Tucker Carlson's Timely Antisemitic Broadcast Drops Before Passover

Throughout most of the conversation, Tucker sits silently, staring, absorbing Isaac’s lines, and plotting his next ones. It’s almost as if they rehearsed, with Tucker slowly lobbing Isaac a loaded question, and Isaac knocking it out of the park with baseless lies behind every swing. In some instances, Tucker interrupts Isaac to hone down on a point, but never once challenges even Isaac’s most blatant transgressions.

Inviting Isaac for this platform is bad enough. Tucker and his producers should know better. It seems facts don’t matter. The question one is left with is to what degree Tucker is motivated by gross ignorance or malicious hate. But either way, he goads Isaac repeatedly.

One instance that was glaring, Tucker states that Evangelical leaders care more about the “highly secular” government of Israel than they care about Christians of the Middle East. This, of course, leads Isaac to excoriate Christian Zionism, based on a (false) belief that Christians must support Israel because the Bible says so, citing theological reasons with which he disagrees why this is the case. As if he’s an authority, Isaac dismisses the Biblical truth that God did indeed choose the Jewish people, and deed them the Land of Israel. God’s covenant is not conditional, as the anti-Biblical Tucker-Munther tag team would have you believe.

Tucker continues to set up Isaac for his fact-less monologue, saying that the US is “paying for a lot of these military operations” that they claim target and persecute Christians. Isaac doubles down on Tucker's assertion, drawing conclusions from the most sweeping (and baseless) generalizations.

By repeatedly delegitimizing Israel as secular, Tucker and Isaac suggest that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist and that God’s covenant is conditional on whether the Jewish people are secular or religious, or even manipulate and trample all over Biblical reality like Tucker-Munther.  If that’s not antisemitic by denying Biblical reality and using it to hold Israel to a different standard, I don’t know what is.

One didn’t need to watch the whole grueling program/pogrom to understand what was being said. At the beginning of the diatribe, it was clear where it was going.   Isaac conflates allegations of human rights abuse and genocide against all Palestinian Arabs in general with the status of Christian Arabs. He lets Tucker (and Tucker’s vulnerable followers) believe that a war against a terrorist organization in a Palestinian culture that allows, celebrates, and supports terror and kidnapping is de facto the same as the situation for Palestinian Arab Christians.  Isaac blames Israel and Israel alone for problems facing Christians rather than our – Jews and Christians – extremist Islamic neighbors.

This is a well-documented lie. Knowing that the Christian population of Bethlehem, Isaac’s hometown, used to be 80% before the Palestinian Authority took control in the 1990s and that today it is about 10%, the only true blame is from Palestinian Arab Muslims.

I’ve experienced this personally.  A few years ago, I decided to buy custom-made coffee mugs from a Palestinian Arab Christian, feeling that I received a quality product and service for the value and that I was helping a Christian in Bethlehem to make a living. Because he can’t come into my community and I can’t go into his, for fear of my own security, we met on the side of the road in what must have looked like an illicit deal.  Everything was friendly and cordial until I suggested that we take a selfie together.   “Why,” he panicked as his demeanor went from warm to cold to fearful on the turn of a dime. “What are you going to do with it,” he demanded.  

When I said that I wanted to share with my Christian friends overseas who would be pleased to know that we were supporting Christian business in Bethlehem, he told me no, he couldn’t take a picture with me because it would be dangerous for him if that picture ever got out that he was doing business with me, a Jewish “settler.”

I had not threatened him in the least, but he was threatened by having a picture with me.

If it had been me on the show, Tucker would have interrogated me as to why a Palestinian Arab Christian couldn’t come into my community. Forget that Tucker knows very well about gated communities where people who don’t live there, have business there or are guests are not allowed to enter; Tucker actually asked why Gazan Christians were not allowed to come to Israel, stating that they obviously don’t threaten anyone.  The fact of an abundance of Palestinian Arab terror leaders being Christian aside, along with many who, like Isaac, are indeed enemies seeking to harm Israel, there’s another double standard that makes Tucker’s rant antisemitic

While suggesting that Christian Gazans should be able to come into Israel freely because they are Christian, Tucker certainly does not advocate for that on the US-Mexican border.  Just as Tucker rightly is opposed to the US border being open to anyone who can walk across it, why does he hold Israel to a different standard as to who it allows to cross its border or become a citizen? Why is the universal right and obligation of any country to do that suddenly erased by Tucker Carlson? One word: antisemitism.

Let's test my theory and bus all the Arabs, or Christians, walking across the Mexican border to Tucker’s house. I am sure he’ll welcome them with open arms, leaving instructions at the gatehouse to let them all in.

In addition to slandering Israel as “secular,” not once but four times, Tucker literally doesn’t blink as Isaac accuses Israel of “occupation” a whopping six times, and mentions the “Nakba/catastrophe,” “settlements,” “siege,” “two-state solution” each twice, and “genocide,” “war crimes,” “human rights abuse,” “international law,” “collective punishment,” and “apartheid” all to slander Israel once each. Delegitimizing Israel oozes out of Isaac’s pores, using these to blame Israel for the plight of the Palestinian Arabs. Never once did Tucker-Munther mention Hamas or the actual massacre and kidnapping that took place on October 7. Tucker does not push back once on Isaacs’ barrage of attacks, even hinting that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority MIGHT be just a little responsible. 

Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Ivan Apfel / Stringer
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Crosswalk Headlines. 

Jonathan Feldstein was born and educated in the U.S. and immigrated to Israel in 2004. He is married and the father of six. Throughout his life and career, he has been blessed by the calling to fellowship with Christian supporters of Israel and shares experiences of living as an Orthodox Jew in Israel. He writes regularly for a variety of prominent Christian and conservative websites and is the host of Inspiration from Zion, a popular webinar series and podcast. He can be reached at firstpersonisrael@gmail.com.