From Dunks To Drones: The NBA Has an Israel Problem

As the NBA playoffs tip off this weekend, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Stephen Curry are under growing scrutiny — not just for their play, but for links to Israeli drone technology and security firms tied to Israel’s military operations that are used to commit war crimes in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

Many of the National Basketball Association’s biggest stars are quietly allying themselves with the State of Israel, making official visits to the country, meeting IDF troops, and investing in its national security industry. Meanwhile, individuals criticizing Israel and supporting Palestinian liberation have been condemned, threatened, and marginalized.

This has caused widespread consternation and push back from the league’s largely progressive fan base. The NBA, in other words, has an Israel problem.

Drone King

The NBA playoffs start this weekend, with Kevin Durant’s Rockets’ facing LeBron James’ Lakers. Yet both stars have questionable ties to Israel. Durant, for example, is an investor in Skydio, a CIA-funded drone manufacturer that sells surveillance and weaponry exclusively to governments.

Within hours of the October 7, 2023, attack, the company was sending its drones to Israel, where they play an important part in the hi-tech genocide in Gaza. The buzz of Skydio X10 and X10D drones is a near constant sound over Gaza. The drones can be equipped with speakers, spotlights, cameras, or offensive weaponry such as grenades. Israel has used similar drones to play sounds of screaming women and crying babies to lure people to a scene, only to be targeted for assassination.

The U.S. government paid for at least 1000 Skydio drones to be sent to Ukraine to be used in its battle against Russia. Another major funder of the company is In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s investments department.

Durant – known for spending a great deal of his time online – is well aware of his investment, and what these drones are being used for, having directly responded to people bringing the issue up. But he has fastidiously refused to address the criticisms. As one NBA fan wrote, “Kevin Durant is on his phone for 23 hours a day to ratio people with 15 followers on Twitter, but bring up his ties with Israel, and now he’s nowhere to be found.”

LeBron Loves Israel

Durant’s opponent this weekend, LeBron James, presents himself as an activist athlete. An outspoken supporter of racial justice movements, he has used his platform to support liberal causes, such as voter registration and to oppose police killings. Idolizing Muhammad Ali, he also very publicly allowed himself to be photographed at a press conference reading the autobiography of Malcolm X (although he was barely able to answer even basic questions about its content).

Surprisingly, then, the four-time NBA Most Valuable Player has expressed his strong support for Israel, and stayed silent on its assault on its neighbors. In the wake of October 7, James was one of many celebrities to rush out statements of solidarity with Israel and condemnation of Hamas.

“The devastation in Israel is tragic and unacceptable. The murder and violence against innocent people by Hamas is terrorism,” he wrote, sending his “deepest condolences to Israel and the Jewish community,” while suggesting Hamas were a “hate” movement.

In the two-and-a-half years of slaughter that has followed it, however, the word “Palestine” has not passed LeBron’s lips, as the star has stayed silent in the face of the unfolding human rights catastrophe. In fact, this February, he went further, seemingly endorsing Israel and its actions, and expressing a desire to visit the country that has bombed seven neighboring countries in the past 12 months.

“I hope I inspire people over there [Israel] to be better in life. Hopefully someday I can make it over there. I’ve heard nothing but great things,” he said.

Considering that Israel has been the number one news story for the past two-and-a-half years, this could be interpreted as public support for Israeli policy.

It is also in direct contrast to the positions taken by LeBron’s idols. Muhammad Ali went to prison rather than participate in the slaughter in Southeast Asia, visited Palestinian refugee camps, and attended pro-Palestine demonstrations until he was physically unable to do so.

Malcolm X, meanwhile, went to Gaza in 1964, and strongly supported the Palestinian cause, linking Israeli settler colonial violence to white supremacism in the United States, and drawing parallels between the Palestinian and Black liberation movements.

