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Why a liberal Zionist rabbi isn’t taking to the streets over Israel’s judicial reform plan
(JTA) — Israel’s 75th anniversary was supposed to be a blowout birthday party for its supporters, but that was before the country was convulsed by street protests over the right-wing government’s proposal to overhaul its judiciary. Critics call it an unprecedented threat to Israel’s democracy, and supporters of Israel found themselves conflicted. In synagogues across North America, rabbis found themselves giving “yes, but” sermons: Yes, Israel’s existence is a miracle, but its democracy is fragile and in danger.
One of those sermons was given a week ago Saturday by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, expressing his “dismay” over the government’s actions. Hirsch is the former head of ARZA, the Reform movement’s Zionist organization, and the founder of a new organization, Amplify Israel, meant to promote Zionism among Reform Jews. He is often quoted as an example of a mainstream non-Orthodox rabbi who not only criticizes anti-Zionism on the far left but who insists that his liberal colleagues are not doing enough to defend the Jewish state from its critics.
Many on the Jewish left, meanwhile, say Jewish establishment figures, even liberals like Hirsch, have been too reluctant to call out Israel on, for example, its treatment of the Palestinians — thereby enabling the country’s extremists.
In March, however, he warned that the “Israeli government is tearing Israeli society apart and bringing world Jewry along for the dangerous ride.” That is uncharacteristically strong language from a rabbi whose forthcoming book, “The Lilac Tree: A Rabbi’s Reflections on Love, Courage, and History,” includes a number of essays on the limits of criticizing Israel. When does such criticism give “comfort to left-wing hatred of Israel,” as he writes in his book, and when does failure to criticize Israel appear to condone extremism?
Although the book includes essays on God, Torah, history and antisemitism, in a recent interview we focused on the Israel-Diaspora divide, the role of Israel in the lives of Diaspora Jews and why the synagogue remains the “central Jewish institution.”
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: You gave a sermon earlier this month about the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, which is usually a time of celebration in American synagogues, but you also said you were “dismayed” by the “political extremism” and “religious fundamentalism” of the current government. Was that difficult as a pulpit rabbi?
Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch: The approach is more difficult now with the election of the new government than it has been in all the years of the past. Because we can’t sanitize supremacism, elitism, extremism, fundamentalism, and we’re not going to. Israel is in what’s probably the most serious domestic crisis in the 75-year history of the state. And what happens in Israel affects American Jewry directly. It’s Israeli citizens who elect their representatives, but that’s not the end of the discussion neither for Israelis or for American Jews. At the insistence of both parties, both parties say the relationship is fundamental and critical and it not only entitles but requires Israelis and world Jews to be involved in each other’s affairs.
For American Jewry, in its relationship with Israel, our broadest objective is to sustain that relationship, deepen that relationship, and encourage people to be involved in the affairs in Israel and to go to Israel, spend time in Israel and so forth, and that’s a difficult thing to do and at the same time be critical.
American Jews have been demonstrating here in solidarity with the Israelis who have been protesting the recent judicial overhaul proposals in Israel. Is that a place for liberal American Jews to make their voices heard on what happens in Israel?
I would like to believe that if I were living in Israel, I would be at every single one of those demonstrations on Saturday night, but I don’t participate in demonstrations here because the context of our world and how we operate is different from in Israel when an Israeli citizen goes out and marches on Kaplan Street in Tel Aviv. It’s presumed that they’re Zionists and they’re speaking to their own government. I’m not critical of other people who reach a different perspective in the United States, but for me, our context is different. Even if we say the identical words in Tel Aviv or on West 68th Street, they’re perceived in a different way and they operate in a different context.
What then is the appropriate way for American Jews to express themselves if they are critical of an action by the Israeli government?
My strongest guidance is don’t disengage, don’t turn your back, double down, be more supportive of those who support your worldview and are fighting for it in Israel. Polls seem to suggest that the large majority of Israelis are opposed to these reforms being proposed. Double down on those who are supportive of our worldview.
You lament in your book that the connections to Israel are weakening among world Jewry, especially among Jewish liberals.
The liberal part of the Jewish world is where I am and where the people I serve are by and large, and where at least 80% of American Jewry resides. It’s a difficult process because we’re operating here in a context of weakening relationship: a rapidly increasing emphasis on universal values, what we sometimes call tikkun olam [social justice], and not as a reflection of Jewish particularism, but often at the expense of Jewish particularism.
