The Social World

Tag: Israel

  • Sun, sand, slaves: an influencer’s trip to Qatar

    Sun, sand, slaves: an influencer’s trip to Qatar

    The lure of the junket can tempt even the hardiest of media souls. For Twitter influencers who’ve never heard of an ethical standard, much less adhered to one, they’re catnip. That’s why this week Cockburn has witnessed the embarrassing spectacle of several right-wing personalities shilling for the government of Qatar. Rob Smith, an Iraq War vet who bills himself as “influential, not an influencer,” described his Qatari vacation as “eye-opening.” He also sounded very Baghdad Bob by saying he’s “helping to keep America strong by understanding and highlighting the unique and mutually beneficial military and financial partnerships that we share with Qatar.”

    Smith says he asked “tough questions,” yet underwent a barrage of criticism. The Twitter account “Israel War Room” chimed in: “Did you ask why Qatar continues to host and fund Hamas? Or why Qatar has criminalized being LGBTQ+? Or why you’re not allowed to criticize Qatar’s ruling family? Or why leaving Islam is punishable by death in Qatar?” Probably not.

    Smith also caught flak for admitting that he didn’t previously know the US had a military base in Qatar. (We literally launched the Iraq War from there.)

    Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support his work.

    Fellow junketeer Emily “Emily Saves America” Wilson – who readers may recall from her brutal squabble with other ex-Turning Point USA ambassadors earlier this year – published a cute selfie with the caption “So beautiful can’t wait to come back.” “Are the million slaves Qatar holds beautiful too?” someone responded. Who knows whether Emily saw any…

    On our radar

    CABINET FEVER President Trump presided over a cabinet meeting that has lasted over two hours at the time of writing.

    RUSSIAN ROULETTE Not present: special envoy Steve Witkoff, who is in Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin.

    GOOD OL’ ROCKY TOP There’s a special election in Tennessee’s 7th district today, with Republican Matt Van Epps taking on Democrat Aftyn Benn for the chance to replace Cockburn favorite Mark Green.

    Are We Dating the Same Oysterman?

    Questionably tattooed Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner has outpaced a lot of controversy during his weird campaign, but he might not be able to escape Facebook whisper networks. A Maine “Are We Dating the Same Guy” page posted a pic of him in November 2024, with “Anonymous member” saying, “Graham, Sullivan. Ghosted me in the past, then popped up on a different dating app. I’m concerned he may have a significant other out there.”

    The women of Maine, recognizing a burgeoning public figure trying to escape a lifetime of misdeeds, rose up. One said Platner “used to bully me for being fat and torture me on the bus.” More apropos, another said “I remember him from back in early 2020. We matched, texted every day, planned to meet up multiple times but “things came up” for him. Then ghosted me.”

    Naughty Graham. Another whisperer said “We spent time together on and off, last time being 2.5 years ago, I would definitely not recommend on any level. He can hold an intelligent conversation, has some humor, even a little charm…but not relationship material. PM for details.”

    Platner, 41, got married last year – and has hopefully transcended the minutiae of the Maine dating app scene. Aside from the Totenkopf, he’s a catch…

    Yiannopoulos versus Theranos

    On Monday, founder of fraudulent startup Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes (or whoever is running her X account while she is in prison) attacked Milo Yiannopoulos’s reputation online propagated by controversy over his past defense of pedophilia. In particular, she mocked an X post from Milo claiming that “when” he was gay, he was more turbulent, but is now settling into a more stable personality. It is unclear why the two are even interacting; they have little in common except for attitude.

    The imbroglio does beg the question of who would win in a fight– an ex-entrepreneur dressed as Steve Jobs or an ex-homosexual niche right-wing celebrity. “Bitch you are NOTHING,” averred Yiannopolous. “FIND GOD.” Given the musings on faith that she has been posting on X from a Texas jail, Cockburn gets the sense that she already has.

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  • Is there such a thing as right-wing art?

    This has been adapted from a speech titled “The Myth-Maker as Nation-Builder,” which was delivered by Jonathan Keeperman, who runs publishing house Passage Press, at the National Conservatism Conference 2025.

    As W.B. Yeats once said: “There is no great literature without nationality. There is no great nationality without literature.” People often ask me whether it is possible to produce right-wing art, or otherwise to use art to engineer a more nationalist politics. But this strikes me as backward thinking. Culture is the field in which a people encounters the shared symbols and language that make political life possible. Art, done well, discloses the deeper truths a people already carry within themselves. Art therefore does not produce the nation; it reveals the nation.

    What is art trying to accomplish? This wanders a bit into the philosophical weeds, but I think it’s important to begin here. The purpose of art is to reveal what is capital-T true about the world and our experience in it. Some statements, stories, films, pieces of music have the quality of “truthness,” and some do not. Neither “truthness” nor “untruthness” is merely imagined or constructed. Some things are true and some things are not.

    But language alone cannot determine what is true and what is not. Argument alone cannot mediate our disagreements. Resorting only to language leaves us with such mistaken phrases as “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” This is wrong. This is also dumb. But it points to the difficulty of arguing our way into a shared understanding of what is or is not true.

    Rather, capital-T truth is felt, not something that is asserted. It is revealed to us, or unconcealed from us. Truth is disclosed. The philosopher Martin Heidegger talks about this as aletheia. Truth is about unconcealing reality, not being merely correct. We can then say that art is true when it creates the emotional and spiritual conditions for the world to be revealed, much like how a profound dream allows the mind to reveal itself to itself.

    For those who find Heidegger a little too abstruse, I offer Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid. Mr. Miyagi’s task is to train his pupil to become an expert at karate. But he doesn’t do this directly. If you recall the movie, Mr. Miyagi teaches a young Ralph Macchio through a series of household chores: painting a fence, cleaning a car – “Wax on! Wax off!” The philosophical lesson contained in this truth is unconcealed only when it is lived into and becomes embodied. As Sensei Miyagi says: “Lesson not just about karate. Lesson about whole life.”

    One of the bedrock properties of truth is that it coheres and it endures. Truth is lindy – it lasts. Falseness succumbs to entropy. To survive, it must be propped up and artificially stabilized. False stories, false art are brittle. Lies are brittle. Truth obtains.

    With this framework, we can understand artists as nation-revealers. First, understand that nations are constellations of enduring truths about a people, an embodied people. It’s their histories, their language, their rituals, their ways of being that cohere over time. When they no longer cohere, there is no longer a nation to speak of. Second, understand that artists and their art unconceal those truths about the people, preparing the mind and spirit so that those truths can become embodied and felt. The conclusion here is that it is therefore not the artist’s job to assert or construct or build the nation. It is the artist’s job to reveal the nation to itself.

