Fox personality Tucker Carlson speaks at the 2017 Business Insider Ignition: Future of Media conference in New York, U.S., November 30, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

In one of Tucker Carlson’s recent Instagram reels, drawn from a conversation with far-left anti-Israel pundit Cenk Uygur, Carlson returned to a maneuver that has become central to his treatment of Israel and Jews.

Carlson noted references to Israel in the assassination files of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, and wondered aloud why some remain redacted more than 60 years later.

His guest, Cenk Uygur, supplied the line that Carlson basically asked for: “That’s almost an admission.”

Carlson widened the frame: Why do we keep seeing Israel [in these files]? Why are the lines blacked out? Why, he asked, are there two “monuments” in Israel to James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s former counterintelligence chief?

Then came the disclaimer. Carlson says he opposes conspiracy thinking because it “drives you crazy.” But, he adds, “if you don’t tell people the truth, like what are they supposed to think?”

The performance is familiar. The host is merely “asking questions.”

But questions of this type are not requests for information. They are accusations regardless of the punctuation. They gesture toward a very nefarious destination, while preserving the speaker’s ability to claim he never quite traveled there.

And as with almost everything Carlson has written or said about Israel in the past few years, this series of “questions” is missing important information and is deeply misleading.

Anyone who has spent time with the Kennedy archives knows that Israel is hardly unique in attracting redactions. Black bars sit beside Mexico, Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Jordan, and a host of other countries. They exist for reasons that are often mundane: protecting sources, preserving methods, honoring liaison agreements, or shielding names that remain sensitive.

A redaction is not a confession. It is often paperwork.

Carlson should know this. Uygur should as well.

But this ordinary explanation, and the fact that many other countries have redactions in the Kennedy assassination files, would collapse the drama.

The “show” depends on persuading viewers that redactions related to Israel must mean something darker.

And so, evidence is withheld. Suspicion advances. Tone does the work that proof cannot.

This is not investigation. It is nefarious storytelling.

Then there is the Angleton insinuation.

Angleton oversaw counterintelligence and, among many responsibilities, managed relationships with allied services across Europe and the Middle East. His ties with Israel grew out of years of professional cooperation and personal familiarity.

Israel later honored him.

There is nothing extraordinary in that. Intelligence communities commemorate foreign officials who strengthen relationships and collaboration. Streets are sometimes named. Plaques are mounted.

Gratitude is not evidence of control. And commemoration is not proof of conspiracy.

To present routine diplomacy as something sinister is to convert normal statecraft into conspiracy.

Carlson’s particular gift (and grift) lies in inversion. He warns against conspiracism while practicing it. He performs reluctance while manufacturing certainty.

If conspiracy thinking corrodes those who consume it, as he says, one might imagine restraint before distributing it at scale.

But insinuation has become Carlson’s product. And it is not randomly distributed. It moves in one direction. The questions chosen, the contexts omitted, the raised eyebrows, the studied bewilderment — they point somewhere specific.

Toward Jews. Toward Israel.

There is never any actual evidence that Tucker provides. What remains are misleading hints elevated into conclusions, delivered with deniability and received, inevitably, by far too many, as fact.

History knows this propaganda method well. It is the politics of implication, the art of constructing guilt through repetition rather than demonstration. The speaker positions himself just outside the accusation while ensuring that the audience hears it clearly.

We know, in retrospect, what such machinery can produce.

The tragedy is not only that it is dishonest. It is that it works.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, Zionism, antisemitism, and Jewish history. He serves on the board of Herut North America.

Rescue personnel work at an impact site following a missile attack from Iran, in Bat Yam, Israel, June 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

It’s a very Israeli “thing” — so much a part of our identity that we don’t even have a word for it. I call it the “silent alert.”

When the Israeli government prefers to not cause panic or tip off its enemies, when it wants to project confidence and strength, it sometimes announces … nothing at all. And yet somehow, we all know to prepare.

Despite the threats emanating from the situation in Iran, the Israeli government has not put out an official warning or any particular instructions to all of us here on the “Home Front” — even at points when a military response from Iran seemed very likely.

Yet still, we’re already double checking our bomb shelters. When away from home, we’re aware of our surroundings, and we note the location of the nearest shelters, as we did for almost two years during the Gaza war. We’re just a little more careful about keeping our phones charged, and our kitchens stocked.

Why?

The superficial, intellectual reason is this: If the United States strikes Iran, then Iran will likely respond by striking us. There’s precedent: after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1991, Saddam Hussein fired massive Scud missiles on Israel, an absurd response given that Israel was one of the only countries in the Western world that had NOT joined the international strikes on Iraq.

Yet there is another significant and more Israeli reason: we just know.

Entrance to the bomb shelter at the RealityCheck offices in Tel Aviv. Photo: RealityCheck.

Israel is a small country, where everyone knows everyone — not literally, but almost.

Soldiers are not unknown figures on some distant base or overseas — they are our parents and children, our neighbors and co-workers, our friends — and in my case, many of my students. Small talk by the פינת קפה (Israel’s equivalent of the “water cooler”) or discussions over family dinner, are basically low-key intelligence briefings.

Of course we don’t know the specifics of secret capabilities in advance, such as the stunning “pager operation” against Hezbollah in 2024, or the myriad of tools brought to bear against Iran last June, but we know when “something’s up.”

This happened numerous times in the last few years — around conflicts with Hezbollah, and Iran. And we always come back to our “Silent Alert.”