There is a counter-argument, however, which you describe in your book: “some left-wing Jewish activists contend that alienation from Israel, especially among the younger generations, is a result of the failures of the American Jewish establishment” — that is, by not doing more to express their concerns about the dangers of Jewish settlement in the West Bank, for example, the establishment alienated young liberal Jews. You’re skeptical of that argument. Tell me why.
Fundamentally I believe that identification with Israel is a reflection of identity. If you have a strong Jewish identity, the tendency is to have a strong connection with the state of Israel and to believe that the Jewish state is an important component of your Jewish identity. I think that surveys bear that out. No doubt the Palestinian question will have an impact on the relationship between American Jews in Israel as long as it’s not resolved, it will be an outstanding irritant because it raises moral dilemmas that should disturb every thinking and caring Jew. And I’ve been active in trying to oppose ultra-Orthodox coercion in Israel. But fundamentally, while these certainly are components putting pressure on the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry, in particular among the elites of the American Jewish leadership, for the majority of American Jews, the relationship with Israel is a reflection of their relationship with Judaism. And if that relationship is weak and weakening, as day follows night, the relationship with Israel will weaken as well.
But what about the criticism that has come from, let’s say, deep within the tent? I am thinking of the American rabbinical students who in 2021 issued a public letter accusing Israel of apartheid and calling on American Jewish communities to hold Israel accountable for the “violent suppression of human rights.” They were certainly engaged Jews, and they might say that they were warning the establishment about the kinds of right-wing tendencies in Israel that you and others in the establishment are criticizing now.
Almost every time I speak about Israel and those who are critical of Israel, I hold that the concept of criticism is central to Jewish tradition. Judaism unfolds through an ongoing process of disputation, disagreement, argumentation, and debate. I’m a pluralist, both politically as well as intellectually.
In response to your question, I would say two things. First of all, I distinguish between those who are Zionist, pro-Israel, active Jews with a strong Jewish identity who criticize this or that policy of the Israeli government, and between those who are anti-Zionists, because anti-Zionism asserts that the Jewish people has no right to a Jewish state, at least in that part of the world. And that inevitably leads to anti-Jewish feelings and very often to antisemitism.
When it came to the students, I didn’t respond at all because I was a student once too, and there are views that I hold today that I didn’t hold when I was a student. Their original article was published in the Forward, if I’m not mistaken, and it generated some debate in all the liberal seminaries. I didn’t respond at all until it became a huge, multi-thousand word piece in The New York Times. Once it left the internal Jewish scene, it seemed to me that I had an obligation to respond. Not that I believe that they’re anti-Zionist — I do not. I didn’t put them in the BDS camp [of those who support the boycott of Israel]. I just simply criticized them.
Hundreds of Jews protest the proposed Israeli court reform outside the Israeli consulate in New York City on Feb. 21, 2023. (Gili Getz)
You signed a letter with other rabbis noting that the students’ petition came during Israel’s war with Hamas that May, writing that “those who aspire to be future leaders of the Jewish people must possess and model empathy for their brothers and sisters in Israel, especially when they are attacked by a terrorist organization whose stated goal is to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.”
My main point was that the essence of the Jewish condition is that all Jews feel responsible one for the another — Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. And that relationship starts with emotions. It starts with a feeling of belongingness to the Jewish people, and a feeling of concern for our people who are attacked in the Jewish state. My criticism was based, in the middle of a war, on expressing compassion, support for our people who are under indiscriminate and terrorist assault. I uphold that and even especially in retrospect two years later, why anyone would consider that to be offensive in any way is still beyond me.
You were executive director of ARZA, the Reform Zionist organization, and you write in your book that Israel “is the primary source of our people’s collective energy — the engine for the recreation and restoration of the national home and the national spirit of the Jewish people.” A number of your essays put Israel at the center of the present-day Jewish story. You are a rabbi in New York City. So what’s the role or function of the Diaspora?
Our existence in the Diaspora needs no justification. For practically all of the last 2,000 years, Jewish life has existed in the Diaspora. It’s only for the last 75 years and if you count the beginning of the Zionist movement, the last 125 years or so that Jews have begun en masse to live in the land of Israel. Much of the values of what we call now Judaism was developed in the Diaspora. Moreover, the American Jewish community is the strongest, most influential, most glorious of all the Jewish Diasporas in Jewish history.