    What are some examples of artists as nation-revealers? The first that came to mind for me was Theodor Herzl’s novel The Old New Land. He wrote this in 1902, while he was still in Austria. It’s a terrible novel. The dialogue is wooden; the characters are flat; the plot is stitched together absurdly. Its utopian vision of a future state of Israel is very naive and implausible – in a word, false.

    But it does have one redeeming quality in the form of a more enduring capital-T truth: the novel reveals the longing of European Jewry for the possibility of a nation, a nation reborn. And what Herzl’s book does is project a future in which Jews could and eventually do live.

    A less obvious example of nation revealing from this same period is the poetry of Yeats in Ireland. Yeats is reimagining Irish nationalism on the precipice of the war for independence. This came a couple of decades later, but he embarks on this very self-conscious cultural project right at the tail end of the 19th century. The poet is a Protestant, not a Catholic, who speaks English, not Irish, and is an avatar for this emergent Irish culture.

    His identity and art force a series of questions: is there such a thing as Ireland? And if so, what is it? Is there an Irish people? Who are they? Is Ireland Celtic? Is it Christian? Catholic? Republican? Norse? Danish? Scottish? Is it English? And how do all these different origin stories potentially fit together? Can some truth cohere out of this cultural mosaic? Through Yeats’s art, can Irishness be revealed and lived into by its people? Among all these disparate parts, can a shared identity be embodied?

    Yeats creates this identity not by projecting a future, like Herzl, but rather by looking into a mythic past. Following the insight that nationalism is first a state of mind, Yeats understood that to change the national state of mind, you must change what that mind feels to be true. He adopts a few strategies to achieve this. We know from his autobiographies that he did so intentionally.

    First, he revives the old Irish tradition of the poet as a central political figure. In the poem “To Ireland in the Coming Times,” he places himself in the pantheon of great Irish poets of the past who conferred legitimacy on their kings and often spoke on their behalf. The point of this for Yeats is to assert the importance of the role of the artist and of art more broadly so that the pronouncements of the artist carry the weight of political authority.

    He also deliberately and explicitly excavates the stories and heroes of the medieval Ulster Cycle. These poems are some of Yeats’s most well-regarded and demonstrate his real literary genius. They are self-consciously nostalgic and homesick for a lost Ireland that begs to be reclaimed, but without the cloying sentimentality that usually comes with these qualities. They also maintain a kind of mythic grandeur and supernatural magic that elevates them above mere history and above the specific ethnoreligious claims of any particular contemporary Irish subgroup while still being squarely grounded in a recognizably Irish tradition.

    Finally, Yeats understood that a nation’s art, if it is indeed going to bind the nation, must not be too insular. His Abbey Theatre, which he opened in 1904, puts his mythic poems on the stage where they can be more viscerally felt and made into a more central part of Irish cultural life. Yeats explained: “I am no longer writing for a few friends here and there, but I’m asking my own people to listen, as many as can find their way into the theater.” Perhaps through plays – where one has more room than in songs and ballads – one can explain those elaborate emotions and intricate thoughts that are oneself.

    What about America? The truth is that neither the examples of Herzl nor Yeats are applicable to us now. Our situation is very different. We do have an established past. We have a self-understanding of our founding. We reinterpret and negotiate that founding often – there are disagreements about motivations and intentions – but there is no disagreement about when and where and what it is. We agree that it happened when the Founders convened. We can point to Plymouth Rock. We can walk the battle green at Lexington.

    What we lack is confidence in our present. We do not need a Herzl to conjure a future or a Yeats to excavate a buried origin. We need artists who can reveal what America is now. Think again of Mr. Miyagi. His pupil will not be told. He must be led by indirection from self-doubt into confidence. Perhaps it is the case with our own self-conception. Now our cultural life is very confused, attenuated, lacking confidence, lacking coherence. It is too fragmented. It is self-antagonizing and it will not be explicitly directed. A durable national identity cannot be asserted into being.

    I’ll conclude with a poem that models an oblique kind of revelation of the type we ought to encourage would-be artists to consider carefully. This comes from William Carlos Williams, a 20th-century modernist poet. The poem is called “The Red Wheelbarrow” (1923):

    so much depends upon a red wheel barrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens

    I will not elaborate further.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 8, 2025 World edition.

  • Israel is turning the screws on Hezbollah

    Israel is turning the screws on Hezbollah

    The killing of Lebanese Hezbollah military chief Haytham Ali Tababtabai by Israel this week reflects how much the balance of power between Jerusalem and the Iran-backed Shia Islamist group has shifted since the year-long war between the two in 2023 and 2024. Yet, paradoxically, Tabatabai’s killing also shows that nothing has been finally settled between the two enemies.

    While Hezbollah has now been shown to be much weaker than Israel, it nevertheless remains stronger than any internal faction in Lebanon, including the official Lebanese government. The practical consequence of this is escalation: Hezbollah is seeking to repair and rebuild its capacities, no force in Lebanon is willing or able to stop this, and Israel, aware of Hezbollah’s intentions towards it, is determined to keep the organization weak and possesses the capacity to do so.  

    This dynamic reflects how much has changed in the Middle East over the last two years. Prior to last year, Lebanese Hezbollah was often referred to as the world’s most powerful non-state military actor. Pundits on sundry television channels would gravely intone that the organization’s capacities outweighed those of many states. This is true: before 2024, Iran’s first and still primary proxy political-military group had enjoyed a three-decade run of near-constant forward motion.

    Hezbollah in its first iteration struck telling blows against US, French and Israeli forces in central Lebanon in the early 1980s. It then fought a successful 15-year insurgency against Israel, which resulted in the unilateral withdrawal of Jerusalem’s forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. In 2006, having declined to end its war following the withdrawal six years earlier, Hezbollah again fought an inconclusive but bloody three-week conflict against Israel. This followed a murderous cross-border incursion by the organization.  

    In 2008, Hezbollah brushed aside efforts by its domestic opponents to curtail its authority within Lebanon. The precipitating factor was the official government’s efforts to assert itself regarding security arrangements at Rafik Hariri International Airport, but the matter soon escalated to a test as to whose word was final in the country.  

    Supporters of Hezbollah and their allies, the Amal movement, quickly occupied west Beirut. The supporters of the rival, pro-western March 14 movement were brushed aside. The matter was settled in Hezbollah’s favor. It still remains settled: witness the frightened official government’s determination to avoid any confrontation with the movement.  

    Its ascendancy in Lebanon assured, and its enemy to the south apparently locked into a pattern of mutual deterrence, Hezbollah was free to engage in campaigns further afield. Between 2013 and 2018 period, its fighters played a central role in defending the Assad regime in Syria.  

    It’s worth noting that by this time, Hezbollah had, at least among many western observers, acquired the mythical status alluded to at the beginning. I remember a European diplomat at a conference in 2015 asking me how it was that the Syrian rebels had until then managed to avoid comprehensive defeat, given that Hezbollah was engaged against them.  

