A season of bipartisan betrayal on antisemitism
As Democrats embraced Zohran Mamdani, the Heritage Foundation
stood by Tucker Carlson and his platforming of Jew-hatred. There’s a
crisis on both sides of the aisle.
JNS
Oct 31, 2025
Kevin Roberts is the seventh president in the Heritage Foundation’s 52-year history
If the history of the last century taught
us anything, it’s that there is one issue that can bring extremists from
both the left and the right together: the Jews and the State of Israel.
The question that Americans should be pondering right now, however, is
not so much the way Jew-hatred has surged on the margins of society
since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Rather, it is the way that animus—not just for the Jewish state, but
also for its American supporters and Jews in general—has gone
mainstream.
What seems to be the end of the post-Oct. 7
war might have signaled an ebbing of the tide of antisemitism. But it
hasn’t. In fact, the weeks since the ceasefire in Gaza have demonstrated
that the surge of antisemitism is not only going strong but has firmly
established itself within both major political parties in a virtually
unprecedented way.
Among Democrats, that was made clear by
the way that their leadership has not only failed to stop or isolate
Zohran Mamdani, an openly antisemitic candidate running for mayor of New
York City. Perhaps even more shocking is the way mainstream
institutions on the right and leading Republicans have not only declined
to disassociate themselves from former Fox News host and
current political commentator Tucker Carlson but have now rallied to his
defense. They also seem ready to defend the platforming of the
anti-Jewish rhetoric of Nick Fuentes, a neo-Nazi hate-monger whom
Carlson had on his podcast.
In both cases, what we are witnessing is a
betrayal not merely of American Jewry and the pro-Israel community, but
of basic American values of decency. What makes it worse is that there
appear to be few people of stature or power in either party who seem
interested in confronting these despicable men. That makes it a
near-certainty that this problem is only going to grow worse in both
parties.
The intersectional antisemitic left
For most of the past two years, this was
most obvious on the political left as Democrats like former President
Joe Biden and his vice president, Kamala Harris, kowtowed to their
party’s intersectional left-wing that hates Israel. Congressional
Democrats succumbed to the same pressure, with a majority of them
supporting cutting off necessary aid to Israel in the middle of its war
against Hamas. What’s more, the nation witnessed the spectacle of mobs
of “progressives” taking over college campuses and targeting Jewish
students for intimidation and violence while chanting for Israel’s
destruction and Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”), and
terrorism against Jews around the world (“globalize the intifada”).
But it took Zohran Mamdani—a heretofore
obscure New York state assemblyman who identified as a Democratic
Socialist—to make clear just how strong the pull of anti-Israel and
anti-Jewish sentiment was within his party.
The loadstone of the 34-year-old Mamdani’s
career has been his ideological commitment to Israel’s destruction,
starting from his student days as founder of a chapter of the
antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin College in
Maine. As late as 2023, he was stating that Israel was somehow the explanation
for the alleged oppression of minorities by the New York City Police
Department, a classic antisemitic trope in which Jews are always the
reason for all the ills of the world. And it continues to this day,
when, during the recent mayoral candidate debates, he recycled Hamas
propaganda, including blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in
Gaza.
Yet rather than seek to stop him, with few
exceptions, mainstream Democrats have rallied around him, believing
that the Jew-hatred he has spread is as popular with young voters as the
Socialist patent nostrums about bringing them cheaper housing and
groceries, in addition to free bus rides.
From Never Trump to pro-Mamdani
The icing on the cake was provided this
week by William Kristol, the Never Trump former Republican strategist
and publisher who has since joined the Democratic Party. In a statement
that made it quite clear that he has largely abandoned most of the
positions and principles he stood for most of his life, he told an
interviewer that he supported Mamdani.
Perhaps it’s not so surprising that he
would say such a thing. He went from treating Obama’s appeasement of
Iran as an “emergency” and a mortal threat to Israel that needed to be
stopped at all costs to supporting it because Trump was on the other side of the issue.
For someone who was not only among the
country’s most prominent Jewish conservatives but also a key player in
the pro-Israel community, to now regard those alarmed by the prospect of
an antisemitic mayor of New York as experiencing “hysteria” is
something of a betrayal to those who once admired him. When Kristol
explains that any concerns about his stands are less important than the
boost it would give his party nationally, it shows not only the depths
of his cynical partisanship but how politically savvy players on the
left—even turncoats like the former Weekly Standard publisher—have simply acclimated themselves to the fashionable Jew-hatred that has taken root there.
The Jewish establishment was slow in
realizing that so-called progressives indoctrinated in the toxic ideas
of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that
had conquered academia and most other sectors of American life was the
engine of 21st-century Jew-hatred. For too long, they had focused on the
antisemitism that existed on the far right, which didn’t have the clout
or influence of their counterparts on the left.
It is the sort of thing that has enabled
conservatives to argue in recent years that while the left has become a
sinkhole of antisemitic Israel-bashing, the political right—led by
President Donald Trump—is a bastion of pro-Israel sentiment.
But it’s time to acknowledge that this
dismissal of right-wing antisemitism is no longer valid. And the person
who made this necessary is Carlson.
Since he was fired from Fox News
in April 2023, Carlson has allowed his hatred for Israel and its
supporters to be open and unfiltered. Still, it wasn’t until he hosted
Holocaust denier and antisemite Daryl Cooper on his podcast that removed
any doubt about his views. Even after he publicly opposed Trump’s
pro-Israel and anti-Iran policies, he continued to be a member of the
presidential family’s inner circle. And leading conservatives, including
the late Charlie Kirk, Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh, refused to disassociate themselves from him.
