The Messiah from Washington and Us - the Donkeys from the Bomb Shelter

Tucker Carlson is right about the Open Secret of U.S. and Israel Relations

Most Israelis like to despise Tucker Carlson. I do not. I have no share in that reflex. To my mind, he is one of the more important voices still committed to preserving freedom of speech in the West. Full disclosure: I met him once. Neither of us convinced the other, but I came away impressed. He is intelligent and curious, capable of listening as well as asking, challenging and thought-provoking. These are not qualities I can easily attribute to most conservative media figures in Israel. And so, although I rarely agree with him and often find myself irritated by his guests, I listen. If only because he is willing to be bold.

His recent controversies, on Chabad, on Netanyahu’s influence, on the contemporary meaning of Amalek and more, demand engagement, not dismissal. His podcast episode on the causes of the war, on who stands to gain and who will pay the price, and his rejection of a theology of hatred, is nothing short of brilliant. The essence of his argument is painful and, I believe, largely correct: American soldiers have already died, and more may yet die, in Netanyahu’s war. A war that bears little relevance to genuine American interests. And, I would add, just as little to Israel’s true interests.

And so, I find myself in a strange position. I, a man of the absolute left, am in conversation with the work of a conservative voice moving steadily rightward. Perhaps this is what that Jewish sage had in mind when he wrote that opposites, the further apart they grow in their practical expressions, the closer they come at their root. Who knows. Perhaps it is precisely there that the foundations of a new Israeli American alliance may yet be found.

Carlson’s position on the Iran war is simple and consistent. This is Israel’s war, not America’s. It has been imposed on Washington through a long and methodical process in which Benjamin Netanyahu succeeded in reframing Israel’s strategic interest as an American one. In his reading, the Iranian nuclear threat has served for decades as a justification, yet the present war barely concerns nuclear questions at all. It is, rather, an Israeli attempt to reshape the Middle East and emerge as the region’s sole hegemon. The problem, in his view (and I humbly agree), is not only Netanyahu, but also the willingness of the American political elite to adopt this framing, out of fear that criticism of Israel will be cast as hostility or antisemitism. An undemocratic Israel, led by Netanyahu and his messianic circle, has frightened and silenced open public debate in the United States.

For his defiant positions Carlson has paid a price familiar to anyone in Israel who is not aligned with Netanyahu. Trump himself declared that Carlson had “lost his way.” Yet he has not broken. He continues, mapping with consistency the tectonic fractures within the America First movement. His critique of the Israeli tail wagging the American presidency marks a boundary that, until now, no one had dared to draw explicitly.

The uproar surrounding his remarks about the spell Netanyahu cast over Trump was entirely predictable. His critics heard echoes of antisemitic tropes; his supporters saw proof of courage. But the argument missed the truly essential question: not whether Israel seeks to influence American policy, every state in the world does precisely that, but how did such an extraordinary system of influence come into being? One that binds together politics, money, religion, and identity across both sides of the ocean.

To understand this, one must begin with an uncomfortable fact. Israel is not merely a small ally of the United States. It is, above all, the most skillful player in the American political system. Netanyahu himself testified that he knows what America is and that it is possible to “move it easily in the right direction.” One need not accept the provocation of that phrasing to recognize the reality it points to. Over decades, Jerusalem, through its American Jewish allies and associates, has spread deep networks of influence throughout Washington. A powerful political lobby, close ties between donors and elected officials, think tanks, personal relationships with lawmakers, and broad-based support cultivated across American society. All of this operates in the open, as a recognized and legitimate part of the American political game.

