ghana joined other countries in sharply criticizing Israel, and the relationship cooled steadily through the 1960s. The Yom Kippur War of October 1973 proved to be the breaking point. In late October 1973, Ghana severed diplomatic relations with Israel, in compliance with an Organisation of African Unity resolution calling on members to cut ties over the occupied Arab territories.

For the next two decades, formal diplomatic relations were suspended. The signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993 opened a window for Ghana to review its position. On August 9, 1994, Ghana and Israel signed a joint communiqué and simultaneously announced in Tel Aviv and Accra the re-establishment of diplomatic ties. Ghana reopened its mission in Tel Aviv in 1996, but Israel did not reopen its embassy in Accra until September 2011.

The post-2011 period has witnessed a dramatic deepening of ties. Two rounds of formal political consultations were held in 2018 and 2021, and Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen visited Accra in 2023. A Ghana–Israel Parliamentary Friendship Association was inaugurated in June 2025, and a Third Session of the Ghana–Israel Political Dialogue was held in Jerusalem in January 2026.

Military cooperation has also featured. In September 2018, 25 commanders from the Ghana Armed Forces received training from Israeli Defense Forces officers in shooting and Krav Maga. In 2019, Israel appointed Colonel Aviezer Segal as its first military attaché to Africa in several decades; according to the Times of Israel, the IDF was by then training local forces in more than a dozen African nations, including Ghana, as part of Netanyahu’s broader Africa strategy.

Cybersecurity has emerged as one of the most dynamic areas of cooperation. In 2020, Ghana’s Minister of Communications led a delegation to the CyberTech Global conference in Tel Aviv, where Ghana and Israel signed a Memorandum of Understanding to strengthen cybersecurity cooperation. In 2024, Ghana’s Cyber Security Authority achieved Tier 1 status in the International Telecommunication Union’s Global Cybersecurity Index, with a score of 99.27 percent.

Yet cybersecurity cooperation also produced the single biggest controversy of the modern relationship. Around 2015–16, NSO Group contracted to supply its Pegasus spyware for roughly $6 million; with a $2 million fee added by the local intermediary, Infralocks Development Limited—run by George Derrick Oppong—Ghana’s National Communications Authority paid $8 million for the system, which was acquired for the National Security Council Secretariat. In 2020, three former senior officials were convicted in Accra High Court for causing financial loss to the state. Former Deputy National Security Coordinator Salifu Osman and NCA Director-General William Tetteh Tevie each received five-year sentences. The Times of Israel called it “the first time in the world that a government official has been jailed for doing business with NSO.”

Economic ties have grown steadily. The Israeli Trade Mission reported in May 2023 that over five years of engagement, Israeli businesses had concluded $140 million worth of deals with over 450 Israeli and 2,000 Ghanaian companies and agencies. MASHAV has run training programs in Ghana since 1958 in agriculture, health, education, and innovation; in 2019, a second batch of 70 Ghanaian agricultural graduates was sent to Israel for an 11-month attachment on Kibbutz farms.

The relationship has drawn serious criticism beyond Pegasus. Former MP Ras Mubarak has argued that Israeli investment and aid carry a political price tag. Netanyahu himself told Israeli ambassadors to Africa in 2017 that the “first interest” of the Africa push was to “dramatically change the situation regarding African votes at the UN and other international bodies from opposition to support.”

In November 2018, Ghana’s Foreign Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey visited Israel and assured Knesset member Avraham Neguise—a Likud figure who chaired the World Likud movement—that Ghana would help Israel gain observer status at the African Union, drawing backlash from pro-Palestinian voices who said it cut against Ghana’s non-aligned tradition.

In December 2025, seven Ghanaian travelers—including four members of a parliamentary delegation bound for Tel Aviv University’s Cyber Week conference—were detained at Ben Gurion Airport for over five hours without justification; three were deported. Ghana’s Foreign Ministry condemned their “humiliating” treatment and said they had been deliberately targeted, and in a rare reciprocal move Ghana deported three Israelis who had just arrived.

Curiously, Ghana’s UN voting record has been quite hostile to Israel. According to the pro-Israel monitoring group UN Watch, Ghana has voted against Israel in the large majority of recent General Assembly votes, with no pro-Israel votes. Ghana voted against the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017, and in September 2025 President Mahama, addressing the General Assembly, backed Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution and condemned Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

This apparent contradiction, warm bilateral ties alongside consistent pro-Palestine UN voting, reveals the true driver of Ghana’s pro-Israel sentiment. It is not government policy but popular religious culture.

According to Ghana’s 2021 census figures, 71 percent of Ghanaians are Christian. Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians represent about 44 percent of all Christians. Scholars consistently identify this demographic reality as a primary engine of pro-Israel sentiment. In the edited volume Christian Zionism in Africa (ed. Cynthia Holder Rich), Suraya Dadoo’s chapter “Brand Jesus: Pro-Israel Messaging Through Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches in Ghana” documents how support for Israel has been embedded in church culture.

Israel has deliberately leveraged evangelical Christianity as a diplomatic tool across sub-Saharan Africa. Gideon Behar, former head of the Africa Bureau at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has described growing Evangelical communities in Africa as having a natural affinity for Israel and as an increasing factor pushing African governments to strengthen ties with it. He explained: “But the fact that there are Evangelical communities that are becoming larger and stronger everywhere in Africa . . . these communities naturally have a stronger connection with Israel, and a stronger urge to have links with us, and they are certainly a factor that is increasingly encouraging African countries to strengthen their ties with Israel.”

Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams, founder of Christian Action Faith Ministries and one of West Africa’s most influential evangelical figures, serves as Patron of the Ghana Israel Business Chamber. In a 2017 sermon, he declared that a key sign of the end times would be “when the capital of Israel is moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” urging his congregation to pray for it as prophecy to be fulfilled.

Ultimately, Ghana serves as the latest exhibit in a broader, calculated strategy by organized Jewry to cultivate golem states across the Global South. By weaponizing the theological fervor of low-IQ, easily manipulated populations, Israel secures a diplomatic and intelligence foothold that masks its deepening isolation in the West. As European nations increasingly awaken to the reality that organized Jewry has acted as the historical nemesis of their civilization, Israel has predictably pivoted toward melanin-enhanced, opportunistic constituencies who are eager to buck-dance for shekels in exchange for immediate financial gain.

[Editor’s note: For other carrying water for Israel see this.]

José Niño is a best-selling investigative journalist covering deep politics and forbidden history.

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