    This long run of success has now been broken. The persons who Hezbollah supporters should hold accountable for this are no longer available for reprimand. They are, firstly, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who chose to launch an assault on Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023 without informing his various allies in the Iran-led regional axis. In so doing, he obligated them to come to his assistance at a time when they neither desired nor were ready for all-out war against Israel. And secondly, Hezbollah’s historic leader Hassan Nasrallah, who chose on October 8 to open a support front against Israel on Hamas’s behalf. 

    Nasrallah, it appeared, had not understood that the rules had changed. He believed his own propaganda regarding Israel’s hesitancy and its fears of losses. He assumed that this would mean that Jerusalem would avoid an all out confrontation with his movement. He was wrong.

    Both Sinwar and Nasrallah died at Israel’s hands in the subsequent war. Israel focused on Hamas and responded only defensively against Hezbollah until the late summer of 2024, then moved on to the offensive. The extent to which intelligence was used to penetrate the organization was revealed in the weaponization of Hezbollah’s electronic devices, which decimated the movement’s mid-level leadership cadre, and in the targeted killings of its top leadership, including Nasrallah. An air campaign destroyed Hezbollah’s long-range missile capacity. A ground maneuver drove it away from the border. Battered, Hezbollah reversed the late Nasrallah’s expressed decision and agreed to a separate ceasefire with Israel in November last year.  

    Since the ceasefire, a three-way stand-off has been under way. Hezbollah, like the rest of the Iran-led regional axis is, with the exception of the late Assad regime in Syria, down but not out. Massively weakened by the war, the organization is trying to get back on its feet. There are cash injections from Iran and efforts to replace anti-tank weaponry and missile capacity.  

    Hezbollah’s new leader is Sheikh Naim Qassem. Qassem was in the past the lead intellectual and theorist of the movement. He used to be the man tasked with meeting western delegations and explaining the inevitability of Hezbollah’s victory to them. As leader, he is, until now at least, judged to have put in only a lackluster performance. Much of the Iranian monies are going toward compensating the families of dead Hezbollah fighters. Around 5,000 men from the organization are reckoned to have died in these two years of war. Still, the movement’s intention is clear, and it is to rebuild its lost strength.

    Israel is determined to prevent this by all available means. A central lesson of October 7 for the Jewish state is that seeking to achieve quiet through mutual deterrence with the armed Islamist militias on its borders is a fool’s errand. These organizations adhere to a religious and ideological outlook which trumps self-interest and pragmatism. They must therefore be kept physically weak. Since its achievements in the last months of 2024, Israel has been engaged in an active campaign to disrupt Hezbollah’s ability to rebuild its capacities. Around 350 of the organization’s men have been killed in this process. Ali Haytham Tabatabai was the latest of them.  

    The final and least consequential side of the triangle is the Lebanese government of President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. Since August of this year, the government of Lebanon has been committed to disarming Hezbollah. Some progress has been made south of the Litani river. Hezbollah has made clear that it will not allow itself to be disarmed north of the river. No one seriously expects the government in Beirut to confront the organization. Which means that as of now, the largely two-way contest between Israel and Iran’s proxy in Lebanon is set to continue.  

    The ball is currently in Hezbollah’s court. But the movement faces a dilemma. Respond forcefully, and it runs the risk of bringing down a further heavy Israeli retribution before it has had time to prepare adequately. Fail to respond, and it faces the further loss of its prestige, both in the eyes of its own Shia constituency and beyond it. As of now, it looks likely that Hezbollah will bide its time and seek to continue to rebuild. But the contest between Israel and Hezbollah is far from over. Another round of high-intensity combat at some stage remains a probability.  

  • Will Israel bring back the death penalty for terrorists?

    Will Israel bring back the death penalty for terrorists?

    For years, there was a broad consensus in Israel that there was no benefit to reintroducing the death penalty. But now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is reportedly considering supporting a bill which would bring back capital punishment for convicted terrorists.

    The bill, which has passed its first reading in the Knesset, would introduce the death penalty for those who murder Jews – specifically, Palestinian terrorists. It would not apply to Jews who commit acts of terrorism and murder Palestinians. And it would not apply if Israeli Arabs, who are full citizens, are murdered.

    The bill is being promoted by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who in 2007 was convicted of incitement to racism for chanting “Death to Arabs.” Since becoming a minister more than three years ago, he has moderated his language and now urges his supporters to chant “Death to terrorists” instead.

    The bill has also been backed by the Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, which for the first time has said it supports the death penalty in principle. Six weeks ago David Zini, its new chief, was appointed after being nominated by Netanyahu.

    In the death penalty bill’s draft presented by Zvika Fogel (of Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party), it states that the death sentence would be carried out within 90 days, with no possibility of appeal, for “anyone who murders a Jew solely because they are Jewish – including those who planned or dispatched the attack.” It also specifies that “the execution will be carried out by the prison service through lethal injection.”

    If passed, it would not be the first time Israel has had the death penalty. From the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 until 1954, it was in force under the British Mandate’s 1936 Criminal Ordinance. During those six years, courts issued death sentences to several murderers – both Arabs and Jews – and to a Jewish Kapo accused of crimes against humanity during the Holocaust. But state presidents Chaim Weizmann and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who opposed the death penalty on moral grounds, pardoned every one of those convicted and commuted their sentences to life imprisonment.

    The only exception was IDF major Meir Tobianski, who, during the war of independence, was hastily and unjustly convicted for treason and spying for Britain and executed by firing squad in the Jerusalem hills. Months later, in 1949, military advocate general Aharon Hoter-Yishai ordered a review of the case and ultimately recommended that the conviction be annulled. Tobianski’s name was cleared, his rank was restored and an apology was made to his widow and son.

    In 1954, the Knesset abolished the death penalty altogether for murder. The debates were not partisan, and the arguments for abolition were rooted in Jewish tradition – that human beings are created in the image of God, and only a divine decree can take away that right to life – as well as universal moral principles and the fact that capital punishment does not deter crime.

    Although the death penalty was abolished for ordinary murder, Israeli law still permits it in rare cases: treason, treason during wartime, crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people (such as Nazis), or extremely severe wartime offenses. In the occupied territories, where military law often applies, there are also provisions that permit death sentences for severe security offenses.

    Over the years, military courts have occasionally handed down death sentences to terrorists, but these were always overturned and commuted to life imprisonment. The only civil death sentence ever carried out in Israel was for Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who was responsible for implementing the Final Solution.

    For years, there were occasional calls – mostly from right-wing politicians – to impose the death penalty on terrorists in particularly heinous cases. But most parties in Israel, along with human rights organizations, strongly opposed it on security, moral and practical grounds – as well as concerns about Israel’s international image.

