WhatsappA failure to stop the antisemitic effort to slander supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance allows extremists to thrive and diverts attention from Qatar’s influence operation.
Some of Tucker Carlson’s defenders and apologists have argued that the backlash against the former Fox News host-turned-podcaster isn’t really about antisemitism.
Given the cozy interviews he’s granted to neo-Nazi “groyper” Nick Fuentes and Holocaust-denier “historian” Daryl Cooper—and his willingness to invite anyone on his show that will promote blood libels against or otherwise smear Israel—that’s not an argument anyone should take seriously. There’s no doubt that Carlson, like so many on the left, are determined to move the Overton Window of acceptable discourse so as to make it acceptable to engage in a wide variety of antisemitic tropes aimed at stigmatizing Jews and anything to do with the Jewish state.
But it’s also true that there is an ongoing debate about foreign policy in which Carlson’s efforts to aid the cause of delegitimizing the Jewish state and its supporters is playing a significant role. As Carlson has made clear, the ultimate target of his attacks isn’t really Jews or even the state of Israel. He’s just as, if not more, interested in taking down Americans who support it, thereby altering American foreign policy in the Middle East.
An antisemitic trope
If he is to be stopped, it won’t be because conservative supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speak up in defense of Israel and its friends. Rather, it will be because Vice President JD Vance, who is not only Carlson’s avowed friend and ally, as well as a frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, does so.
The phrase Carlson uses is “Israel First,” which is an attempt to disparage anyone who backs the U.S.-Israel alliance as not merely unpatriotic but also somehow at odds with President Donald Trump’s “America First” foreign policy. The expression is essentially an antisemitic trope about dual loyalty, and is linked to other ones about Jews buying influence. That’s why, rather than maintaining silence about Carlson’s most recent platforming and coddling of a neo-Nazi, the vice president needs to show that he is prepared to challenge allies to his right. If he fails to do so, it will not only hurt the country; it will also harm Vance’s own chances of following Trump into the Oval Office.
The “Israel First” smear delineates the distinction between the contemporary right-wing version of Jew-hatred from the even more potent one on the left.
Both are rooted in toxic myths.
Leftists are wrong to think of the Jewish state as either “white” or a manifestation of imperialism, since the Jews are the indigenous people of Israel. But left-wingers, like New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, hate Israel because they see it through the lens of their mindset in which the world is divided between two groups: people of color who are always victims no matter what they do, and “white” oppressors who are always in the wrong.
Progressive myths
Progressives have successfully indoctrinated a generation of young Americans to believe in critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism. As a result, their mischaracterization of the genocidal Palestinian-Arab cause of destroying Israel as justified resistance to racism has become something close to orthodoxy for most liberals.
Unlike the left, the overwhelming majority of American conservatives do not hate Israel. Nor are they antisemitic.
But a growing and increasingly loud minority on the right who are hostile to Israel view it as being part of a conspiracy to undermine American sovereignty. They regurgitate Carlson’s canards about Israel’s supporters—both Jews and evangelical Christians— wrongly manipulating the United States into conflicts in which it has no stake. Some of them also believe this is a threat to Christianity and white supremacy. Their support comes from a group of predominantly male youngsters who are influenced by the likes of Carlson, podcaster Candace Owens and the vile Fuentes.
Which faction poses the greater threat to what is left of what was once optimistically termed as a bipartisan pro-Israel consensus? And how do we reach and persuade either variety of Israel-haters—whether on the left or the right—that they’re wrong?
It’s easy to see the left as a greater problem simply because it now dominates the Democratic Party.
The intersectional left-wing base of the Democrats is in thrall to the ideologues who falsely analogize the Palestinian war on the Jewish state as a rerun of the American civil-rights movement. Faith in that distorted understanding is so deep that nothing Israel’s opponents do—including the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023 and a century of rejection of every attempt at compromise, including offers of Palestinian statehood—can make them realize that they are backing a genocidal cause rooted in hatred of Jews. Nor do they seem to care that the side they’re on is reactionary Islamist one that opposes all of their other progressive beliefs about society, including LGBTQ and women’s rights.
Such people not only dominate party activism. They also virtually monopolize the ranks of liberal journalism, thus amplifying their ability to control the discussion in the mainstream media about the Middle East.
Pro-Israel Democrats, such as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), are an increasingly small minority out of step with the rest of their party. So are moderates, like Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who, while deeply critical of the Jewish state, are still supportive of the alliance. But, despite the hopes of Shapiro and other non-leftists who will hop into the race in the next two years, it’s increasingly likely that the next Democratic president, whether in 2028 or some point in the future, will not merely be a half-hearted ally, as was the case with Joe Biden, or unfriendly in the manner of Barack Obama, but an open and unabashed foe of Israel in a way that is unprecedented.
Danger on the right
As dire as that prospect is for Israel-supporters, there is a strong argument that the threat from right-wing Israel-haters is just as dangerous heading into the next presidential election cycle.
Given that Trump is the most pro-Israel president since the founding of the modern Jewish state, and that the base of the GOP is largely evangelical and devoted to the welfare of Israel, that doesn’t make sense. Unlike the case with the Democrats, the Republican GOP congressional caucuses in the House and Senate are both strongly supportive of Israel.
But it would be a mistake to underestimate the potential of those who cheer on Carlson and his even more extreme Israel-haters and antisemites to influence discourse on the right.
Indeed, as Vance’s response to a question from a student at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi indicated, signs of real trouble are on the horizon. The student asked why the United States supports Israel and gives it “hundreds of billions of dollars.” He also questioned both the value of the alliance and repeated slanders about “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza (falsely attributed to the late Charlie Kirk), and claimed that not only did Israelis practice a different religion but “openly support the prosecution of ours.”
