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From Coughlin to Carlson: The Return of the ‘Jewish War’ Libel
Tucker Carlson speaks on first day of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
Nearly every generation in America produces the same refrain in moments of conflict: this is not our war.
Sometimes that argument reflects prudence. Sometimes it reflects hardheaded cost-benefit analysis. But in American history, it has also carried something more corrosive — the suggestion that America is not acting on its own interests at all, that shadowy “foreign” forces are pulling the strings, and that those forces are Jewish.
In the 1930s, Father Charles Coughlin aligned himself with the isolationist fervor that would later crystallize into the America First movement. He warned about foreign entanglements and demanded neutrality. In practice, that neutrality meant opposing American support for Britain, while leaving Nazi Germany untouched.
Coughlin spoke darkly of “international bankers” and “alien powers.” His audience understood the code: Jews were cast as the hidden drivers of war and finance, steering the United States toward bloodshed for their own purposes.
Henry Ford dispensed with code altogether. Through The International Jew, he accused Jews outright of orchestrating global conflict and corrupting nations from within. His antisemitic publications were celebrated in Nazi Germany, and Hitler publicly praised him.
It wasn’t realism. It was antisemitism in a patriotic costume.
Reasonable people can debate military intervention. What they cannot responsibly do is attribute war to a secret Jewish hand.
Nearly a century after Henry Ford and World War II, many Americans treat this rhetoric as archival — something from black-and-white newsreels. It isn’t. The nouns have changed. The structure hasn’t.
“International bankers” becomes “the Israel lobby.”
“Dual loyalty” becomes “Israel-funded traitors.”
“Alien interests” becomes “Zionists dragging America into war.”
The accusation is the same. Americans aren’t really in charge. Jews are.
Carrie Prejean Boller recently urged Americans to promise “to never elect another Israel-funded traitor ever again.” That is not foreign-policy analysis. It is an explicit charge of treason tethered to support for the only Jewish state.
Candace Owens operates in a more theatrical register, but the mechanism is familiar: insinuation over evidence, suggestion over argument — the steady implication that Israel lurks behind everything bad.
One grotesque example was the insinuation that Israel somehow bore responsibility for Charlie Kirk’s death because he opposed war with Iran — despite Kirk explicitly supporting Trump’s decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites this past June and rejecting the false choice between isolationism and endless war.
But facts are incidental in this antisemitic ecosystem. Suspicion is the product. Hate is the goal.
On the far-left, the tone changes but the inversion remains. Cenk Uygur recently posted a poll asking who has done more damage to the world: Benjamin Netanyahu or Ali Khamenei. An elected leader in a democracy — where citizens protest freely and newspapers criticize the government daily — was framed as morally interchangeable with an unelected theocrat who imprisons women for “immodesty,” executes dissidents, hangs gay people, mass-murders protestors, and exports terrorism across continents.
Calling that comparison analysis flatters it.
Tucker Carlson now amplifies similar narratives at scale. Two days into the conflict with Iran, he alleged that Mossad agents were arrested in Saudi Arabia and Qatar planting bombs — a claim for which no credible evidence was produced and which regional officials, including in Qatar, publicly denied. The allegation mattered more than its veracity. Israel as covert arsonist. Israel as manipulator. Israel as the nefarious hand pushing America into war.
It is Coughlin’s playbook, translated for social media and YouTube.
Watch the pattern unfold. October 7th recedes. Casualty numbers are stripped of battlefield context and redeployed as moral indictments. Blame narrows to Netanyahu, widens to Israel, then to “Zionism,” and eventually to anyone who defends Israel’s right to exist or defend itself.
And eventually the word returns: traitor.
Once that vocabulary reenters political discourse, history supplies the rest.
We already see open talk of blacklists, deportations, and political cleansing — often from voices that simultaneously claim Israel suppresses free speech, even as they excuse regimes that imprison journalists, issue fatwas, and execute protesters.
Israel is among the most scrutinized countries in the world. Its press assails its leaders without restraint. Its citizens often fill the streets in protest. Yet those who demonize it claim victimhood and warn of censorship, while defending governments that criminalize dissent and murder dissenters as a matter of state policy.
Conspiracy theories do not demand coherence. They require a villain.
What makes this moment volatile is the current convergence. Significant elements of the American far-left and segments of the woke-right arriving at the same charge: Jews are the hidden engine of war. Israel manipulates American power. Jewish loyalty is suspect.
This is not merely ugly rhetoric. It is strategically reckless.