    The Shin Bet also always opposed it. Over the years, various internal discussions took place within the agency, always concluding that the death penalty would not deter potential terrorists. The arguments against the death penalty were particularly well articulated by the late Yitzhak Ilan, former deputy director of the Shin Bet. In conversations I had with him, and in documents he wrote, he explained that the only possible justification for the death penalty would be deterrence. But based on his 31 years of fighting terrorism, “the disadvantages far outweigh any potential deterrent effect.”

    He noted that between sentencing and execution, terrorist organizations would likely attempt to carry out kidnappings or bargaining attacks to prevent executions – just as the Jewish underground groups did under British rule. “In such a case,” Ilan emphasized, “we would suffer a double loss: instead of a terrorist sitting in prison for life, he might be released as part of a deal triggered by the death sentence.”

    Ilan also warned that executions could lead to revenge attacks by terror groups or even by the condemned person’s relatives. In addition, wanted terrorists would refuse to surrender, choosing to fight to the death – putting security forces at greater risk. And perhaps most significantly, those sentenced to death would become martyrs and role models. “Islamic culture glorifies martyrs,” he said, “and those who face execution would quickly become revered cultural heroes.” In Israel today, public streets, parks and institutions are named after members of the underground organizations executed by the British.

    The Shin Bet strongly denies that its change of position is tied to Zini’s appointment, claiming that its stance was formed independently by professional officials over a long period, influenced by the horrendous acts of murder, rape and burning by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and by the fact that Hamas no longer holds any live hostages. The Shin Bet has stated that although it supports the death penalty in principle, it opposes its automatic and blanket application. In other words, it believes each case must be evaluated individually. This approach sharply contrasts with the demands of Ben-Gvir and his allies, who want courts to apply the law automatically, without judicial discretion.

    There is still a long way to go before the bill passes its second and third readings. But given Israel’s security situation and with the 2026 elections approaching, Netanyahu appears more willing to advance the bill than ever before. Some reports suggest he tried to halt the passage of the bill behind the scenes. But the legislation is gaining momentum – and if passed, could reshape Israeli society forever.  

  • The global cottage industry gaming America’s culture wars

    The global cottage industry gaming America’s culture wars

    It is the 9/11 of the blue ticks, the Hindenburg of the grifters, the dotcom bubble of the slop-peddlers.

    The influencer industry has been left reeling by a new function on X which allows readers to see the location from which any given account is operating. The latest update makes it possible to establish when and where an X account was set up and whether it has changed its name since then.

    A sensible measure, you might think, but not if X is where you make your living and do so by inserting yourself into other countries’ internal politics. There are no firm figures on how many earn a crust this way but even the most cursory glance through the Hellsite Formerly Known as Twitter will tell you the number isn’t insignificant.

    It’s near impossible to scroll down the “For You” stream without spotting an account with US flags in the profile and header pics and a litany of posts, images and especially videos highlighting the worst of US political, cultural and racial divisions. Yet while this is posed as the output of Americans frustrated by one thing or another, it is sometimes – perhaps often – the work of foreigners who do not live in the United States, never have, have no connection to the country whatsoever, but who have figured out a way to make bank off the need of very online Americans for validation of their pre-existing attitudes.

    This is the result of Elon Musk allowing users to monetize their accounts via a premium subscription. Flipping the blue tick from an imprimatur of an account’s authenticity to a marker of someone on the make ought to have been sufficient warning for users, but on social media as in commerce the emptor seldom heeds the caveat.

    And now everyone can see just how many of those blue ticks aren’t what they seem.

    You’ve got to admire their entrepreneurial pluck. It’s all too easy to sit back and coast at your nine-to-five, but these guys have identified a gap in the market and created a whole new industry serving up rageslop to Westoid midwits who can be roused to anger about anything – race, gender, Jews, chemtrails, White House refurbishment – other than the civilization crumbling around them.

    Farming culture-war engagement is a slog, especially when you work to build an audience for one grievance then events (or impressions data) require you to pivot to another one. It’s more effort than reward in most advanced economies but in poorer climes pandering to prejudices and pathologies can bring in a nice chunk of change. First World problems pay Third World mortgages.

    And is there really all that much harm done?

    If you’ve been following @Zoomer_Rhodesian, who claims to be a twenty-something e-girl from Galveston, for her “Is it them again, Yogi?” memes and her keen interest in Waffle House CCTV footage, does it matter that the account is actually the work of Manjeet, a Gen-X father of eight from Ghaziabad?

    If you’re in the market for a desperate Gazan whose only son is shot dead by the IDF every few weeks, and someone in Romania is happy to play that role for engagement, what have you to complain about? You created a market and the market responded accordingly. Service sought, service rendered, cash collected.

    The follower of such an account is being deceived, of course, but only in the same sense that the subscriber to OnlyFans is deceived when his favorite camgirl confesses with a moan that he gets her so hot.

    Where phony accounts can be a source of harm is when their fictions are amplified without verification by the mainstream media. The greatest risk of this comes with accounts which purport to document issues journalists care most about, from a perspective journalists most strongly agree with, in parts of the world where access for journalists is restricted or financially prohibitive. Which is a long-winded way of saying “Palestine.”

    Even here, though, the substantive harm is not done by the Indonesian random inventing ever more lurid stories about Israeli villainy but by the journalist who fails to do that most basic of diligences: check your sources.

    The origin update isn’t all downsides, though. If you’ve ever been unjustly accused of being a foreign influence op, Elon’s latest innovation brings sweet vindication. I should know from my own X account. Contrary to what I’m sometimes told, I don’t tweet from an air-conditioned basement suite at the Mossad headquarters – more’s the pity – but from across the pond in good old Blighty. Look, I have the certificate to prove it.

    This, however, raises another possibility: that accounts flagged as American or otherwise Western will now become very valuable, valuable enough for Westerners to make a fast buck of our own flogging our log-in details to Indian influencers and Ghanaian grifters. Finally, globalization is working in our favor again.

  • Why Trump and Israel differ on Turkey’s involvement in Gaza

    Why Trump and Israel differ on Turkey’s involvement in Gaza

    As the Gaza ceasefire struggles into its second month, a significant difference between the position of Israel and that of its chief ally, the United States, on the way forward is emerging. This difference reflects broader gaps in perception in Jerusalem and Washington regarding the nature and motivations of the current forces engaged in the Middle East. The subject of that difference is Turkey. 

    The Turks have expressed a desire to play a role in the “international stabilization force” (ISF), which, according to President Donald Trump’s 20-point plan, is supposed to take over ground security control of Gaza from the IDF (and Hamas) in the framework of the plan’s implementation. Ankara appears to have played a significant role in securing the 1October 10 ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Islamists. Now, Turkey wants a major role in future arrangements on the ground in Gaza, in both the military and civilian sectors.  

