A year after Charlie Kirk’s killing, his organization has buried his criticism of Israel to maintain support from the Israel-based International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. With close ties to the Israeli government, the Fellowship is flooding conservative media with paid partnerships.
By Max Blumenthal
One year after Charlie Kirk’s killing, The Charlie Kirk Show is distributed by a federally registered agent of Israel and his widow, Erika, has reversed his critical positions on the US-Israeli special relationship.
Now, The Grayzone can reveal that the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization he founded is holding faith events sponsored by an Israel-based non-profit with close ties to the Israeli government.
A leaked contract obtained by The Grayzone reveals that TPUSA entered into an agreement with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) to sponsor a series of ostensibly Christian faith-based summits between 2025 and 2027. Signed on May 16, 2025, the contract committed IFCJ to pay $700,000 to TPUSA over two years. In exchange, the group was to receive a series of promotional benefits including main stage speaking slots for its President, Yael Eckstein, and the distribution of pro-Israel “activism kits” to over 200 college campuses.
View the full May 16, 2025 contract between IFCJ and TPUSA here.
From the May 2025 IFCJ/TPUSA contract obtained by The Grayzone
Based in Israel and Chicago, Illinois, IFCJ presents itself as a charity which raises money from Christians to assist Jews supposedly suffering from poverty and antisemitism. In fact, it is a fundraising behemoth which is currently on a spending spree, plowing millions into American conservative media while partnering closely with the Israeli government to spread Zionist propaganda.
In a recent interview, IFCJ President Yael Eckstein boasted that her organization effectively supplements the Israeli state: “We’re a non-governmental organization, but we effectively distribute the aid so well that the government of Israel asks the Fellowship to build projects for them during times of emergency.”
The IFCJ’s contract with TPUSA was inked in the midst of a severe crisis at the house that Charlie built. At the time, Kirk was publicly anguishing over the increasingly onerous demands of those he described as Jewish “stakeholders,” who were threatening to pull their support for TPUSA unless he stopped providing space at his events to conservative critics of Israel like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
“It’s all of the sudden: ‘oh, Charlie: he’s no longer with us.’ Wait a second—what does ‘with us’ mean, exactly? I’m an American, okay? I represent this country,” he fumed to Kelly during an August 6, 2025 podcast.
Kirk had also become an outspoken opponent of US-Israeli plans to wage war on Iran.
As The Grayzone revealed, TPUSA’s largest donor, Robert Shillman, denounced Kirk’s criticisms of Israel at a private gala just four days before his killing, and announced that he’d withdrawn $2 million in contributions. By this point, Kirk had rejected a separate offer of Israel-directed donations to TPUSA, and refused a personal request from Netanyahu to visit Jerusalem.
The $700,000 contract with IFCJ demonstrates how much TPUSA had on the line when Kirk was killed. According to the agreement, that funding helped TPUSA hold three major faith-based events, and will continue to underwrite summits of “believers” and pastors through 2027.
The Grayzone asked IFCJ communications director Elizabeth Gartman about her group’s relationship with TPUSA. While acknowledging that “we’ve sponsored some things with them in the past,” Gartman declined to answer questions about the contract.
IFCJ is currently listed as a sponsor of TPUSA’s 2026 “Make Heaven Crowded” tour, which stirred controversy when a photo appeared on social media showing a giant Israeli flag hanging over the stage at an event at Cielo Vista Church in El Paso, Texas on August 29. Amid criticism from the conservative grassroots, TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet claimed, “The church put [the Israeli flag] up all on their own. We don’t micromanage churches, especially when they’re gracious enough to host us.”
In fact, IFCJ has placed thousands of Israeli flags on the grounds of churches across the US through its “Flags of Fellowship” project. The campaign was initiated following the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel to mobilize evangelical Christian support for the country’s war on the besieged Gaza Strip. IFCJ President Yael Eckstein has stated her goal is to plant 3 million Israeli flags on church grounds and university campuses across the world.
Installing Erika Kirk, relieving Israel
Following the September 10, 2025 killing of Charlie Kirk, his widow, Erika Kirk, was installed as TPUSA CEO. Under Erika’s establishment-friendly leadership, the internal crisis over Israel was buried along with her late husband’s body.
“Charlie used to say: Jew hate is brain rot,” she insisted in a televised town hall with self-proclaimed “Zionist fanatic” CBS editor-in-chief Bari Weiss three months after her husband’s death.
Recounting a visit to Jerusalem in which she “saw the Bible come alive in Technicolor,” Erika Kirk wondered aloud, “How could you hate that place?”
Erika Kirk was a former beauty pageant contestant who claimed to have been raised by a single mother: Lori Frantzve, the founder of a series of companies that contracted with the US military, including AZ-Tech and E3Tek. Franztve contributed to a 2015 book called “Blackout Wars” which featured proposals for “state initiatives to achieve preparedness against an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) catastrophe.” Fellow contributors to the volume included former CIA Director James Woolsey.
Erika Kirk (then Frantzve) at the Pentagon in 2012. Trump appointed Erika Kirk to the advisory board of the Air Force Academy in March 2026.[/caption]
Erika Kirk’s presence as the leader of TPUSA ensured continued sponsorship by IFCJ – a group which maintained a direct line to the Israeli government. But with conservative youth rejecting Zionism in droves, her colleagues were understandably skittish about the relationship.
