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I’m sitting at the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate Conference this week listening to Van Jones and I’m disappointed in myself for not hating all he says.
It starts with this:
“I work for CNN,” Jones says, “but I’m not CNN. I don’t agree with everything CNN says or does.”
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Van Jones attends the 85th Annual Peabody Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on June 1, 2025. (Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images)
Van Jones an ally of Jews
I must not feel good because Jones was once named “Czar” in the Obama administration, and the United States congressional record clearly paints him as an avowed communist.
And I am an adult, born into communism, who experienced it first hand. So I know people in America who praise Communism, even though they never lived the disastrous totalitarian experience, are idiots. In fact, they are useful idiots, as Lenin said.
Despite this, Jones says some things that are not outright wrong.
He shares with the audience at the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate conference that he visited Gaza in 2002 and 2004 before Hamas took over. So he understood the deep meaning of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
“You say Hamas to me, you say the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazis, I knew exactly what that group was about,” Jones says. “But then I realized that almost nobody in my world would know Hamas from hummus. They would have no idea.
“All of a sudden I decided I had to step up and be an ally [to Israel].”
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Van Jones speaks on stage during the 2025 ForbesBLK Summit at the Ray Charles Performing Arts Center Morehouse College on October 10, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)
The US would not allow Mexican rockets
Jones has done the math on Jews, and because he is at an anti-Semitism symposium, he tells how there are only approximately 15.7 million Jews on Earth, with about half of them in Israel.
“You have 15 million Jews in the world, half of them in Israel, surrounded and having rockets fired at them every day,” Jones says. “No one in the United States would listen to people in Mexico saying, ‘Look, Texas used to be Mexico. California used to be Mexico. It’s stolen land, we want it back. So now we’re shooting rockets at your babies every day. And your kids have to wake up every morning and look at their phone to see if it’s safe to go outside, and you have to have a place to hide in your house.
“It would happen here one time. If Mexico fired rockets up here one time, talking about giving us Texas back, Mexico would be a parking lot.”
Yes, mostly correct.
Except, of course, there have definitely been Mexicans protesting ICE actions, flying Mexican flags and saying California and Texas were stolen from them. No one is firing rockets, but Univision anchor Maria Elena Salinas said “the whole Southwest is Mexico.”
And she said that undisputedly on the same CNN Jones works for, but on Thursday denied it.
We differ.
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Van Jones attends the premiere of “The Morning Show” Season 4 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City on September 9, 2025. (Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Jones: Protection of Jews most important
“So,” says Jones, “the idea that Jews are supposed to live under this constant state of terror. The only place they’ve been able to be safe is being bombed, and if they do anything to try to protect themselves, they’re wrong. That, I don’t think, was explained to me in all my years as a progressive.
“We left the impression that if you were white, male, and had money, there’s no way you could be oppressed. When in reality, it’s not like all Jews have money, but the reality is, for 3,000 years, white people, who were men and women, had money and didn’t have money, were brutally oppressed. Brutally oppressed. How we left it out, we have to leave out any country, and we have to solve it. solved.”
Jones said protecting Jews from anti-Semitism must rise to the top of the list of marginalized people in need of protection.
“In my opinion, this is part of a much larger plot,” says Jones. “Nobody’s that mad at 15 million people. There’s eight billion people in the world and they’re mad at 15 million? No. When they come after the Jews, it’s not about the Jews.
Van Jones attends the 85th Annual Peabody Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on June 1, 2025. (Alberto Rodriguez/Variety via Getty Images)
“It’s only 15 million people. It’s something else. And I believe they’re deliberately going after the Jews as a way to overthrow the entire Western world.
“I think if they can separate blacks from Jews, if they can turn people against each other and promote this poison, I don’t think it’s about the Jews. I think it’s a much bigger plot, and I think we’re being cheated.”
Jones has been a radical for most of his life. Now he’s either softer (not likely), he’s controlled opposition, or he just sometimes gets to a truth.
Thursday was an example of one of them.
