Netanyahu takes aim at the so-called 'woke right,' Tucker Carlson

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with pro-Israel American social media influencers at the Israeli consulate in New York City on Friday following his speech to the United Nations General Assembly.

At the meeting, Debra Lea Schwartzben, a New York-based influencer who founded a Turning Point USA college chapter and has worked as a marketing coordinator at Fox News, asked Netanyahu what is to be done in the event that evangelical support for Israel begins to wane.

There appears to be a generational shift under way in the evangelical community. A 2024 report from Tel Aviv University's Center for the Study of the United States revealed that whereas in 2018, 68.9% of American evangelicals under 30 said they supported Israel, that number plummeted to 33.6% in 2021. Despite that significant drop, support reportedly stabilized from 2021 to 2024.

According to the findings of a new survey released by the Quinnipiac University Poll, 47% of all American voters think that supporting Israel is in the national interest; 41% disagree; and 12% declined to opine.

'We're going to have to use the tools of battle.'

"Evangelicals are the reason that Israel has been supported in public sphere outside of just Jews," said Schwartzben. "With Charlie's assassination and with the ... trajectory that we see with, like, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, I guess I'm curious about what's another game plan if we lose evangelical support for the state of Israel. What's our backup plan to be strong, like, outside of the diaspora?"

In his reply, Netanyahu apparently referred to Owens, Carlson, and other such "Christian influencers" using the terms "woke right" and "Woke Reich," noting that "these people, they're not any different from the woke left. I mean, they're insane. They're loonies. But they're actually meeting on some of the things."

"We have to secure that part of our — the base of our support in the United States," continued Netanyahu. "That is being challenged systematically."

Blaze News has reached out to Netanyahu's office for clarification about his meaning of "woke right" as well as to Owens and Carlson for comment.

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Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Israeli officials and advocates for the Jewish state appear to be growing increasingly concerned over the so-called "woke right," a flexible term that has been used by liberals as a smear against various conservatives but appears in the context of Netanyahu's Friday remarks to specifically denote isolationists on the right and those critical of Israel and/or Middle Eastern military interventions.

Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, for instance, cautioned Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk in an open July 13 letter — shortly after Kirk and Megyn Kelly raised the question of whether Jeffrey Epstein may have been a Mossad asset — about platforming Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and other so-called "conspiracy theorists," claiming that the named Americans "are not conservatives; they are full-blown wokists just wearing different costumes."

"I'm asking you: please stay true to your strong moral compass and speak out against antisemitism, whether it comes from the woke left or the woke right," added Chikli.

Karys Rhea, a former associate producer at the Epoch Times and delegate for Israel365 Action, told the Tel Aviv-based "ILTV News Podcast" in December that members of the so-called "woke right" say that "they are part of the America First movement. They're very clear about that. They consider themselves patriots, usually proud Christians, people who are anti-censorship, pro-faith, pro-family, anti-globalism, anti-Marxism, anti-elitism. But people have observed that it seems like both their beliefs and their actions say otherwise"

The beliefs that Rhea insinuated were disqualifying for an American conservative and qualifying for the "woke right" label appear to largely center on criticism of Israel.

Rhea added that Tucker Carlson is the "godhead" of the "woke right."

Author Danny Burmawi recently suggested in the pages of the Times of Israel that "while the left vilifies Israel in the name of anti-imperialism and social justice, the woke right attacks Israel through the language of nationalism and religious betrayal. They see in Israel a foreign parasite, an ethnostate hijacking U.S. resources, dragging America into endless wars, and manipulating domestic institutions. They accuse the 'Zionist lobby' of corrupting Christian values, spreading cultural degeneracy, and controlling the media."

After suggesting that the so-called "woke right" is both state- and NGO-backed, Netanyahu said on Friday, "We have to fight back. How do we fight back? Our influencers."

Netanyahu further told the influencers, "We're going to have to use the tools of battle."

The prime minister clarified that the weapons he had in mind were not swords or drones but social media, emphasizing the importance of TikTok and Elon Musk's X.

"We have to fight the fight, okay? To give direction to the Jewish people and give direction to our non-Jewish friends or those who could be ... our friends," added Netanyahu.