The Iranian regime chants “death to America.” It arms extremist militias responsible for the deaths of American soldiers. It coordinates militarily and economically with Russia and China. It advances its nuclear program while expanding a ballistic missile arsenal designed to make any future intervention incredibly costly in blood and treasure or impossible.
Yet parts of the American right now argue that confronting such a regime cannot possibly serve American interests — because Israel is involved.
They offer no strategic framework explaining how appeasing a regime aligned with America’s principal adversaries strengthens the United States. They do not explain how allowing that regime to entrench militarily across the region with an arsenal of over 20,000 ballistic missiles enhances American security. They return, instead, to a familiar suggestion: Israel must be the problem.
That is not isolationism. It is fixation.
It is the same fixation that drove Ford to publish The International Jew. The same fixation that animated Coughlin’s warnings about “alien powers.” The same fixation that made “America First” in 1939 supportive of Nazi Germany over Britain.
As Charlie Kirk has bluntly observed, antisemitism is loser behavior. Historically, it has also been strategically disastrous behavior.
The recurring story is simple: if Americans suffer, if America bleeds, someone insists that Jews must be pulling the strings.
That story has never strengthened the United States. It has never preserved peace. And it has never ended well for the societies foolish enough to fully embrace it.
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.
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Frontrunner for Iran’s Next Supreme Leader Emerges, US Sub Sinks Iranian Warship Off Sri Lanka
Mojtaba Khamenei, the second son of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, visits Hezbollah’s office in Tehran, Iran, Oct. 1, 2024. Photo: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The powerful son of Iran’s slain supreme leader emerged on Wednesday as a frontrunner to succeed him as the US stepped up its military campaign against Tehran.
As new explosions rang out in Tehran, plans were in doubt for a funeral for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, killed by Israeli forces on Saturday in the first assassination of a nation’s top ruler by an airstrike.
The body had been expected to lie in state in a vast Tehran mosque from Wednesday evening, but state media reported a farewell ceremony had been postponed.
Two Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iran’s slain supreme leader, was not in Tehran when his father was killed in a strike that destroyed the leader‘s compound.
Iran said the Assembly of Experts that will select the new leader would announce its decision soon, only the second time it will have done so since the Islamic Republic’s founding in 1979.
Assembly member Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told state TV the candidates had already been identified but did not name them.
Israel said it would hunt down whoever was chosen.
Other candidates for supreme leader include Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the Islamic Republic’s founder and a champion of the reformist faction sidelined in recent decades.
But the favorite appears to be Mojtaba Khamenei, who has amassed power as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control, the Iranian sources said. Choosing him would send a signal that hardliners were still firmly in charge.
Some Iranians have openly celebrated the death of the supreme leader, whose security forces killed thousands of anti-government demonstrators only weeks ago in the biggest domestic unrest since the era of the revolution.
But Iranians angry with the government said there was unlikely to be much sign of protest while bombs are falling.
“We have nowhere to go to protect ourselves from strikes, how can we protest?” Farah, 45, said by phone from Tehran, adding that the security forces “are everywhere. They will kill us. I hate this regime, but first I have to think about the safety of my two children.”
Meanwhile, in a sign of the US military’s reach, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said a US submarine had sunk an Iranian warship off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. At least 80 people were killed, Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister told local television.
The United States and Israel pressed on with their round-the-clock assaults on Iran that began on Saturday. The top US commander said the campaign was “ahead of the game plan” and Hegseth said the US was winning the conflict.
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it is not a fair fight. We are punching them while they’re down,” Hegseth told a briefing. “Our air defenses and that of our allies have plenty of runway. We can sustain this fight easily for as long as we need to.”
A New York Times report said that Iranian intelligence had reached out to the CIA early in the war about a path toward ending the conflict.
The report said that officials in Washington were skeptical of an “off-ramp” for now, while Trump said on Tuesday that Iranians wanted talks but it was “too late.”
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Britain Launches Review Into School-Related Antisemitism
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Donald Trump (not pictured) hold a bilateral meeting at Trump Turnberry golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, Britain, July 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Britain‘s government on Wednesday launched an independent review into antisemitism in England’s schools and colleges, responding to data showing classroom-related incidents have doubled since before Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.
Attacks on Jews have risen globally since Hamas’s assault on Israel, which triggered the Gaza war. Britain reported a 4% annual increase in cases of antisemitism in 2025 – the second-highest total on record – including a sharp spike after a deadly synagogue attack in northern England in October.