Steph Curry: Making Buckets From the Occupation

Perhaps the only current player that can match LeBron’s star power is Stephen Curry. The 12-time All Star and 2023 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion award winner presents himself as a humble activist fighting for good. Like LeBron, he is a vocal supporter of the Democratic Party, and has lent his weight to a number of racial and social justice causes.

But also like LeBron, Curry’s connections to Israel have come under public scrutiny. The Golden State Warriors guard has plunged tens of millions of dollars into the country’s tech industry, investing in security and defense firms founded and staffed by Israeli spies and military commanders.

One of these is security firm, Zafran, who, in 2024, Curry bankrolled to the tune of $30 million. Zafran is led by Sanaz Yashar, who spent fifteen years at IDF intelligence outfit, Unit 8200, rising to become a commander, before leaving at starting Zafran.

Unit 8200 is the Israeli military’s most elite and most controversial department. The unit is responsible for cyberwarfare and intelligence attacks, and has been behind some of Israel’s most controversial actions, including producing A.I.-generated kill lists of Gazans, and carrying out the 2024 Lebanon pager attack.

The group is widely identified by both domestic and international human rights agencies as a key perpetrator of the genocide in Gaza, while the pager incident was condemned as a major act of international terrorism, even by former CIA Director, Leon Panetta. Unit 8200 and its graduates are responsible for the production and dissemination of huge quantities of spyware, including the Pegasus software that was used to spy on tens of thousands of activists, politicians, and journalists around the world.

Zafran’s two other co-founders, Snir Havdala and Ben Seri, also come from Israeli military intelligence backgrounds. Havdala spent eight years at Unit 8200, becoming the group’s head of security research, while Seri served in Unit 81, an organization that focuses primarily on building offensive cyberweapons to be used against Israel’s enemies. All three were awarded official prizes for their military contributions. Now, they work (nominally) in the private sector, although the line between Israel’s Silicon Valley and its state intelligence is notoriously blurry.

Another Israeli cybersecurity firm Curry has recycled his NBA dollars into is Upwind, a group founded by Israeli soldiers, Amiram Shachar, Lavi Ferdman, and Liran Polak, who met while serving in the elite Mamram Unit. Famous for selecting only the top 1% of applicants, Mamram is tasked with creating the technological backbone for the entire country’s military, including drones, missile systems, and the Iron Dome.

According to public data from employment database LinkedIn, the majority of employees at both Zafran and Upwind are former Israeli intelligence officers.

Curry’s Israeli investments appeared to have been lucrative ones, as the companies continue to grow. Thus, while the American sharpshooter is making buckets from his partnership with Israel, he remains silent on Gaza.

Unlike Durant, though, Curry’s relationship with Israel appears deeper than purely contractual. He has expressed his interest in Israeli culture, has told the press that he is learning Hebrew, and even has Hebrew tattoos on both his wrists.

Draymond Green: Playing Defense for Israel

Curry’s Golden State Warriors teammate, Draymond Green, however, took his relationship with Israel to a higher level. In 2018, the four-time all-star and NBA Defensive Player of the Year went on a high-profile official trip to Israel, organized by the Friends of the IDF, an American group that purchases equipment for Israeli soldiers.

During his four-day visit, Green smiled as he put on an IDF uniform and shot weapons at a gun range. He also visited Israeli border police and presented their counter-terrorism commander with his own Warriors jersey. He even attended a meeting with Israeli president, Reuven Rivlin – a sign of how important a propaganda coup Israel considered luring the NBA star to their country.

Israel, at the time, was in desperate need of a public relations victory. Green chose to visit the country at the height of the Great March of Return, a series of non-violent Palestinian protests aimed at drawing the world’s attention to the grave injustices being meted out by the Israeli occupation. In response, IDF and Israeli police units – the very organizations Green met with – mowed down protestors, intentionally killing hundreds and disabling thousands.

Green was well aware of the importance of his visit and that it would be understood as an endorsement of a political project. Just weeks previously, he, Curry, and their NBA champion Warriors team rejected an invitation to the White House to meet President Donald Trump, realizing that to do so would carry political connotations.