And yet, the only place in the Jewish world where the Jewish community is growing is in Israel. More Jewish children now live in Israel than all the other places in the world combined. The central value that powers the sustainability, viability and continuity of the Jewish people is peoplehood. It’s not the values that have sustained the Jewish people in the Diaspora and over the last 2,000 years, which was Torah or God, what we would call religion. I’m a rabbi. I believe in the centrality of God, Torah and religion to sustain Jewish identity. But in the 21st century, Israel is the most eloquent concept of the value of Jewish peoplehood. And therefore, I do not believe that there is enough energy, enough power, enough sustainability in the classical concept of Judaism to sustain continuity in the Diaspora. The concept of Jewish peoplehood is the most powerful way that we can sustain Jewish continuity in the 21st century.
But doesn’t that negate the importance of American Jewry?
In my view, it augments the sustainability of American Jewry. If American Jews disengage from Israel, and from the concept of Jewish peoplehood, and also don’t consider religion to be at the center of their existence, then what’s left? Now there’s a lot of activity, for example, on tikkun olam, which is a part of Jewish tradition. But tikkun olam in Judaism always was a blend between Jewish particularism and universalism — concern for humanity at large but rooted in the concept of Jewish peoplehood. But very often now, tikkun olam in the Diaspora is practiced not as a part of the concept of Jewish particularism but, as I said before, at the expense of Jewish particularism. That will not be enough to sustain Jewish communities going into the 21st century.
I want to ask about the health of the American synagogue as an institution. Considering your concern about the waning centrality of Torah and God in people’s lives — especially among the non-Orthodox — do you feel optimistic about it as an institution? Does it have to change?
I’ve believed since the beginning of my career that there’s no substitute in the Diaspora for the synagogue as the central Jewish institution. We harm ourselves when we underemphasize the central role of the synagogue. Any issue that is being done by one of the hundreds of Jewish agencies that we’ve created rests on our ability as a community to produce Jews into the next generation. And what are those institutions that produce that are most responsible for the production of Jewish continuity? Synagogues, day schools and summer camps, and of the three synagogues are by far the most important for the following reasons: First, we’re the only institution that defines ourselves as and whose purpose is what we call cradle to grave. Second, for most American Jews, if they end up in any institution at all it will be a synagogue. Far fewer American Jews will receive a day school education and or go to Jewish summer camps. That should have ramifications across the board for American Jewish policy, including how we budget Jewish institutions. We should be focusing many, many more resources on these three institutions, and at the core of that is the institution of the synagogue.
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Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu?
Until recently, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett appeared to be the opposition figure best positioned to challenge Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s election this fall. But a new contender has emerged: Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, whose newly formed Yashar! (“Straight!”) party is rapidly gaining popularity.
According to Israel’s public broadcaster KAN, Eisenkot’s party currently projects to win 21 Knesset seats, trailing Netanyahu’s Likud at 23. Bennett and Yair Lapid’s joint slate, Together, the duo that managed to win the 2021 elections, is polling at 17 seats. Several other major Israeli polls reflect a similar or even stronger position for Eisenkot. As of this writing, Eisenkot and Netanyahu are neck and neck on Polymarket as the most likely politician to become the next prime minister.
Amid Trump’s Iran deal, which left Netanyahu in the lurch and has been widely unpopular among Israelis, Netanyahu’s appeal as a prime minister who can ensure Israel’s security is beginning to slip. Only 11% of Israelis feel Israel won the war, and 52% feel Netanyahu’s conduct harmed Israel’s interests in the U.S.-Iran deal. A recent Channel 12 survey found that 58% of Israelis believe the country’s next prime minister should not be Netanyahu.
After Bennett and Lapid joined forces to run together this April, their popularity has been steadily decreasing. Since they announced their joint run, Eisenkot has been gaining roughly one seat per week in Israeli polling.
This reflects an important theme in Israeli politics: combining politicians does not necessarily combine their voters. Bennett, a right-wing Orthodox nationalist who has long opposed a Palestinian state, appeals to a different constituency than Lapid, a secular centrist who has expressed support for a two-state solution.
Some right-wing voters who have supported Bennett now may view him as too left-leaning for their tastes because of his alliance with Lapid. For Bennett, who was seen as someone who could take right-wing voters from Netanyahu, this is a real problem.
Enter Eisenkot: a security-focused centrist with an untraditional background. He grew up in Eilat as the son of Moroccan immigrants. If elected, he would be the first ever Mizrahi Prime Minister in Israeli history.