Intellectually, we remember that some of Iran’s most deadly attacks during June’s “Twelve Day War” came in during its final days, with notable improvements in both targeting and munitions power. If the Iranian regime is truly nearing its end, it may decide to use the most powerful weapons it has been holding in reserve. Even chemical weapons, though not expected, are not entirely out of the question. On the other hand, Israel’s defenses have improved as well, including the unveiling of Iron Beam, the IDF’s new laser-based missile defense system.

Yet beyond intellect, we all “just know.” Like Hezbollah’s plan to wipe out Israel’s civilian infrastructure, these concerns might not come to pass. Yet for now, the danger is real, and Israeli civilians remain on “Silent Alert.”

Our thoughts are primarily with the astonishingly brave Iranian protesters, risking their very lives just to march and speak out — but in Israel, the threats are always real.

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.

Anti-Israel mob moments before it shattered glass door to storm Jewish event featuring IDF soldiers near Toronto Metropolitan University. Photo: Provided by witness of incident

Canadian universities like to describe themselves as guardians of free inquiry. But across the country, they are quietly training students to learn a different lesson: that some ideas are simply not worth debating, defending, or discussing.

Over the past two years, pro-Israel events have become uniquely difficult to hold on Canadian campuses — not controversial in the abstract, not banned outright, but rendered practically impossible through a combination of administrative obstruction and tolerated disruption.

Whether this pattern stems from ideological sympathy or institutional cowardice matters less than its effects. The result is the same: one set of students learns that their speech is a liability, while another learns that intimidation works.

The incidents are not isolated anomalies; they have become the norm over the past two years. Since late 2023 and continuing through 2025, anti-Israel protestors have repeatedly shut down or derailed campus events.

At Toronto Metropolitan University, anti-Israel protestors disrupted a pro-Israel event to the point of chaos. At Concordia, a student group was barred from holding an Israel-related event on campus entirely. When the event was moved off campus, protestors followed and physically blocked entrances.

In Winnipeg, a pro-Palestinian group protested an IDF soldier event at a community centre with children and families present, after the event was forced out of a college campus.

Less visible, but just as telling, are the quieter administrative encounters that epitomize how pro-Israel activity is increasingly treated as a problem to be managed rather than an expression to be accommodated.

Universities often respond by insisting that they’re merely enforcing neutral policies: security requirements, space approvals, risk assessments.

But neutrality collapses when the same scrutiny is not applied evenly. Pro-Israel events routinely face heightened security fees, last-minute conditions, location changes, or outright cancellations, while other politically charged programming often appears to proceed with fewer obstacles.

In practice, this amounts to a quiet “Jewish tax” on participation: higher security bills, more paperwork, more scrutiny, and more risk simply for wanting to host an event connected to Jewish identity or Israel.

In several cases, approvals are granted only to be quietly reversed days later, with vague references to new policies and no clear explanation, leaving students with no appeal and no timeline.

When the price of speaking is predictably higher for one community, exclusion no longer needs to be explicit to be effective.

Over time, this selective enforcement reshapes campus life in ways administrators rarely acknowledge. Student leaders internalize risk aversion. Event organizers self-censor choices, titles, and themes in the hope of slipping under the radar. Jewish and pro-Israel students stop expecting equal treatment and start planning around institutional resistance as a given.

What looks like peace from an administrative office is actually  a culture of withdrawal. Students quickly learn that persistence brings scrutiny, while retreat brings quiet relief, and many choose accordingly.

Even more troubling is what this normalization teaches those who oppose these events. When protestors can disrupt, blockade, or intimidate with little consequence from the school directly, they receive a clear signal that escalation is rewarded.

The cost-benefit analysis becomes obvious. Why argue, debate, or organize a competing event when shouting loudly and causing enough chaos can make the opposition disappear? By failing to enforce their own rules consistently, universities in Canada and the US convert protest from expression into ideological enforcement.

This is not how pluralistic institutions are supposed to work. Universities exist precisely to host contested ideas without allowing one faction to exercise a heckler’s veto to another. Once administrators begin quietly calculating which viewpoints are too expensive, too disruptive, or too politically inconvenient to accommodate, the university ceases to be an arena for debate and becomes a manager of reputational risk.

The consequences extend beyond Israel. Today, it is Jewish activism. Tomorrow, it might be foreign policy dissent, religious expression, or unpopular research. Precedents do not remain neatly confined.

Universities will insist they are under immense pressure, and that may be true. But pressure is not an excuse; it is the test. Institutions that pride themselves on courage and independence cannot outsource their values to whomever shouts the loudest or threatens disruption most effectively.

This is where students, parents, alumni, and donors should step in. Silence has costs. Universities respond to incentives, not press releases or paltry condemnations. When unequal treatment becomes reputationally and financially uncomfortable, policies change. When it does not, administrative drift hardens into doctrine.

The demand here is not special treatment for pro-Israel students. It is equal treatment. Clear rules, enforced consistently. Events allowed to proceed without ideological filtering. Protest protected, but disruption penalized. Safety ensured without turning one group’s existence into a logistical burden.

If universities cannot guarantee that, they should stop pretending they are neutral forums. And if Canadians care about the future of higher education as a space for genuine debate rather than managed conformity, now is the moment to insist that campuses live up to the principles they so eagerly advertise.

Because once students learn that they can shut down ideas they disagree with, the damage is already done.

Adam Katz is a 2025-2026 CAMERA on Campus fellow and a political science and history student at the University of Manitoba.