His decision to visit Israel at the (then) height of their atrocities was widely condemned online. “Flashing a toothy grin with a sniper rifle in Israel on a trip sponsored by Friends of the IDF is so horribly offensive. They’ve recently slaughtered 100s of unarmed Palestinians with those rifles,” activist Shaun King reacted.

Zionism 2.0

A key figure in the NBA’s partnership with Israel is Durant, Curry, and Green’s former Warriors teammate, Omri Casspi. A disciple of President Shimon Peres, the Israeli forward has been a passionate supporter of his country’s expansionist project, and sees basketball as a way of improving Israel’s poor reputation among the Black American community.

“What I wanted to accomplish was to create a better awareness by bringing big celebrities with a lot of following on social media, creating goodwill ambassadors for Israel,” he said, adding: “Unfortunately, Israel gets a bad rep sometimes in the media. These guys are from places like Baltimore and Alabama. And there are kids down there who follow them really closely, and they see that they’ve been to Israel, and that creates good energy.”

Casspi has convinced several NBA players to join him on high-profile visits to Israel, all paid for by Israeli-American billionaire and Republican mega donor Miriam Adelson, who now owns the Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise.

In 2015, Adelson paid for a private jet to take Casspi and fellow players, DeMarcus Cousins, Rudy Gay, Caron Butler, Tyreke Evans, and Chandler Parsons to Israel. While there, the group visited the Western Wall and meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what even The Jewish Journal called an “anti-BDS [Boycott Divestment and Sanctions] PR” trip.

The next year, Casspi was joined by Rudy Gay, Chris Copeland, Donald Sloan, Shawn Marion and Amar’e Stoudemire, latter of whom would later move to Israel and convert to Judaism.

Jimmy Butler, meanwhile, received an award for his pro-Israel activism from Israeli Consul General to the Northwestern United States, Ambassador Marco Sermoneta. Since October 2023, the six-time all-star has vocally campaigned for the release of Israeli prisoners from Hamas custody,

Other NBA players known to have visited Israel include Victor Oladipo, Lamarcus Aldridge, and Enes Kanter Freedom.

For Casspi and Israel, however, building goodwill for Israel among the basketball community is not enough. After more than two years of constant fighting, the Israeli economy is in tatters, and desperately needs foreign investment. To that end, the former pro founded Swish Ventures, a project designed to funnel American money into the Israel tech sector.

Casspi hopes that Curry’s massive investments are just the start. As he told The Times of Israel in 2024:

“We are launching Swish at a time when the importance of the high-tech sector to Israel is maturing… In this not easy climate during war and with high interest rates, we see this period as Zionism 2.0, a time and age of building generational companies from Israel, and we want to take advantage of that and help them build a great industry.”

“The high-tech infrastructure allows us to serve national interests and is more important than ever,” he added.

As such, then, the efforts to improve connections between the NBA and Israel are far from natural, but are intentional, coordinated, and part of a wider strategy to further the Zionist project.

Crushing Pro-Palestine Sympathy

While the practice of associating the NBA’s brand with an Apartheid state has received serious pushback from fans, the league has quietly endorsed it. Indeed, NBA commissioner Adam Silver participated in an official visit to Israel as part of its “Basketball Without Borders” program, bringing NBA legends David Robinson and Wayne Embry with him. While in Israel, Robinson and Embry met with both Rivlin and Netanyahu.

Silver has also zealously quashed expressions of support for Palestine, no matter how small. Last year, NBA legend Dwight Howard revealed how a 2014 social media post almost lost him his career. “So I tweet ‘Free Palestine’. Less than 10 minutes after I tweet that, I get a call from the commissioner of the NBA [Silver], agents, people working with my foundation,” he said, all with the coordinated message: “You got to erase this tweet, you got to take this down.”

