Students Supporting Israel launch fall tour to promote Black, Ethiopian, Jewish unity

Starting in 2022, two of the most recognizable African American cultural figures in the world, Kanye West and Candace Owens, waged an unrelenting campaign to promote antisemitism.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Students Supporting Israel (SSI), one of the largest collegiate groups for Jewish undergraduates in America, on Wednesday announced an ambitious fall 2026 tour aimed at encouraging Black-Jewish unity amid a period of rising racial hatred that has prompted calls for the two minority groups to set aside longstanding differences and partner again to defend liberal democracy against threats posed by political actors across the ideological divide.

Titled “Roots of Unity: African American Christian and Israeli Ethiopian Jewish Voices,” the tour will stop at six campuses in Florida, including the University of Miami and the University of Florida.

Along the way, organizers will team up with Black student organizations, interfaith groups, and other parts of the university community to draw students into a dialogue that, given recent developments in the Jewish world, has taken on renewed urgency.

Starting in 2022, two of the most recognizable African American cultural figures in the world, Kanye West and Candace Owens, waged an unrelenting campaign to promote antisemitism and other ideas drawn from the most sordid corners of politics.

Holocaust denial, medieval blood libels, and classic antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and control flooded their social media accounts as users emerged from once-obscure ideological corners to amplify the content in hopes it would catch on with American youth.

West eventually stepped back from the campaign, attributing his remarks to a manic episode.

Owens, however, carried on, folding everything from the Russian Revolution to Michael Jackson into a narrative of Jewish malevolence.

Most recently, she was involved in accusing the wife of French President Emmanuel Macron of having been born male and offered to personally verify that she was not.

“They tried to jeopardize the relationship, you know. Kanye West is all over the map. One day he’s meeting with a rabbi, the next he’s praising Hitler, so I don’t have much to say about him except the fact that he promoted some serious antisemitism,” SSI president and founder Ilan Sinelnikov told The Algemeiner on Friday.

“But Owens—she’s in the stratosphere. I met her in 2019 at the White House during the signing of the Abraham Accords. To see how she has flipped is crazy, and the stuff that she says, calling us satanic devils and other crazy old-school names—it’s so important that we have the African American Christian community with us.”

He added, “We also are happy to have the Ethiopian perspective, which isn’t heard as much.”