    Israel is absolutely opposed to any Turkish role in future security arrangements in Gaza. Jerusalem appears to grudgingly accept Turkish civil involvement. Here also, however, given the background and orientation of the Muslim Brotherhood-associated Turkish IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, which is currently engaged in relief work in the Strip, there is extreme suspicion in Jerusalem. The IHH was the sponsor of the 2010 “flotilla” to Gaza, in which a number of Islamist activists and their allies sought unsuccessfully to break Israel’s naval blockade on the territory. But while a Turkish civil role is probably unavoidable, Israel draws the line at a Turkish troop presence. 

    This is because Israel identifies Turkey in its current form as something very close to an enemy state. The reasons aren’t mysterious. Jerusalem has alleged that Ankara allows Hamas to maintain a large office in Istanbul, from which they claim the organization has planned both military and terror activities and political and media campaigns.  

    Israel has also claimed that Turkey facilitates the unimpeded travel of Hamas officials across the Middle East by supplying them with Turkish passports. Turkish President Recep Tayipp Erdoğan has never condemned the massacres of October 7, 2023. Rather, the Turkish leader describes Hamas as “not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”

    The Turkish leader is somewhat less complimentary in his view of Israel’s leaders. A few days ago, Ankara issued arrest warrants for alleged “genocide” against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and 36 other Israeli officials.  

    In May 2024, against the background of the Gaza war, Erdoğan announced that “relations with Israel have been severed.” Later, it became clear that he had been referring specifically to trade relations. Still, the statement reflected that the state of affairs between Jerusalem and Ankara had reached their lowest ebb.  

    The Israeli system considers that Turkey’s consistent pattern of anti-Israel activities forms part of a larger, assertive and expansive regional strategy. It fits comfortably with Turkey’s military incursions into Iraq and Syria over the last half decade, its deployment of drones and proxy fighters in Azerbaijan and Libya in support of allies’ wars, its efforts to build influence in Lebanon, the West Bank and Jerusalem, its burgeoning alliance with Qatar, and its “mavi vatan” (blue homeland) strategy in the Mediterranean, in which it seeks to lay claim to expanded exclusive economic zones (EEZs) in the eastern Mediterranean, Aegean and Black Seas.  

    In all this, Israel sees a combination of political Islam and Neo-Ottoman revanchism, exemplified by a statement by Erdogan earlier this year that Turkey’s “spiritual geography” extends to “from Syria to Gaza, From Aleppo to Tabriz, From Mosul to Jerusalem.”

    Israel suspects that Turkey wishes to make use of the ISF in Gaza as a platform by which it can reinsert Turkish troops into the Israeli-Palestinian context and use their presence in turn to leverage influence, probably through tacit cooperation with its Hamas ally.  

    The Trump administration shares little or none of Israel’s perception of Turkey. Rather, it sees Ankara as a strong, stable and welcome partner, able and willing to play an important role in securing the region. President Trump describes Erdoğan as a “great leader.” The White House has rushed to embrace the new Sunni Islamist president of Syria. As Trump has noted, the victory of Ahmed al-Sharaa and his rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the Syrian civil war was equally an achievement for Turkey, which created the conditions for the Sunni Islamist fighters to prepare before they marched on Damascus late last year.  

    The administration appears to have taken Turkey as a kind of guide on regional matters, accepting the notion that Turkish power can guarantee Syria and continue to prevent an ISIS resurgence. In a recent briefing to the Middle East Forum think tank, Turkish researcher Sinan Ciddi also noted that, during his September visit to the White House, Erdogan committed to giving the US access to Turkey’s deposits of lithium and other critical mineral deposits in the country.  

    The combination of strong, authoritarian rule, an apparent ability to achieve goals and a willingness to make available natural resources appear to have won Trump’s favor. Turkey’s close alliance with Qatar, which similarly backs Sunni political Islam across the region, forms part of the same general orientation.  

    US Middle East envoy Tom Barrack on Thursday paid tribute to the Turkish role in Syria, describing “Turkey’s tireless role… a testament to the quiet, steadfast diplomacy that builds bridges where walls once stood.” In all this, one can detect Trump’s famously transactional view of relations with foreign powers. These are forces with power and money that can get things done. They claim to want stability. They offer potential tempting material inducements. What’s not to like?

    In this, there is a key difference between the US and its allies in Jerusalem. The view of Middle Eastern affairs diplomacy as a real estate deal so prevalent in Trump’s White House is programmed to regard such elements as politicized religion or nationalist revanchism as surely verbiage only, perhaps to be used to fire up the base, but hardly likely to motivate or direct behavior at the state level. Here is the gap in understanding. Prior to October 7, many in Israel also dismissed these elements, convinced that the shared motivation of self-interest would solidly undergird relations and that, therefore, for example, the Hamas leaders in Gaza could be bought off with money and material inducement.

    For now at least, in Israel, no one believes that any more. But that is the principle that appears to be underlying much of the current US orientation in the pivotal Middle East region. The problem is that the Middle East is notably different from the real estate world in a number of key details. Recent experience suggests that those who try to ignore this may eventually learn it through bitter experience.

  • The Heritage Foundation’s exodus of experts

    The Heritage Foundation’s exodus of experts

    Under Kevin D. Roberts, the Heritage Foundation is unraveling the remarkable legacy Edwin Feulner built. Once known as “the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement,” Heritage’s moral and philosophical clarity has yielded to confusion, populism and personality-driven politics. The damage to Heritage’s mission and credibility is becoming irreparable.

    Much of the recent outcry focuses on Roberts’s decision to maintain Heritage’s partnership with Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s now-infamous interview with Holocaust-denier Nick Fuentes. During that exchange, Carlson ridiculed Christians who affirm the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland, sneering that figures such as Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Senator Ted Cruz were “seized by this brain virus.” He derided Christian Zionism as “heresy” and declared, “I dislike them more than anybody.” Carlson even proposed stripping US citizenship from young Americans serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

    The record is long and damning. In March 2025, Carlson hosted Qatar’s prime minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, who defended his regime’s financial support for Hamas as a “mediation tool.” Carlson offered virtually no challenge. In February 2024, he traveled to Moscow to interview Vladimir Putin, allowing the Russian dictator to justify his invasion of Ukraine as a response to NATO expansion and to describe Ukraine as “an artificial state.” Carlson listened approvingly. In July 2025, he sat down with Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, who denied nuclear ambitions and whitewashed his regime’s repression.Rather than condemn Carlson’s antisemitic tirades, Roberts chose to defend him – blaming “the globalist class” and “their mouthpieces in Washington” for supposedly forcing conservatives to “reflexively support” Israel. He dismissed those alarmed by Carlson’s anti-Semitic rhetoric as part of a “venomous coalition.” This is not an isolated misstep. For years, Roberts has aligned Heritage with Carlson even as the broadcaster has platformed dictators, historical revisionists and antisemites hostile to American interests and values.

    Equally revealing is Roberts’s claim that he doesn’t keep up with Carlson’s content because of his sports-viewing habits – as if ignorance excused negligence. A CEO who neglected developments in his own industry would be dismissed. The Heritage board’s duty of care requires ensuring that its president is informed and aligned with the organization’s founding principles.

