Buck-Dancing for Zion: Tracking Van Jones’ Slavish Devotion to American Jewry

Van Jones is forever tethered to the House of Zion.

May 05, 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.

José Niño Unfiltered

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