Vance could have shot down the lies about “ethnic cleansing” and Israeli persecution of Christians, not to mention the exaggeration of the extent of the military aid it gets. But he didn’t. Instead, he did his best imitation of former Vice President Kamala Harris’s kowtowing to the libels of leftist Israel-haters during last year’s campaign. He expressed sympathy with the student and asserted that the Trump administration wasn’t getting bossed around by Jerusalem.
A ‘post-Israel America?’
It’s that kind of answer from a politician who is fully capable and willing to challenge critics and questioners when they are in the wrong that encouraged the paleocon American Conservative magazine to ponder whether Vance will be the one to “lead a post-Israel America.”
That may be wishful thinking. After all, Vance made a compelling case last year that the Jewish state was a model ally for an “America First” administration, since it is willing to do its own fighting and has shared interests with the United States. But right now, he seems more interested in maintaining his close friendship with Carlson and appealing to the audience who watches him and other far-right podcasts than in telling the truth about the antisemitic libels directed at Israel.
The populist national conservative wing of the GOP seems to be increasingly worried about its young voters being under the influence of antisemites.
That was on display in the last few weeks as the Heritage Foundation think tank failed to fully dissociate itself from Carlson. Others on the right, such as Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh, who are more interested in bashing those who care about Israel and antisemitism than in criticizing even the craziest of Jew-haters like Owens, seem to agree that a neo-Nazi of Fuentes’s ilk speaks for the concerns of many, if not most, young conservative males. Support for engagement with Fuentes and his followers, rather than condemnation of them, is a disturbing abandonment of principles.
As conservative thinker Rod Dreher noted in his Substack, he’s now convinced that “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes.” If the actual number is anywhere close to that number, it isn’t merely shocking. It’s something that ought to be setting off alarms among those who have confidently assumed that the right was immune to antisemitism, especially when compared to the political left.
It’s hard to imagine anyone with a strong following on the left, like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or others in the Congressional left-wing “Squad,” pushing back against the intersectional myths about Israel’s being a “white” oppressor or asserting that Jews aren’t the indigenous people of Israel. But it ought not to be fanciful to imagine Vance, who has an early but impressive lead in the race to succeed Trump in 2028, disabusing young conservatives of the myths that Carlson or Fuentes have been feeding them.
As someone who has opposed an unlimited U.S. commitment to the war in Ukraine and the need to prioritize the coming threat from China, he has the standing to take the opportunity to reiterate the arguments for the alliance with Israel at a time when many on the right look to him for leadership to defend the conservative movement from antisemites.
He could point out that, contrary to Carlson’s assertions, the United States benefits enormously from security cooperation, joint weapons and technology development and intelligence-sharing with Israel.
He could make it clear that almost all of the billions in military aid that Israel receives is spent in the United States, and that assisting American arms manufacturers is just as crucial for the U.S. as it is for the Jewish state.
He could also argue that far from persecuting Christians—a lie that Carlson floated in an interview on his program with the Israel-hating sister of former Clinton administration staffer and ABC News host George Stephanopoulos—the Jewish state is the only country in the Middle East where Christians can live and worship freely. That’s something unimaginable in virtually every Muslim and Arab country, including Qatar, which Carlson falsely lauds as a true American ally.
AIPAC vs. Qatar
He might also note that the smears against the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby that are frequently repeated by users of the term “Israel Firsters” are similarly mendacious. Contrary to its detractors and some of its supporters who have also exaggerated its influence, AIPAC is not only not the dominant force in Washington; its efforts are dwarfed by those of other special interest groups, ranking 191st in direct lobbying, 18th in direct contributions to candidates and 21st in outside spending.
By contrast, Qatar is operating a vast influence operation in the United States that encompasses not just direct contributions, but also the Islamist propaganda broadcast on its Al Jazeera network. It also involves buying the loyalty of American businessmen such as Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and journalists like Carlson. It invests heavily to subvert American higher education, to which it is the largest foreign donor.
This invidious campaign aims not only to promote the emirate’s financial and political interests, such as supporting its terrorist clients like Hamas. It also seeks to spread Islamist beliefs among U.S. Muslims and secular college students that are antithetical to the values of Western civilization that conservatives believe in and wish to defend against the effort by woke progressives to tear down.
Anyone who worries about defending biblical values or putting American interests first ought to be sounding the alarm about Qatar. And this means all those who tap into the deep religious, ethical and political support for Israel as AIPAC does, especially conservative Christians.
But the vice president seems to be making a political calculation that he can’t afford to alienate Carlson’s and Fuentes’s fans if he is to secure the support of the right in future races.
That’s unfortunate and not just because at a time of an unprecedented surge in American antisemitism, the country needs moral leadership. It’s potentially dangerous because the longer Carlson and those on the right who share his obsessive hatred of Israel are allowed to expand their foothold in mainstream conservative discourse, the stronger they will grow.
That will not only fuel the kind of Jew-hatred on the right that we now take for granted on the intersectional left. But it will lend legitimacy to the anti-Israel Democrats who have so much in common with Carlson and fumble a GOP opportunity to seize the political center from a party that treats extremists like AOC and Mamdani as rock stars and their future leaders.
Repudiating the far-right won’t deprive Vance of the votes he needs to obtain the 2028 GOP presidential nomination. But it could cost him the general election if he makes the same mistake as Harris did in 2024: allowing himself to be captured by extremist allies.