He did not serve in Sayeret Matkal, the elite special reconnaissance unit in the IDF that cultivated many future Israeli politicians, including Bennett and Netanyahu. Rather, he got his start in Golani, the IDF’s oldest unit. He slowly climbed through the ranks, spending his career within the security establishment before eventually becoming the chief of staff of the IDF in 2015.
His political career is relatively new. Eisenkot entered politics in 2022 as part of Benny Gantz’s National Unity party before breaking away to launch Yashar! in 2025. His time in politics, though short, has been free of scandal or feuds — beyond, of course, his frequent disagreements with Netanyahu.
Service for all
For many Israelis, Eisenkot’s public image is inseparable from personal loss. His son, Gal, was killed fighting in Gaza in 2023, and two of his nephews also died during the war. Their deaths have given Eisenkot a unique standing in a country where military service has profoundly affected many Israeli families in the last few years, especially following the Oct. 7 attacks.
This experience also resonates amid one of the most contentious debates in Israeli politics: whether ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students should continue receiving exemptions from military service. As reservists have been called up repeatedly since Oct. 7 and the IDF has faced manpower shortages, many Israelis have argued that the burden of military service is being shared unequally. Roughly 80,000 men aged 18 to 24 who are currently exempt are eligible to serve in the IDF.
According to the Israel Democracy Institute, only 9% of the Israeli public supports exempting the ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service. Netanyahu’s coalition, which depends on ultra-Orthodox parties, has sought to preserve some form of exemption system.
Eisenkot not only faced profound personal sacrifice for his family’s military service, but he also runs on the platform “service for all,” which hopes to reform broad military exemptions for the ultra-Orthodox.
In May 2025, he shared his thoughts for the first time on a two-state solution, telling Channel 12, “I always speak in favor of a Jewish, democratic, strong, and powerful state, and from that, we should derive our decisions. I think a Palestinian state is not relevant after October 7.” He added, “We need to be very measured, build it from the bottom up, and certainly not talk about a state and a prize after this murderous event,” he said, referring to the Oct. 7 attacks. “Instead, we should make our considerations from a position of strength, take our time, and not decide from one moment to the next, certainly not talk about it now.”
One of the most visible criticisms of Eisenkot has been his lack of command of the English language. Eisenkot speaks English, though certainly not to the level of fluent proficiency of MIT-educated Benjamin Netanyahu or Naftali Bennett. Last week, a top Netanyahu aide, Jonatan Urich, posted a viral video on X splicing clips of Einsenkot speaking heavily accented English with Nethayahu’s major speeches at the UN and Congress.
Eisenkot responded to the video on a popular Israeli podcast, stating, “Where was Netanyahu’s excellent English on October 7?” he asked. “Where is his excellent English in strengthening the relationship between Israel and the United States, which this morning is at rock bottom?”
While Eisenkot’s party continues to soar in the polls, he has a long way to go before he will be able to dethrone Netanyahu, who has won six Israeli elections since 1996.
Israel’s next prime minister will not simply be the person who secures the most votes for their party. To govern, a coalition must command at least 61 of the Knesset’s 120 seats. To do this, political parties – though often ideologically different – must come together in the hopes of securing a majority number of seats in the Knesset.
Eisenkot’s principal rival for leadership of the anti-Netanyahu camp is Bennett. Still, both Bennett and Eisenkot have emphasized that their primary goal is to take down Netanyahu. When asked whether he would step aside for Eisenkot if that were necessary to form a government, Bennett replied: “I will do anything in the world to replace this very bad government. I will not let ego be a factor.”
The post Who is Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli politician who could dethrone Netanyahu? appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump nominee defends college cartoon of Jewish student with devil horns at Senate hearing
(JTA) — President Donald Trump’s pick for general counsel of the agency that oversees federal workers’ labor rights testified in Congress on Wednesday that he does not believe a cartoon he published in college that depicted a Jewish student with devil horns was antisemitic.
Charlton Allen appeared at the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs for his confirmation hearing Wednesday afternoon. There, Sen. Ruben Gallego, the Arizona Democrat, pressed him about the cartoon.
“If you look behind me, you’ll see the front cover of an edition of the Carolina Review depicting Aaron Nelson, a Jewish candidate for student body president. Your magazine altered Nelson’s photo depicting him with the horns and a pitchfork. Inside the article says, ‘The difference between Aaron Nelson is simple. He’s Jewish.’” Gallego said. “Yes or no, Mr. Nelson. Do you stand by this depiction?”
