Charlie Kirk - A Nefarious Twist (Yehuda Teitelbaum) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, September 17, 2025

Charlie Kirk - A Nefarious Twist (Yehuda Teitelbaum)

I've been impressed with the writings I have seen by Yehuda Teitelbaum on his Substack, so I asked him if he can contribute to EoZ. Here's his first post.

The hallmark of a conspiracy theory is its ability to twist something ordinary and benign into something dark and sinister.

One of the more malicious narratives circulating after Charlie Kirk’s murder is that “Jewish donors” or “pro-Israel backers” pressured him to drop Tucker Carlson, and that this was somehow sinister. The implication is that Charlie was betrayed or controlled, and that those who supported him financially were secretly pulling strings.

All of this can be made to sound nefarious, but a quick look at the facts and it’s obvious why their narrative is ridiculous. Donors support organizations because they believe in the mission. When an organization begins to platform liars, conspiracy theorists, or people who openly indulge in antisemitic tropes, those donors are perfectly within their rights to withdraw support. That is not nefarious. That is normal. It happens across every cause, every party, and every movement. Pretending otherwise is a deliberate distortion.

Imagine you donate to an organization dedicated to fighting racism, and then that organization begins giving a platform to people spreading racist conspiracies about your family. Would you continue writing checks? Of course not. You would call the director, explain that this betrays the mission, and make clear that your support cannot continue under those conditions. That isn’t a "threat". It is ensuring that your money goes to places that align with your values.

It seems like this is what happened with Charlie. Some of his supporters asked him to reconsider giving airtime to Tucker Carlson, a man who has spent the past year obsessively targeting Israel, repeating falsehood after falsehood, and never retracting even when caught red-handed. Tucker has made a career out of accusing others of disloyalty to America for caring about foreign policy, yet he has devoted show after show to Israel, in ways that are objectively false, factually wrong, and morally reckless. At this point, there is no question that Tucker is not being honest with his viewers.

For Jews, Israel is not just another foreign country. It is the only state in the world that exists to protect Jewish survival. History has shown again and again that when Jews are threatened, the world stands aside. From the pogroms of Eastern Europe to the Holocaust itself, the pattern is unmistakable. Jews cannot depend on anyone else for their safety. That is why Israel matters to us in a way that is not comparable to any other issue. It is about the most basic instinct of survival. So yes, Jews and pro-Israel supporters are deeply invested in how Israel is spoken about in public life. And it's not some dark conspiracy. It is the most understandable reaction in the world to two thousand years of abandonment and persecution.

I don't even care whether someone is “loyal” to Israel. I don’t even know what that means, and the only people who use that word are antisemites. What I care about is truth and intellectual honesty. What I care about is calling out grifting and manipulation when I see it.

This is why what Tucker and Candace are doing now is so toxic. They have not gone so far as to openly accuse Israel of killing Charlie, but they heavily imply it. They leave the dots scattered on the table, knowing their audience will connect them. Their shows are filled with claims that Charlie was “turning on Israel,” that he was growing disillusioned, that there is more to the story than the government will say. They will not say the words themselves, but their friend Ian Carroll already has, and they are content to let his accusation hang in the air while pretending their own hands are clean.

This is how propaganda works. It is never just the open lie. It is the suggestion, the wink, the claim that “we aren’t getting the full story.” It is the tactic of dropping enough breadcrumbs so that the audience does the dirty work themselves. And when the lie takes root, Tucker and Candace can shrug and insist that they never actually said it. It is complete and total cowardice.

When someone spends their days ranting about Jews, Israel, or “Zionist control” with no coherence, that is no longer in the realm of healthy disagreement. That is what happens when conspiracy becomes pathology. To call pro-Israel donors “nefarious” for refusing to bankroll such behavior is absurd.

And yet, Tucker and Candace’s defenders want you to see something dark in all of this. They frame it as shadowy influence, “the lobby,” secret pressure. It is the same script antisemites have been running for generations. If Jews act in public life, it must be conspiracy. If Jews withdraw support, it must be coercion. If Jews object to lies, it must be censorship. The fact that anyone repeats this tired line today shows how little has changed.

The reality is far simpler. Donors are accountable to their values. Charlie was accountable to his choices. And Tucker and Candace are accountable for their words. None of that is sinister. The only sinister thing here is the way some have rushed to exploit a man’s death to launder old antisemitic tropes under the guise of “truth-telling.”

If you really believe Tucker’s endless fixation on Israel is organic, ask yourself why he ignores every other foreign policy issue, why he never admits error, and why he refuses to criticize states openly hostile to America. If you really think Candace is a fearless dissenter, ask yourself why she cannot provide evidence for any of her claims. But most of all, if you really think pro-Israel supporters of Charlie Kirk had no right to push back against that circus, then you have lost touch with the basic rules of civic life.

Calling out lies is not censorship. Refusing to bankroll hatred is not a conspiracy. It is the most ordinary thing in the world.