    This builds on other troubling decisions by Roberts threatening the reputation of the institution. Its sprawling “Project 2025” document places pro-market and interventionist ideas side by side, creating ideological confusion rather than clarity. Even more troubling, Roberts has weaponized Heritage’s “one-voice” policy to pressure fellows to remove social-media posts defending capitalism or criticizing unconstitutional executive overreach. In doing so, he has effectively “canceled” Heritage’s own scholars.

    Under Roberts, Heritage has abandoned much of the philosophical fusionism that once defined modern conservatism: the Reagan-era synthesis of free markets, social conservatism and a strong national defense. Roberts’s Heritage now flirts with tariffs, industrial policy and even capital controls – positions antithetical to economic freedom. He condemned tariff critics as “globalist elites” and celebrated Trump-era protectionism as a “tool of statecraft.” That is a sharp break from the tradition that rightfully regards economic liberty as inseparable from political liberty. Roberts threatens to replace Reagan conservatism with Buchanan’s nativism, protectionism, isolationism and central planning.

    The exodus of respected experts on free trade, financial regulation and macroeconomics, international relations and first principles speaks volumes. Their departures symbolize not only a collapse of institutional expertise but the silencing of the intellectual backbone that once made Heritage formidable. Meanwhile, Kevin Roberts hired Mario Enzler, who was forced to resign as Dean of the St. Augustine Business School after the university became aware of multiple falsified academic degrees. Roberts also hired Mark Meador, a critic of both the “consumer-welfare” antitrust standard and the esteemed Judge Robert Bork who championed it.

    Roberts proudly claims he “does not take direction from members or donors.” In the corporate world, a CEO with such arrogance would face swift action from the board and shareholders. Roberts’ alliances and rhetoric have damaged Heritage’s reputation and alienated its donor base. He is using Heritage as a personal platform for ideological experimentation and personal self-aggrandizement.

    Donors have entrusted Heritage with hundreds of millions of dollars, often through endowments meant to safeguard Western civilization and the US-Israel alliance. Those intentions deserve respect, not betrayal.

    A continued institutional alliance between Heritage and Tucker Carlson normalizes the antisemitism promoted weekly on Tucker’s show. It’s for this reason leading members of the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism (NTFCA) publicly announced their departures from this Heritage project including Combat Antisemitism Movement, Young Jewish Conservatives, Coalition of Jewish Values, ZOA and the Israel Innovation Fund. The loss of the organization’s moral and intellectual capital under Kevin Roberts is increasingly clear.

    The Heritage Foundation once stood as a bulwark of principled conservatism by confronting Soviet tyranny, championing tax reform and deregulation, and defending the Judeo-Christian roots of Western civilization. Today, Kevin Roberts aligns Heritage with a demagogue who flatters dictators and scorns allies, and he muzzles Heritage fellows from speaking out. In so doing, Roberts is dismantling not just a think tank’s reputation but a generation’s work of conservative institution building.


  • The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is in danger of shattering

    The Israel-Lebanon ceasefire is in danger of shattering

    It’s been almost a year since Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that arguably held more power in Lebanon than the government itself, signed a ceasefire to end a ferocious two-month long war. The deal couldn’t have come at a better time; thousands of Israeli air and artillery strikes had pulverized southern Lebanon, Hezbollah’s traditional base of operations, leading to a displacement crisis and killing close to 4,000 Lebanese. Whole swaths of northern Israel had been vacated due to Hezbollah missile attacks, forcing the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to spend money on tens of thousands of civilians bunking in hotel rooms. But the agreement is wearing thin. The ceasefire is really a ceasefire in name only. Will it hold?

    Israel continues to strike targets in Lebanon, both in the south and above the Litani River, in what it claims is a self-defense measure to prevent Hezbollah from rearming. Last weekend, four people were killed in the southern Lebanese town of Kfarsir. Before that strike, the UN Human Rights office stated that more than 100 Lebanese civilians have died in Israeli attacks since the November 2024 deal was signed. The situation is getting intolerable for Lebanese politicians. President Joseph Aoun, a former army chief himself, went so far as to order the Lebanese army to confront Israel in the event of similar events in the future. The fact that Lebanon’s military capacity couldn’t possibly match up to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is beside the point. The larger issue is that Israel’s military actions are alienating a Lebanese government that is, if not friendly, than at least not adversarial.

    What Hezbollah and Lebanese officials call violations of the ceasefire, Israel calls self-defense. Despite Israeli troops pulling out of the small portions of southern Lebanon they briefly controlled during the war, the IDF still holds five separate points on the Lebanese side of the UN-demarcated Blue Line, which is technically a breach of the terms. The Israelis, however, are tying a full withdrawal from Lebanon to the Lebanese government’s demobilization of Hezbollah. And Israel has no intention of stopping the airstrikes as long as Hezbollah is holding weapons.

    “The Lebanese government’s commitment to disarm Hezbollah and remove it from southern Lebanon must be implemented,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Sunday. “Maximum enforcement will continue and even intensify – we will not allow any threat to the residents of the north.”

    The Trump administration, which inherited the Joe Biden-era ceasefire agreement, finds itself in a vice. Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Turkey who doubles as Donald Trump’s special envoy for Syria and Lebanon, warns that Hezbollah still has a stockpile of at least 15,000 rockets and is replacing some of the arms it lost during last year’s war. During a conference last week, Barrack advised the Lebanese government to sit down with Israel and work on a normalization pact, as if establishing normal diplomatic relations would magically fix all the problems between these two states. It also happens to be a recommendation that is borderline pointless, since Lebanese officials will find it hard to rationalize normalization talks as long as Israeli bombs are killing Lebanese citizens on Lebanese territory. To do anything less would be to jeopardize the credibility of the relatively new administration in the eyes of the people it’s supposed to represent.

    It’s difficult to see what Washington can do fix things. Hezbollah has no incentive to part with their small arms, rockets, launchers and explosives if Israel continues to attack. Israel, in turn, has no incentive to stop treating Lebanon as its own personal piñata as long as Hezbollah refuses to disarm and transition strictly into a non-violent political party (and that’s even assuming Israel would support Hezbollah participating in Lebanese politics to begin with). The maelstrom is further complicated by the Gulf states, who would normally be called upon to fundraise Lebanon’s reconstruction but aren’t likely to write any checks if they don’t feel comfortable that the war is truly over.

