What do Tucker Carlson, the isolationist conservative pundit, and Elizabeth Warren, the woke progressive senator from Massachusetts, have in common? Not much other than slandering Israel.
Last week, at an event at the Islamic Center of Boston, Warren told her audience, "What Israel is doing is wrong. ... It is wrong to starve children within a civilian population in order to try to bend it to your will. ... I believe that they'll find that it is genocide." She claimed the International Court of Justice has "ample evidence to do so."
Yesterday, in an interview posted on X that already has over 7 million views, Carlson gave a platform to Pastor Munther Isaac. Isaac is the conference director of Christ at the Checkpoint, a well-known anti-Israel propagandist forum in Bethlehem that seeks to undermine Evangelical Christian support for Israel. Christ at the Checkpoint supports the BDS [Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions] movement, denies the Jewish people's historical connection to Israel by manipulating Christian theology and history, and vilifies Israel as solely responsible for all conflict in the region.
Christ at the Checkpoint promotes a particularly twisted form of antisemitic supersessionist theology. At one of its conferences, Anglican priest Naim Ateek explained the name of the group by falsely claiming, "Jesus was a Palestinian who lived in Palestine ... born under occupation. Jesus lived under occupation. Everything he taught, everything he said was done under occupation, exactly the way we live today."
Isaac celebrated the Oct. 7 massacre, declaring in his sermon the next day that he was "shocked by the strength of the Palestinian man who defied his siege."
Carlson's team carefully vets his guests. Munther Isaac's antisemitic views and support for Hamas are well-known, but Carlson hosted him all the same. When Isaac said that Israel is committing "genocide" in Gaza and "starving" the Gazan civilian population, Carlson made clear that he agreed with these lies. "Father, thank you for your thoroughly decent and sensible analysis," he said. "I hope it's heard by Christians throughout the West."
As for Warren, her hatred of Israel isn't news. In this, she is like millions of other woke progressives. But Carlson is a hero of the right. Can he really be an antisemite? The answer, sadly, is yes.
For a long time, many have tried to give Carlson the benefit of the doubt. Carlson isn't antisemitic, he's just an isolationist, they claim. But his antisemitism is now undeniable.
Back in December, Tucker said that Jewish conservative Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire "doesn't care about the country at all." Carlson accused him and other pro-Israel pundits of being "focused on a conflict in a foreign country as their own country becomes dangerously unstable." Instead of arguing with Shapiro on the merits, he questioned his motivations and loyalty to the United States, a classic antisemitic "dual loyalty" trope that implies Jews are a traitorous fifth column.
In June 2023, Carlson attacked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, with clear antisemitic tropes. He referred to Zelenskyy as "sweaty and rat-like. A comedian turned oligarch. A persecutor of Christians. A friend of Black Rock. ... Shifty and dead-eyed."
Over the course of the interview with Carlson, Isaac told some truly incredible lies. For example, "When the state of Israel was created, it was not created on an empty land. It was created on a land that had millions of indigenous Palestinians there, including Palestinian Christians."
In fact, before five Arab armies invaded Israel in 1948, less than a million Arabs were living there. The majority of them fled Israel at the behest of Arab leaders. The remaining 150,000 Arabs were granted full Israeli citizenship after the war. Over the last 75 years, the Arab Israeli population has grown to over 2 million. Arab Christians make up about 7% of that number and are among Israel's most successful minority groups.
But this wasn't Isaac's most egregious lie. He asserted, "My message to Christian leaders is that there is a very, very brutal war taking place in Gaza, a war I describe using the word 'genocide' because it's a war that has used starvation as a means. ... When will we learn that war does not help? When will we take Jesus' word seriously about being peacemakers?"
U.S. federal law defines genocide as "violent attacks with the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." Hamas, not Israel, is guilty of this crime.
Israel's innocence is obvious. Hamas claims that over 30,000 Gazan civilians have been killed in the current war. Col. John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, has stated that this is absurd. "Thirty thousand civilians have not died in Gaza, as a fact, because that number does not account for a single Hamas member," he said. He added, "Civilian casualties are abnormally low" and "the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] are actually doing this with the least amount of civilian casualties in the history of war."
Isaac's claim that Israel is "starving" Gazans is also false. From the beginning of the war through mid-February, 254,210 tons of supplies were transferred to Gaza, including 167,080 tons of food. There are now 42% more food trucks entering Gaza daily than before Oct. 7. The day before this article was written, 468 aid trucks entered Gaza, the highest number since the war broke out. There is more than enough aid entering Gaza today to feed the population; if civilians are hungry, it's because Hamas steals most of the supplies for themselves.
Carlson is no fool. He knows that Isaac is lying. He knows that Israel is not committing genocide. Why, then, did he give his seal of approval to Isaac's lies? Why promote a known charlatan who has dedicated his life to undermining Israel? The answer is unavoidable: because Tucker Carlson is an antisemite, and his goal is to turn Christians against the Jewish state.
We've seen Carlson's like before. In Psalm 52, David says of them, "Your tongue plots destruction, as a sharpened razor, working deceit. ... You loved evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking righteousness forever."
People like Carlson may be popular for a while. But as all believing Jews and Christians know, at the end of the day, God never abandons his people. Welcome to the antisemites club, Tucker. Have fun with Elizabeth Warren.
This JNS.org opinion piece, written by Elie Mischel, was reprinted by permission from the Jewish News Syndicate.
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