The Community Security Trust, which advises Jewish communities on security, recorded 204 school–related antisemitic incidents in 2025, twice pre-2023 levels.
“The figures are stark and clear,” education minister Bridget Phillipson said in a statement.
She added that “too many Jewish teachers who raised concerns felt that nothing was done. That is not acceptable.”
The government said the aim of the review was to assess how well education settings identify, prevent and respond to antisemitic behavior, and where further support was needed.
The review will examine schools’ policies, how incidents are handled when they occur, what preventive measures are in place, and how external factors – including protests outside schools and wider geopolitical tensions – influence behavior within education settings.
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Israel Orders Lebanese to Leave Swathe of the South ‘Immediately’ as Hezbollah Strikes Ramp Up
Smoke rises after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs, following an escalation between Hezbollah and Israel, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, Lebanon, March 4, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Israel warned residents to immediately leave a swathe of south Lebanon on Wednesday, ordering them to move north of the Litani River on the third day of full-blown hostilities with the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.
Lebanon has emerged as a theater in the war that has engulfed the region since the United States and Israel attacked Iran. Hezbollah launched drones and rockets at Israel on Monday, prompting Israeli retaliation.
Nearly 60,000 people have fled the fighting, the United Nations said, adding to tens of thousands who were already displaced by a 2024 war between Hezbollah and Israel.
An Israeli military spokesperson published a map on Wednesday of the area in southern Lebanon that he said residents should evacuate, an area amounting to around 8% of Lebanese territory.
A day after Israel‘s defense minister said he had authorized the military to advance and take control of additional positions, Israeli troops had moved into at least nine towns in southern Lebanon, a senior Lebanese security official told Reuters.
The Israeli military said two soldiers were wounded as a result of anti-tank fire, the first reported injuries among Israeli troops since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday.
ISRAELI TROOPS ‘A LITTLE FARTHER’ INSIDE LEBANON
The Lebanese army said it had redeployed troops from some border positions in light of Israeli incursions into southern Lebanon.
It said it had arrested 26 Lebanese nationals in various places who were carrying weapons without a license but did not say whether they were members of Hezbollah. The Lebanese cabinet on Monday voted to outlaw Hezbollah’s military activities.
The Israeli military declined to comment on any specific new deployments in Lebanon.
A spokesperson said the military was “positioning troops a little farther” into Lebanon than before, “to prevent any attacks against the northern communities” in Israel.
Israel has kept troops at several locations inside Lebanese territory since its 2024 war against Hezbollah.
While Israel has already warned residents to leave dozens of villages in the south, Wednesday’s order was the broadest yet, covering an area between the border and the Litani River, which meets the Mediterranean some 10 km (6 miles) north of Tyre, a historic port city and one of Lebanon’s biggest.
The Israeli warning told residents to immediately move north of the river “to guarantee your safety.”
Many thousands of Lebanese have already fled their homes in the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs of Beirut, and the south, parts of the country that bore the brunt of the 2024 war.
50 KILLED IN LEBANON, SAYS HEALTH MINISTRY
An Israeli airstrike hit a four-story building in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbeck, killing six people and wounding 15, the Lebanese National News Agency reported. It said rescue workers were still searching for missing people.
A strike also hit a hotel in the Beirut suburb of Hazmieh, well outside the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs.
Hezbollah announced a number of attacks on Wednesday, including one using what it described as a precision-guided missile that it said was fired at a military facility in northern Israel, and another with attack drones fired at a base 120 km (75 miles) inside Israel.
On Tuesday, missiles fired from Lebanon set off air raid sirens as deep into the country as its main commercial hub Tel Aviv. An Israeli military source said they were fired by Hezbollah. There was no immediate claim by the group.
The Lebanese health ministry has said 50 people have been killed in Lebanon since Monday and 246 wounded.
There have been no reported fatalities in Israel as a result of attacks by Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi’ite Muslim group established by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1982.
During the 2024 fighting, tens of thousands of Israelis were evacuated from towns in the border area but many have now returned. Israeli officials have said there are no plans to remove them for now.
Hezbollah said it opened fire on Monday to avenge the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday in the US-Israeli attack.
Israeli military spokesperson Effie Defrin said the Israeli military had attacked more than 250 Hezbollah targets throughout Lebanon over a 48-hour period.
Israel has invaded Lebanon several times since 1978, and occupied a belt of territory in the south until 2000, when it withdrew following years of guerrilla warfare by Hezbollah.