    This is not to say the situation isn’t entirely negative. The resumption of full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah, which many observers assumed would occur shortly after the agreement came into force, hasn’t come to pass. Northern Israel has seen a total of one rocket attack from Lebanon. The Israeli population that left for the country’s major cities during hostilities is starting to come back to the farms and small villages that populate Israel’s northern communities. Hezbollah has cooperated far more than previously assessed, and the Lebanese army, constantly strapped for cash and dealing with resource constraints, has proven itself to be a committed enforcer of the deal’s provisions. The writ of the Lebanese state has expanded, and Lebanese troops who previously viewed the southern portion of the country as a no-go zone are now regularly deployed there. Last but not least, the Lebanese government is no longer acting in an interim capacity; its president is a leading promoter of demobilizing Hezbollah and bringing all arms under the state’s control.

    But these glimmers of hope can’t hide the fact that the situation risks spinning out of control. It’s the geopolitical equivalent of the chicken-and-egg problem. Except this time, the answer will determine whether Lebanon stays in a gray zone between war and peace, descends into another cycle of violence or gets the opportunity to rebuild.

  • Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

    Will the Gaza ceasefire hold?

    In the latest blow to the beleaguered Gaza ceasefire, Israeli aircraft this week struck targets in Gaza City after Hamas carried out an attack using rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire on IDF soldiers in the Rafah area. One Israeli reserve soldier was killed in the Hamas attack. The exchanges of fire took place amid continued Hamas stalling on the issue of the return of the bodies of slain Israeli hostages. 

    There was widespread Israeli outrage this week after filmed evidence emerged showing Hamas fighters re-burying body parts of a murdered hostage whose corpse they claimed to have already returned. After burying the body parts of Ofer Tzarfati, 27, of Kibbutz Nir Oz, who was kidnapped and murdered at the kibbutz on October 7, 2023, Hamas invited Red Cross officials to the scene and tried to present the body parts as those of another of the murdered hostages. 

    The Gaza Islamists’ intention, presumably, was to reveal this deception later on, and by so doing retain an additional murdered hostage as “collateral” in the grisly trade in which it seeks to deter Israeli action against it by holding on to the bodies of those it has murdered. 

    These two incidents reflect the current troubled state of the ceasefire concluded in early October between the sides. They probably do not presage its imminent collapse, because neither side has an interest at the present time in a full return to hostilities. Hamas entered the ceasefire under the guidance of its allies in Turkey and Qatar, in order to prevent an IDF push into the Gaza City area which threatened the organization’s continued existence as a governing structure. It needs the continued support of these powerful states, who in turn want to stay on the right side of the Trump administration. 

    Israel, meanwhile, wants a period of rest and recuperation for its exhausted soldiers and similarly has an interest in staying on the right side of the Trump administration. The President, apparently, continues to believe strongly in his 20-point plan for what he called a “grand concord and lasting harmony” in the Middle East. Jerusalem has no desire to, and cannot afford to, appear to be the party responsible for consigning the plan to the memory hole. 

    So for now at least, the framework brokered by the US looks set to remain formally in place, despite the incidents of the last days. But the path to its implementation remains strewn with obstacles. Indeed, it is possible to discern an emergent reality quite at odds with the provisions of the plan, which looks set to constitute the true “post war” state between Israel and the Gaza Islamists. This emergent reality appears set to uneasily co-exist with the 20-point plan’s continued existence as an increasingly theoretical road map. 

    The problem with the 20-point plan is that while both sides had a clear interest in implementing its first phase, from there it gets complicated. The part that has been implemented involved Israeli forces withdrawing to an agreed upon line and the release of the then 20 remaining living hostages. Following this initial withdrawal, Israel now remains in control of 53 percent of the Gaza area, with Hamas holding the remaining 47 percent, along with the majority of Gaza’s population. Hamas, as seen in recent days, appears in no hurry to release the bodies of the remaining hostages. But this is not the main obstacle to the plan’s continued implementation. Article 13 of the 20-point plan contains the provision that: “Hamas and other factions agree to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. All military, terror, and offensive infrastructure, including tunnels and weapon production facilities, will be destroyed and not rebuilt. There will be a process of demilitarization of Gaza under the supervision of independent monitors, which will include placing weapons permanently beyond use.”

    This describes a situation in which Hamas agrees to its own dissolution as an armed factor in Gaza. Part of its wording suggests the influence of the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. But this is in defiance of reality. Hamas has been massively damaged as a military force over the last two years of fighting. It no longer exists as the hybrid army of 24 battalions that entered the war after the massacres of October 7, 2023. But as may be discerned from the rapidity and brutality with which it reimposed its authority on the 47 percent of Gaza which it retains, it is far from destroyed.

    Armed struggle as part of a long war intended to end in the dissolution of Israel is in the core DNA of this movement. Its officials, indeed, have made perfectly clear that they have no intention of carrying out those provisions of the plan which call on it to disarm. On October 11, a Hamas official told Agence France-Presse plainly that “the proposed weapons handover is out of the question and not negotiable.”

    With Hamas making its intention not to disarm clear, those countries which had considered signing up for the “international stabilization force” envisaged by the plan are now having second thoughts. No external third party wants to put its manpower in harm’s way challenging a jihadi armed force determined to prevent its own dissolution. And for as long as Hamas remains in control of part of Gaza, there is an additional reluctance on the part of outside actors to commit resources to the reconstruction of the Strip, given the possibility that any such investment might be destroyed once again when Hamas chooses to reignite the war that forms its raison d’etre.  

    From the Israeli point of view, the current situation in which an Islamist-ruled pile of rubble is surrounded by an area of Israeli control is by no means unmanageable. Israel succeeded in recent months in establishing a number of clan-based allied militias within Gaza. These appear set to remain in existence in the Israeli-controlled zone. Article 17 of the 20-point plan, meanwhile, allows for the possibility that “in the event Hamas delays or rejects this proposal… the scaled-up aid operation, will proceed in the terror-free areas handed over from the IDF to the ISF.”

    Such a situation is unlikely to hold in the longer term, of course. Israel remains determined to secure the complete dissolution of the Hamas entity in Gaza, if not by agreement, then by force. But given the current US commitment to the 20-point plan, for the period ahead it looks likely that two de facto entities of governance will exist in Gaza and that intermittent hostilities between them will continue. This is a far cry from “grand concord and lasting harmony,” of course. But then in the Middle East, reality’s victory over illusion, at least, tends to be swift and decisive. 

  • How Israel won the war – and lost the PR battle

    How Israel won the war – and lost the PR battle

    Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the Gaza peace deal brokered by Donald Trump, the past two years have seen Israel achieve an unprecedented litany of military accomplishments in the Middle East. The level of damage done to Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis is difficult to comprehend. The end of the Assad regime and, with American support, the demolition of the Iranian nuclear program – setting it back years at the least – were steps that many once thought impossible. Israel has emerged from the post-October 7 period unquestionably stronger in every way except one: its support around the globe, particularly among the youngest voices in the West.