On November 2, 2025, the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Israeli Government Press Office hosted a Christian Media Summit in partnership with the IFCJ. The event culminated with a “Pillars of Jerusalem” award to Charlie Kirk, who had been assassinated two months prior. An Israeli government press release stated that “the award will be accepted on his behalf by his widow, Erika Kirk.”
When the announcement of Erika Kirk’s participation in an Israeli government event triggered a predictable wave of online backlash, TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet went into damage control mode. “Erika will not be attending,” Kolvet claimed. “First we heard of this was from the quoted tweet [announcing her participation].”
However, it appears that TPUSA has maintained its relationship with the IFCJ, which co-sponsored the Israeli government awards ceremony where Erika had been slated to appear.
Kolvet did not respond to a request from The Grayzone for comment on his organization’s apparent contract with TPUSA.
A June 5, 2026 Twitter/X image posted by IFCJ President Yael Eckstein[/caption]
Taking from working class Christians, giving to wealthy Jews
The IFCJ was founded in 1983 by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, a former staffer for the Anti-Defamation League who became a consultant to the 1988 presidential campaign of right-wing Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson. When I met Eckstein in his Chicago, Illinois office for an interview in 2004, he was living in Israel, where he served as a formal advisor to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. His IFCJ was then the second largest nongovernmental donor to Israel, next only to the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel.
Eckstein had become notorious for raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from evangelicals through emotionally cloying fundraising appeals broadcast on Robertson’s CBN and other right-wing Christian networks. “Just 350 dollars can save one Jew!” he declared in one commercial, pleading with Christians to send him their money to supposedly save Russian Jews in distress.
IFCJ’s fundraising efforts have reached into Latin American countries like Mexico and El Salvador, where Eckstein has rustled up money from evangelicals living just above the poverty line, then transferred it to powerful Jewish organizations in the US, or plowed it into charity projects in Israel.
By 2012, Eckstein was paying himself $1.2 million a year, while doling out a hefty salary to his daughter, Yael. According to Ministry Watch, “over 40% of a donor dollar goes to fundraising and Rabbi Eckstein’s excessive compensation.” After Eckstein died in 2019, the Washington Post reported that a reputation management firm was hired to scrub the internet of references to his and his daughter’s excessive salaries.
Today, IFCJ is run by Yael Eckstein, who has continued her father’s tradition of absurdly manipulative fundraising appeals. One recent IFCJ radio ad asks Christians for $35 to help cover “the cost to rescue one Jew on an upcoming aliyah freedom flight” to Israel. The donation “will help one poor elderly Jew out of a life of hopelessness and antisemitism,” the ad promises.
Israel takes over conservative media
Through IFCJ’s sponsorship of TPUSA, Yael Eckstein has become a featured speaker at numerous faith events around the US. Her organization is also expanding its reach into Republican-oriented media organizations through paid partnerships, guaranteeing her friendly interviews, puff pieces, and publicity.
But there may be a more sinister agenda at play. By plowing millions into conservative media, the IFCJ seems to function as a third party for the Israeli government with which it is closely aligned, ensuring that these outlets stay on message and survive despite dwindling viewership.
Among the conservative outlets sponsored by IFCJ is Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire. Over the past two years, the Daily Wire has been forced to lay off top executives amid a dramatic decline in viewership and precipitous loss of revenue. Yet it has held a paid partnership with IFCJ, resulting in a series of one-on-one interviews between Shapiro and Eckstein.
Despite his outlet’s declining fortunes, Shapiro appeared in TPUSA studios on September 15, 2025 – one of the first episodes of the Charlie Kirk Show after the founder’s killing – to announce that the Daily Wire was donating $1 million dollars to “bring people back to Christ, and bring people back to church, and back to biblical values.”
It is unclear if that money arrived through the IFCJ or any other Israeli-aligned sponsor of the Daily Wire. (Shapiro’s outlet also maintains a paid partnership with Express VPN, which is owned by Israeli tycoon and convicted fraudster Teddy Sagi, who simultaneously sponsors the Israeli army.)
Besides the Daily Wire, the IFCJ has arranged paid partnerships with Fox News, the Jerusalem Post, Newsmax, and the podcasts of the rabidly pro-Israel Fox host Mark Levin and Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
As Responsible Statecraft reported, iHeartMedia has donated over $1.7 million in “digital revenue” from Cruz’s podcast to the pro-Cruz Truth and Courage PAC. Besides partnering with IFCJ, Cruz’s podcast airs ads for the Israeli government, meaning Tel Aviv is at least indirectly supporting his political career.
The deluge of Israeli money into conservative media has even consumed the Charlie Kirk Show. The Grayzone reported that the TPUSA founder’s podcast is now distributed by a federally registered agent of Israel as part of a whopping $46 million dollar annual contract between the Israeli government and Brad Parscale, the former chief of staff for Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign. Parscale registered as a foreign agent of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs just eight days after Kirk’s untimely death.
To date, there is no evidence that the state of Israel was responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Yet the killing quickly resolved one of the worst political crises Israel faced in the Trump era. With a single bullet, those who Kirk had derided as hyper-domineering Jewish “leaders” and “stakeholders” were instantly relieved of perhaps the greatest single obstacle to their control over the movement he had represented.
Damn there is no end to what Israel controls in the US. It sickens me
The Grayzone, shining light on the dark and the rotten.
The reaction, plugging holes with cash and trying to drown truth with rapid fire propaganda. That’s not confidence, that’s panic