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TikTok star Montana Tucker follows Holocaust series by emceeing embassy event for Israel’s 75th anniversary
(JTA) — TikTok star Montana Tucker, who documented a family trip to Auschwitz last year for her millions of followers, will emcee the Israeli embassy in Washington’s event celebrating Israel’s 75th anniversary.
The 30-year-old actress and singer is best known for her short dance videos, which often include celebrities. She has over 9 million TikTok followers and close to 3 million Instagram followers.
Tucker’s selection as the emcee for the Israeli embassy event, to be Tuesday at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., comes as the star builds a reputation for Jewish content.
Last June, Tucker and her mother visited Auschwitz, the former Nazi death camp that is now a museum and memorial in Oswiecim, Poland. Tucker’s great-grandmother and other relatives were murdered there during the Holocaust.
Tucker narrated a series of short videos about the trip, which she titled “How To: Never Forget” and collected into a 23-minute video on YouTube in January, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
A press release for the embassy event linked to the video series.
She has said that she was inspired in part to educate others about Holocaust history and antisemitism by Kanye West’s series of antisemitic rants last fall. She was also disturbed by a 2020 Claims Conference survey on millennial and Gen Z knowledge of the Holocaust that found that 63% of those demographics in the United States did not know 6 million Jews died during World War II.
In March, Tucker then posted a conversation she had with second gentleman Doug Emhoff, who had visited Auschwitz in January and who is also focused on efforts to combat antisemitism. She had attended the first White House Jewish Women’s Forum days earlier.
Tucker, who grew up in Boca Raton, Florida, and also releases pop music, was close with her grandparents who survived the war and recorded testimony for Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation archive.
“My whole life, I always knew my grandparents’ stories,” Tucker told Variety in January. “I’ve always felt very, very attached to them. They used to speak at all the schools down in Florida. My zaide [grandfather in Yiddish]… would wear a pin that said, ‘I’m a survivor.’”
Tucker also has ties to Israel, where she had her bat mitzvah ceremony, as Jewish Insider reported. She said it’s a “big priority” to visit again soon.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.