Howard revealed that it had a chilling effect on his speech, realizing that “If I say too much, if I say something, I may not get a job no more.” At the time of his post, Howard was an eight-time all star and three-time Defensive Player of the Year, suggesting that, on the subject of Israel/Palestine, even marquee names feel immense top-down pressure to conform.

In 2022, the league went one step further with star player Kyrie Irving. After he posted a link to the antisemitic conspiracy documentary, “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America,” to his Twitter account, Irving was immediately suspended, and forced to apologize.

He was even made to give half a million dollars to the Anti-Defamation League, a pro-Israel pressure group that spied on Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement and has sought to undermine the current Movement for Black Lives – an organization Irving supports.

This pressure to conform extends, it seems, even to high-profile fans of the sport. At this year’s NBA All Star Game, director Spike Lee wore a keffiyeh-patterned top and a bag featuring a Palestinian flag motif. Shortly afterward, he issued a bizarre public apology for his clothing choice, asking for forgiveness for his “gesture of hostility to the Jewish community” and his “support of violence.”

Targeting Black Americans with Propaganda

The African-American community is vastly more supportive of Palestine than the rest of the population. Like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, Black Americans are far more likely to see parallels between their own struggles and those of the Palestinians. A 2023 New York Times Siena College poll found that they were the only group more likely to sympathize with Palestine (34%) than Israel (28%) – far more than their white counterparts, who overwhelmingly backed Israel (56% to 17%).

Israel and its supporters have long identified the Black community as a potential problem. To that end, they have been targeting them for at least a decade with special public relations efforts. Emails released by WikiLeaks show that entertainment moguls liaising with the IDF recruited hip hop mega producer Russell Simmons to promote Israel’s image in Black America.

When asked what could be done, the founder of Def Jam Records and the brother of Joseph “Rev.Run” Simmons, one third of Run DMC, responded: “Simple messaging from non Jews specifically from Muslims promoting peace and Israel’s right to exist…We have resources and the desire to win rather than lose the hearts of young Muslims and Jews.”

What these resources were, he explained: “We have hundreds of collaboration programs between Imams Rabbis and their congregations We have many respected imams who would join former chief rabbi metzker (spelling) rabbi Schneier and non Jews in promoting the Saudi peace plan.” “Through this campaign we will be helping Israel,” he concluded.

For a deep dive into this story, read the MintPress News investigation, “The Israel Files: WikiLeaks Docs Show Top Hollywood Producers Working with Israel to Defend its War Crimes.”

Israel has also tried to more directly recruit Steph Curry into its P.R. drive. A recently-created firm called Show Faith by Works, registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as affiliated with the Israeli government, identified the basketball star as a potential “Christian Celebrity Spokesperson” who could “deliver pro-Israel messaging” into religious communities across the country. There is no evidence, however, that Curry accepted their offer.

Imperial Boomerang

While putting money into drones or Israeli technology may seem a rather abstract, faraway investment for American NBA stars, they are increasingly coming to negatively affect Black communities across the United States. Skydio has signed a number of lucrative contracts with domestic law enforcement agencies, including the DEA and ICE, the latter of which has bought millions of dollars worth of drones

ICE has surveiled, harassed, and broken up communities of color from coast to coast, and is using cutting edge technology to suppress protest movements organizing against it. Last week, the agency admitted that it was also using powerful Israeli spyware developed by former Unit 8200 agents to hack into phones across America.

With help from groups such as the ADL, ICE has a long history of working with the Israeli police and military, studying the tactics they use to oppress Palestinians. Now, we are increasingly seeing those tactics being used to discipline and control domestic dissent.

Therefore, while NBA stars like Durant and Curry can make a killing investing in questionable tech companies, the technology they produce could increasingly be used to suppress Americans protesting against the Israeli-inspired police state being rapidly constructed before our eyes

Related Articles:

When It Comes to Defending Rights, LeBron Takes Michael Jordan to School

From Dunks To Drones: The NBA Has an Israel Problem