The fact that he received a prominent speaking slot
at Kirk’s memorial service on Sept. 21, where he employed a crude
antisemitic trope centered on the deicide myth, also demonstrated that
he remained a mainstream player in conservative and Republican circles.
Heritage embraces Tucker
He reached a new low this week when he welcomed
neo-Nazi Holocaust denier and vicious Jew-hater Nick Fuentes onto his
podcast. That raised the question as to whether Carlson was going to be
able to mainstream antisemitism on the political right in much the same
way that woke progressives have done to the left.
We didn’t have long to find out the answer
to that question. And it came from a surprising source—the Heritage
Foundation Washington think tank that has been one of the intellectual
hubs of conservative thought and activism. In a video
posted on X, Kevin Roberts, a historian and president of Heritage, made
it clear that not only was he refusing to distance himself and his
organization from Carlson, but that he was doubling down on this stand.
In a brief speech, Roberts denounced those
who have criticized Carlson’s platforming of antisemitism and his
vicious attacks on Israel and Christian Zionists, whom the podcaster
described as heretics who had a “brain virus.” Roberts said Heritage
didn’t believe in “canceling our own people or policing the consciences
of Christians” and depicted those appalled by Carlson as a “venomous
coalition” who engage in “slander” that “serves someone else’s agenda.”
Roberts said Heritage supported
cooperation with Israel when it served U.S. interests—something no one
disputes. But the Heritage president seemed to echo some of the dark
rhetoric of the far left and far right when he spoke of those who
“reflexively support” the Jewish state as “loud” sinister, globalist”
forces who are somehow harming America, and that must be resisted.
He made clear that he would stick with
Carlson, no matter what he did, and his only interest was in attacking
the left. He said that he “disagreed with and even abhorred things that
Fuentes had said,” but wouldn’t cancel him either. He treated his hatred
of Jews as merely an idea that should be debated.
He did some damage control on that aspect of his statement a day later by detailing
on X his profound disagreement with Fuentes’s vile bigotry. Still, he
stopped short of drawing the obvious conclusion that those who normalize
and seek to mainstream neo-Nazi beliefs need to be held responsible for
doing that.
The point being, it doesn’t matter if you
are appalled by Fuentes if you treat those who promote him and treat him
as legitimate as allies, and smear those who oppose such abhorrent
behavior as somehow unpatriotic or guilty of dual loyalty.
This is a startling turnabout for an organization with not only an honorable record of support for Israel but whose “Esther Project”
to combat antisemitism has served as a blueprint for the Trump
administration’s efforts to root out left-wing ideologies that are
enabling Jew-hatred on college campuses. Roberts’ seeming neutrality
about his friend’s prejudiced behavior directly contradicts what his
organization has been trying to do in academia.
It’s especially discouraging since the
real “globalist” forces in the international community are the ones
whose arguments are echoed by Carlson and Fuentes, in which they promote
blood libels against Israel, and seek to isolate and destroy it.
Supporters of the Jewish state are Heritage’s natural allies and are to
be found among its staff and donors because they support the same vision
of national conservatism—both in the United States and Israel— that
Roberts has championed.
JD Vance mimics Kamala Harris
Roberts’s profession of loyalty to Carlson came in the same week as a troubling response
of Vice President JD Vance to questions from an Israel-hating student
at a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi. When
given an opportunity to slap down anti-Israel conspiracy theories, he
let them go unanswered. He responded with what could only be described
as an equivocal statement about the U.S.-Israel relationship in which he
boasted of pressuring Jerusalem during the recent ceasefire
negotiations and professed his Christian faith.
While Trump and Vance have strong pro-Israel records, Vance’s answer was little different from the way Harris responded
to smears of Israel from left-wing activists when campaigning last
year, when she was primarily interested in signaling her sympathy for
them. Like her, Vance seemed to be signaling that he, too, was more
concerned with demonstrating his solidarity with extremists on his end
of the spectrum than in distancing himself from them. When you consider
that Vance is the likely frontrunner to succeed Trump, it calls into
question whether Trump’s historic pro-Israel policies will be maintained
if he wins in 2028.
Both battles must be fought
Taken together, all these events present an ugly picture of the current state of political debate in the United States.
There is no doubt that most of those who
are supporting the U.S.-Israel alliance and fighting antisemitism can be
found among Republicans and on the political right, while all the
energy and most of the young stars in the Democratic Party are to be
found among its anti-Israel and antisemitic left-wing. And unlike the
crickets to be heard among most prominent Democrats about Mamdani, the
pushback against Heritage and Carlson from prominent Republicans like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee is a sign that the
conservative base of the GOP is still firmly pro-Israel and ready to
fight Jew-hatred wherever it is to be found.
But what we heard from the Heritage
Foundation and Vance this week indicates that the antisemites have not
only gotten a foothold within the conservative mainstream. Some of the
most important players in it would prefer to embrace them rather than to
drive them back to the fever swamps where they belong.
This is a sobering revelation for those
who have long taken comfort from the way that the two major American
political parties had more or less exchanged identities in the last
half-century when it came to Israel and opposition to antisemitism. This
shouldn’t diminish the effort to call the political left to account for
its role in normalizing hatred for Israel. But it is a discouraging
reminder that the same battle must now also be fought on the political
right.