The cartoon ignited a firestorm when it was published in the Carolina Review, a campus conservative magazine that Allen founded as an undergraduate at UNC. The magazine’s faculty advisor said he resigned after it went to print against his advice, and nearly two dozen Jewish faculty members pressed UNC’s chancellor to denounce the cartoon and censure the magazine, which he did.
Allen fended off allegations of antisemitism at the time and again during a 2014 hearing to confirm him for a position in North Carolina. He did so again on Tuesday.
“I would not say that it’s antisemitic,” he said. “We were the group that was calling for the equal treatment of all student religions.”
“If I were 30 years ago advocating for The Review, I would say, ‘don’t run that cover,’” he testified. “I think it was a mistake.”
According to reports from the time, Nelson had been accused by the Carolina Review of discriminating against a Christian campus group by voting not to fund it. He had voted in favor of funding a “majority” of other campus Christian groups while he was a representative in the student congress.
Facing backlash, Allen denied at the time that the depiction of Nelson with horns was meant to channel longstanding antisemitic stereotypes.
“Our cartoonist lampooned [Nelson] as such because her perception was that Aaron was evil,” Allen told the Duke Chronicle in April 1996. “Newspapers in the past few weeks have run cartoons lampooning public figures such as Gingrich, Pat Buchanan and even myself as ‘devils’ with horns and pitchforks. Where’s the public outcry over these cartoons?”
On Wednesday, Allen offered a slightly different explanation. He said the picture was meant to channel UNC’s historic and enduring rivalry with nearby Duke University, whose mascot is the “Blue Devil.”
“The cartoonist’s intention was to make an analogy to that,” he said.
In 2014, during his confirmation hearing ahead of his appointment for commissioner of the state Industrial Commission of North Carolina, Allen addressed criticisms of the cartoon by saying his grandfather had helped to liberate Jews in Europe from concentration camps during World War II, the Indy Week reported at the time.
Trump nominated Allen to the Office of the Special Council — the agency that protects whistleblowers from unlawful conduct — in May 2025 but withdrew the nomination less than a week later. In September, he nominated Allen to the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Nelson, meanwhile, won the election handily to become UNC’s student body president. Now president of The Chamber, Chapel Hill’s chamber of commerce, Nelson did not respond to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency requests for comment.
The post Trump nominee defends college cartoon of Jewish student with devil horns at Senate hearing appeared first on The Forward.
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Former antisemitic activist Lucas Gage explains to Jewish podcast why he left the movement
(JTA) — In July 2024, X suspended antisemitic influencer Lucas Gage for six months for making “repeated and clear calls for violence.”
This month, Gage was in Lakewood, New Jersey, explaining to two Jewish interviewers why he no longer considers himself an antisemite.
“It’s like a disease. I’m serious. It was like this compulsion and look, it comes from a justified place in some, but then it’s like what have I become honestly and it’s like I was sick of myself,” Gage told Yaakov Langer and Jake Turx on the podcast “Inspiration for the Nation.” “Looking back at the videos that got me knocked off of Twitter … I was out of my mind.”
Gage, a longtime white nationalist activist from New Jersey formerly known as Angelo John Gage, spent more than a decade promoting conspiracy theories and hate towards Jews online before publicly renouncing antisemitism earlier this year.
He told Langer and Turx that a pivotal moment for him was seeing antisemitic theories proliferate about the September murder of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. From there, his conversations changed.
“The more I sit down and talk to Jewish people, the more I realize how maligned they are,” Gage wrote in a post on X announcing the interview. “The lies the JQ crowd now tell about me are similar to those they tell about Jews. I was part of that crowd, but now I’m glad to say I’m no longer an antisemite.”
Gage announced in a March post on Substack that he was “abandoning” antisemitism, explaining that while his declaration was “not an apology,” his “focus on Jewish supremacy alone has become a self-destructive and futile endeavor, which does not even solve the problem.”
“The problem, however, is that I got sucked into the mob—the very mob I identified as ‘my people,’ who are just as problematic as the Jewish mob,” Gage wrote. “With that being said, I do not denounce my beliefs about Jewish supremacy and criminality in certain areas of society nor Jewish overrepresentation, which are all well substantiated.”