    Polling is consistent, showing increased opposition to Israel and even support for Hamas among younger voters

    The polling on this question has been consistent and widespread, finding a clear trendline toward increased opposition to Israel and even support for Hamas among younger voters. In America, the widely respected Harvard-Harris poll found last month that nearly half of Generation Z respondents supported Hamas over Israel, and more than a third of millennials shared their views.

    Gallup’s July survey found support among those aged 18 to 34 for Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Iran to be just 9 and 15 percent respectively. A Quinnipiac survey which previously showed strong majorities believing it is in America’s interest to favor Israel found support had fallen from 69 percent in December 2023 to 47 percent today, driven by a significant increase in skepticism among younger voters.

    And a major study released in October by the conservative Family Research Council that surveyed American Christians found just six in ten regular churchgoers believe it’s important to pray for Israel, and a majority did not believe it was important for the United States or for their churches to support Israel. Consistent with other polling, churchgoing Gen Z respondents ranked the lowest in favoring any kind of support – prayer, verbal, or financial. In the wake of the October 7 attacks, it would have seemed ludicrous to predict this level of dropoff. But for those who consistently conduct polling on this topic, the trend is both undeniable and the reasons too convoluted to explain with simple questions.

    “For young people on the left, it’s a racial thing, a victimhood thing,” one pollster told me. “On the right, I think it’s more complicated. There’s a strong narrative that’s taken hold in a younger generation that claims American foreign policy is still overwhelmingly being dictated by the Jews, not ‘America First’ influences. So being an Israel skeptic has become a transgressive revolt against the establishment – and people need to understand that even for those who support him, Trump is the new establishment.”

    What has helped this trend take hold in the minds of some young conservatives is that sometimes the actions of Israel’s most vociferous supporters trigger callbacks to the speech codes of the American left. A survey over the summer conducted by Turning Point USA of roughly 7,000 attendees who participated in their major student activist conference in Tampa, Florida, found that 73 percent self-identify as pro-Israel. But that doesn’t mean they don’t recoil at what they view as a tendency by some Israel supporters to frame criticism of the nation or its political leaders like Benjamin Netanyahu as anti-Semitism.

    “One of the things that’s driving more people away from Israel is when you shut them down and don’t say they’re allowed to ask certain questions,” Andrew Kolvet, Charlie Kirk’s producer, said in a NewsNation interview outlining the results of the survey and a series of focus groups. “We have lived through an era where they were called racist if they felt like DEI was a problem. A lot of these kids have been steeped in a world where they were told they couldn’t say something, then the floodgates broke open and now they can say it, and now they feel like the anti-Semite word is being thrown out just like the racist word was a few years ago.”

    The effort Kirk and his team placed on navigating the complicated feelings on campuses about Israel, even gathering multiple Jewish and non-Jewish influencers to discuss the questions he was getting from fans in the weeks prior to his death, indicates how much this area has become a minefield for the young right.

    The Mike Huckabee generation of America’s baby boomer Christians who looked forward to their church’s annual trip to the Promised Land may still be in key positions within the Republican party, but they no longer dominate the conversation online or among younger voters. And for people raised on the idea that a core principle of “America First” foreign policy is avoiding entangling alliances which risk dragging the United States into needless wars, Israel is the number one example.

    Yet for some avowed supporters of Israel, the real story here isn’t entirely or even mostly an organic one, but is driven by a number of intentional actors with their own agendas, backed and promoted by foreign or anti-American interests. Mark Levin, the radio host and Fox News anchor, has taken to labeling these forces “the enemy within,” a combination of media figures and politicians he believes have seen their rhetoric boosted and shared across social media in an attempt to break the America-Israel alliance.

    The ongoing feud on this question between Levin and his former colleague Tucker Carlson (Levin calls him “Chatsworth Qatarlson”) has been just one of many to play out on social media and across a vast diaspora of podcasts, many of which have stronger consumption among politically engaged young people than the cable-news programs that once dictated the direction of foreign-policy debate.

    In the grand scheme of things, this is a battle that is not going away so it cannot be considered lost

    Just as the degradation of power held by the Democratic media establishment has furthered the fortunes of radical candidates like Zohran Mamdani, the fear among some pro-Israel activists is that diminishing strength of leadership on the right could lead to critics of the Israel alliance – like once-MAGA darling Marjorie Taylor Greene – taking on larger roles within the coalition. And behind it all is an abiding concern about the future of the Republican party after Donald Trump. As much as Trump has cemented his place in the minds of many as the most pro-Israel President in American history, his heir apparent is viewed with significantly more skepticism. The potential of a J.D. Vance contest against the likes of Marco Rubio for the GOP nomination in 2028 could become one where differences of opinion on Israel take center stage.

    There is near-universal acknowledgment on the part of American Jewish activists that there is a problem here for their cause, but the question of what to do about it prompts little in the way of answers. AIPAC, the much criticized pro-Israel lobbying group, recently rolled out an ad campaign to rebrand their organization as “America First” to online derision. The elevation of Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, who is very public about his pro-Israel views, has prompted hopes for more pro-Israel commentary from a network that has courted controversy with their coverage.

    But there is a noticeable lack of vibrant leadership making the case for Israel to young audiences – a fact that becomes all the more noticeable with the loss of Kirk. “We know the kind of voices we need, we just don’t have them right now,” one Jewish activist told me. And in their absence, anti-Israel voices such as Nick Fuentes’s can fill the void.

    When CBS News’s Tony Dokoupil put the question to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing a poll showing just 14 percent of Americans under 30 support Israel, his response was clear-eyed. “I think the first fix is to finish the war as speedily as possible, something that I have sought to do against all these contrarian propaganda… so, first, you want to end it, end the war speedily, because in the TikTok age and in the television age, letting wars go on too long is going to cost you precisely what it cost you. There’s a real battle on the social media. It’s a big battle. It’s a battle for truth, really.” Netanyahu’s answer implies that Israel is losing that battle.

    In the grand scheme of things, this is a battle that is not going away, so it cannot yet be considered lost. The lack of bipartisan support for Israel has been an acknowledged problem for years, and now the danger of real opposition within both parties is a growing concern that can’t be ignored. For now, Israel backers can hold on to the reality that they continue to get the votes they need and the backing of many of the most prominent American politicians.

    So long as Donald Trump is the leader of the GOP, he defines “America First” – as he reiterated when some of his MAGA supporters were invoking the prospect of World War Three during the debate over striking Iran. He has given no indication of handing over the reins to anyone else.

    It is important to remember that there is a time for war and a time for peace. The debate over the Israeli alliance takes on a different nature in both contexts in American politics. The emergence of an emboldened anti-Israel faction of the American right has been driven not just by prominent voices but by the images from Gaza blasted across TikTok. With a ceasefire in place, a renewed conversation can be had. Israel’s focus remains survival above all else, even if the destruction of its enemies has come with a critical loss of western support. In the hierarchy of needs, staying alive matters most. The arguments can wait for another day.

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s October 27, 2025 World edition.