In continuing my own “conversation” with the challenges Carlson raises, I want to expand on one of his central insights. One of the most striking phenomena in recent American politics is the alliance between American Christian messianism and its Israeli Jewish counterpart. It is both a religious phenomenon and a formidable political coalition, shaping the foreign policy of the world’s most powerful nation. Carlson did not create this alliance, but by pointing to it openly he did something rare in an increasingly suffocated public sphere: he opened a necessary discussion that many prefer to avoid. The current Iran war is the first world war of monotheistic fundamentalism; Christianity and Judaism fundamentalist confronting Shiite Islamic fundamentalism. Each arriving with its full weight of fury, bloodlust and hatred. In a world where religious fanaticism became the political identity, Israel sits at the very core of the DNA of this extreme religious political right.

This influence does not rest on lobbying and political donations alone. It is built on a far deeper transformation. In recent decades, evangelical Christianity has become one of the most organized and influential forces in American politics. Evangelicals constitute roughly a quarter of the population and vote at particularly high rates. For millions within this movement, Israel is not simply another geopolitical ally. It is a central element in their theology of history. The return of the Jews to Zion is understood within the evangelical tradition as a necessary stage in the redemptive drama of the end of days.

A parallel process has unfolded in Israel. Messianic conceptions of history have gained strength within Israeli politics. Segments of religious Zionism and the settlement movement see the State of Israel as a stage in a broader redemptive process. Within wide circles of the Chabad movement as well, a similar vision of history persists. As an ongoing and immediate messianic unfolding. And so, when Jewish messianism meets Christian messianism, an unusual political alliance is born. Grounded not in full theological agreement but in a deep resemblance in the way both sides read history. In both camps, history is purposeful, political events are interpreted as chapters in a redemptive narrative, and the State of Israel stands at the heart of that story. This alliance extends far beyond governments. It lives in churches and synagogues, in civic organizations, media networks, and political communities on both sides of the ocean.

Into this system enters Donald Trump’s distinctive style of leadership. He has never concealed that he leads through personal intuitions and direct relationships. He sees himself as unbound by the mechanisms of Washington. There is a certain strength in this, leaders not captured by institutional consensus can break entrenched patterns. But there is also a danger. When decision-making becomes too personal, it becomes far more vulnerable to external influence. Democracies build mechanisms of balances, representation, and restraint because historical experience teaches that personal intuition becomes dangerous the moment it presumes to replace public accountability.

This is also where Netanyahu fits into the picture. He is one of the foreign leaders most deeply versed in the American arena, profoundly attuned to the psychology of American politics and to the place of religion within it. It is for precisely this reason that Netanyahu, years ago, stepped back from American Jewry as Israel’s strategic rearguard and chose instead to cultivate the evangelical base, telling them plainly: “Israel has no better friend in America than you”.

This is the real context of what Carlson was trying to say. Not a conspiracy, not some shadowy ethnic power. Rather, the convergence of several murky yet visible political forces: a highly skilled Israeli influence system operating within American politics, a capricious president, a vast evangelical network that anchors Israel theologically, and an ideological alliance between Jewish and Christian messianism. All of these are connected not only through visions of the end of days but through present-day practical reality. One that promotes, I say with sorrow, a politics of hatred and bloodshed, in the name of “love of God,” of course.

The controversy that erupted around Carlson teaches one important thing: the problem is not the existence of this or that political force. The problem begins when democratic society grows afraid even to speak about it. A democracy incapable of discussing openly the forces shaping its policy gradually loses the ability to understand itself.

This is where Tucker Carlson’s real contribution lies. Not because all his arguments are correct. But because he says aloud what American politics has long known and preferred to leave unsaid: that the alliance between American messianism and Israeli messianism is today one of the most politically damaging forces shaping America’s relationship with the Middle East. This force demands condemnation and resistance. But first, it demands a conversation. Without it, we will be unable to build other alliances: between the United States and the Muslim and Arab worlds, with Europe and its Muslim minorities within it, with Muslim Americans and with Israel. Alliances grounded more in humility and less in swagger, in shared values rather than delusional visions of redemption and annihilation, and altogether free of the embarrassing ego crusades accompanied by the intolerant hatred of all who are not them.