When asked by Langer, the founder of Living Lchaim and host of the podcast, why he had the “strength” to publicly renounce antisemitism and meet with Jews, Gage said he felt an obligation to engage with the Jewish community after spending years attacking it online.
Gage told the Jewish hosts that he thought it would be wrong for him “to walk away and not speak to a community I’ve been at war with for 14 years, and to see why I was at war with you guys in the first place.”
Turx, the senior White House correspondent for Mishpacha Magazine, an Orthodox publication, said the meeting took place after he reached out to Langer multiple times.
Langer did not respond to a Jewish Telegraphic Agency request for comment, and efforts to reach Gage were unsuccessful.
During the nearly two-hour interview, Gage recounted his journey from an Iraq war veteran to antisemitic activist and, more recently, to a public critic of the online movement he once helped build.
Gage, who is Roman Catholic, said his descent into antisemitic conspiracy theories began after serving in Kuwait and Iraq, when he became obsessed with identifying who was responsible for sending him to a war he described as “a lie.”
“I went through all the conspiracy theories until I ran into the Jews and that was in 2012 when I read ‘Mein Kampf’ and I was like ‘whoa,’” Gage said.
That year, Gage began posting on the racist Web forum Stormfront that he had recently found out about “the real Jewish question” and that “EVERYTHING connects and leads back to the jews — the evil jews,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Stormfront played a role in one of the best-known recent conversion-from-white supremacy stories, in which the child of the site’s founder renounced extremism and antisemitism after being invited to Shabbat dinners in college.
For Gage, Stormfront was a site of his radicalization. After beginning to post there, he became a regular fixture in white nationalist circles, appearing on far-right podcasts, organizing activists and eventually taking a shot at elected office.
In 2014, Gage ran unsuccessfully for the House in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District under the far-right white supremacist American Freedom Party but was disqualified before the campaign season began because of incorrectly filed paperwork. Following that bid, he served as the chairman of the National Youth Front, the youth wing of the party.
Gage’s online presence and influence within white nationalist circles grew rapidly, appearing alongside former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke and Stormfront founder Andrew Anglin on their platforms. He also frequently promoted the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which is widely considered antisemitic and claims that Jews are orchestrating the replacement of white people in Western countries with nonwhite immigrants.
Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Gage said that he shifted the focus of his online accounts to railing against Israel, posting on X over the ensuing months that “every supporter of Israel is a terrorist” and that “Zionists are worse than pedophiles,” according to screenshots of his account posted by the Anti-Defamation League.
Gage said his departure from the movement was driven in part by frustration with what he called “low-IQ antisemitism,” or conspiracy theories that reflexively blame Jews for unrelated events.
“What was the final straw? Charlie Kirk. Okay. Why? Because I keep talking about low IQ antisemitism. What is that? It’s when you blame Jews for things they haven’t even done,” Gage said, explaining that he couldn’t agree with conspiratorial claims swirling on the far-right that Israel had been behind the Turning Point USA leader’s murder.
Gage said that he believed even if it was proven that the man accused of Kirk’s killing, Tyler Robinson, had committed the crime, the far-right crowd he had surrounded himself with would have still blamed the Jews.
“There’s no hope for these people, and then they’re turning on me just for disagreeing,” Gage said.
Gage’s shift quickly earned him the ire of antisemitic influencers he had once aligned himself with, including far-right antisemitic media personalities Jake Shields and Stew Peters.
“Imagine if Lucas Gage had never existed. What a beautiful world it would be. The world would be a much better place if Lucas Gage did not exist in it,” Peters said during a podcast appearance with Shields last month. “I mean, that guy singlehandedly destroyed the most cohesive movement in modern history.”
Looking ahead, Gage stressed the importance of engaging with figures who hold antisemitic views, citing the deadly terror attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Australia in December.
“I want to talk to different groups of people and say, look, yeah, we have to sit down and have these conversations, because if we don’t, if we isolate the antisemites, ‘oh, they’re just maniacs, they’re jealous, we don’t care,’ they’re going to go crazy,” Gage said. “I didn’t, but someone else did. Remember the guy who shot up the beach in Australia?”
Since announcing the interview, Langer said that his inbox had been “flooded” with messages asking him if he believed Gage was sincere, to which he responded “100%.”
“I wish more people were as authentic and honest as he is,” Langer said. “While it wasn’t easy to make change in his life, he did it.”
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