Charles Jacobs

Co-Founder and President

Once named by The Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders, Charles Jacobs is a journalist and long-time social activist who, over the better part of four decades, has founded human rights and pro-Israel organizations to deal with unmet challenges. Some of these have become national institutions.

CAMERA — In 1989, responding to widespread mainstream media bias against Israel, Charles co-founded with Andrea Levin the Boston branch of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis), now the organization’s national office. Today, CAMERA is the pre-eminent Middle East media watchdog organization in the United States.

American Anti-Slavery Group — In 1993, in the face of reports of modern-day human bondage, particularly in Africa, where Arabs and Muslims were enslaving black Africans, Charles, along with African Christians and Muslims, founded the American Anti-Slavery Group. The organization brought unprecedented international attention to the enslavement of tens of thousands of mostly Christian Africans in Sudan by militias armed by the genocidal Islamic regime in Khartoum. On September 18, 2000, Coretta Scott King and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino presented Charles with the first-ever Boston Freedom Award for his abolitionist work. In 2001 and 2011, Charles flew several times, illegally, into Sudan on rescue missions that freed thousands of slaves. Charles testified before Congress on three separate occasions (in 1996, 1999, and 2000), and, on October 21, 2002, was invited to the White House for the signing of the Sudan Peace Act, where he spoke with President Bush. The AASG was instrumental in influencing the president to change U.S. policy on Sudan and enforcing a north-south peace treaty which ended the slave raids and created the world’s newest state: South Sudan.

The David Project — In the summer of 2002, in response to the sudden emergence of a new global anti-Semitism — principally focused against Israel — Charles co-founded the David Project to promote a fair and honest discussion of the Middle East conflict, and which, in 2017, was incorporated into Hillel International’s Israel Engagement and Education department. In its current iteration, it has educated thousands of pro-Israel students each year, preparing them for the rhetorical battles on the nation’s campuses.

Americans for Peace and Tolerance — In September of 2008, in view of the threat of Muslim Brotherhood elements’ rapid penetration of American society — and the failure of civic and political leaders to deal with it — Charles, along with Professor Dennis Hale and Sheikh Ahmed Mansour, founded Americans for Peace and Tolerance. APT works to expose and challenge leftist and terrorist-linked Islamic campaigns which threaten America and the Jews. APT campaigns have helped rid MIT and Northeastern University of terrorist imams, one demoted at NEU because of an APT video campaign.

Jewish Leadership Project — In the summer of 2022, after decades of Jewish leadership institutions consistently failing to recognize new threats to their communities for political reasons, Charles founded the Jewish Leadership Project, a group geared toward demanding that Jewish leaders carry out their responsibilities without partisan considerations. Expanding on a series of articles published in an issue of White Rose Magazine the previous year, in 2023, the JLP published a book, Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership, consisting of 22 essays by local activists and Jewish luminaries, including Alan Dershowitz, Caroline Glick, Mort Klein, and Jonathan Tobin.

African Jewish Alliance — In the winter of 2024, Charles connected with representatives of persecuted Christian and un-Arabized Muslim African populations who wished to join forces with American Jews and Israelis against global jihad. The resulting African Jewish Alliance’s mission is to educate the public and government about the nature and extent of Islamic terrorism throughout Africa — religious repression, slavery, and genocide in particular — and also to restore the unnecessarily withered friendship between black and Jewish Americans.

Charles has been widely published, including in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post, JNS, and the Encyclopedia Britannica. He has appeared on local and national television and radio, including CNN, CBS, Fox News, NPR, and PBS. Along with Avi Goldwasser, he edited and published the book Betrayal: The Failure of American Jewish Leadership (Wicked Son, 2023).