The MAGA influencers who've turned on Israel
ON university campuses, in the media, and in many Western parliaments, Israel faces growing antipathy as the Gaza war drags on. But while the post–October 7 environment has proven just how hostile the left has become, Israel now has to look out on the right as well.
While at the outset of the conflict, Israel enjoyed almost unanimous support from the center and the right, over time, a rising chorus of voices aligned with the right has begun to question the actions of the Netanyahu government. Perhaps most concerning of all is the way their rhetoric echoes that of the far left. Prominent right-wing figures with significant influence on public opinion, such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, have begun to scrutinize Israel, oblivious to the danger that Islamic terrorism poses to the Jewish People but also to Western culture as a whole.
Since Tucker Carlson departed Fox News to establish his own media venture, he has begun leveling critiques at Israel supporters. After October 7, he went on the attack against American conservatives who declared solidarity with Israel, accusing them of being “focused on a conflict in a foreign country as their own country becomes dangerously unstable.”
He recently hosted Palestinian evangelical pastor Munther Isaac of Bethlehem on his program. His decision to host Isaac — an outspoken anti-
Israel figure who subscribes to an old-school, anti-
Semitic Christian theology — instead of Israeli Arab Christians, or Palestinian Christians who have been driven away by Hamas, was seen by many as an attempt to sway the evangelical Christian demographic away from its longstanding support of Israel, and toward something darker.
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