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Mondoweiss: Charlie Kirk’s death has ignited a war over Israel on the right, and the Israel lobby is worried

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Charlie Kirk’s death has ignited a war over Israel on the right, and the Israel lobby is worried

The battle for the legacy of Charlie Kirk continued this week with the publication of a long letter from the late evangelical activist to Benjamin Netanyahu last May. Kirk professes love for Israel and the Jewish people, then warns Netanyahu that Israel is getting “CRUSHED” on social media in the United States over charges of “apartheid” and “genocide” but suggests how an active p.r. campaign can undo those losses.

Israel advocates, including the financier Bill Ackman, pointed to the letter as evidence of the charismatic leader’s devotion to Israel. And not—as commentator Candace Owens and others have said– that Kirk was turning on Israel in recent months.

The controversy is important because Kirk, who at 33 was killed during a speech in Utah September 10, led a youthful movement to help get Trump elected. If Israel loses Kirk’s base, it really is in crisis in the U.S. discourse.

Or as Kirk himself said in July: “I’ve been trying to tell them [Israel supporters], There’s an earthquake coming in this country on this issue and in the country, and they don’t believe me.”

Kirk’s letter to Netanyahu only shows that he was souring on Israel. It warns that consumers of social media know that the U.S. gives billions to Israel but “they’re less aware of what we get in return.” It would have been nice if Israel had sent an airplane with a star of David on it full of aid to the U.S. after a hurricane, he says, and suggests the action team that Israel could put together here to counter its reputation for genocide.

The letter was surely circulated to donors. Kirk was dependent on donors to support his political organization, Turning Point USA.

Kirk Letter by pmcnamee

In statements last summer, Kirk was plainly anguished about the Israel issue. “I’m trying to find this new path,” Kirk said of his Israel views in a “focus group” on Israel he convened with young conservatives. “I love Israel… I saw where Jesus rose from the dead and he walked on water…”

But he questioned American aid to Israel. “Also I’m an American, and I represent a generation that can’t afford anything.”

In that focus group, Kirk sounded many criticisms of Israel, though not always endorsing them:

–Supporting  Israel is not in the U.S. interest. We’ve spent hundreds of billions and Israel may have dragged the U.S. into the Iran conflict. Maybe the U.S. should “decouple” from Israel, Kirk ventured.

–The antisemitism charge against Israel critics has lost its meaning. “If you call everyone an antisemite, if they don’t take a puritanical view of the Netanyahu government, that’s bad for everybody,” Kirk said.

–The Israel lobby works against U.S. interests. “I’m told by some people that if I criticize AIPAC that’s antisemitic,” Kirk said, before speculating that AIPAC goes against American interests. “Do you think that AIPAC represents, I’m not saying I believe this, a sort of cutting in line in prioritization away from the American people… We vote, we’re citizens, but a separate group gets higher priority…”

–Israel is like other “broken” institutions. It keeps saying it has a “messaging problem,” when it is actually “doing something wrong,” Kirk said.

–Kirk refused to cancel Tucker Carlson after Carlson’s attack on the Israel lobby and its wealthy Jewish supporters.

The last issue was particularly volatile. Last July Carlson gave a speech to a Kirk summit in Florida that smacked of antisemitic themes. Carlson said that rich financiers in Jeffrey Epstein’s “constellation” who care only about Israel are wrenching Americans away from their real concerns, such as the affordability crisis, and telling them to care about Iran. Carlson said that the career of Bill Ackman, the most important pro-Israel activist in the country right now, demonstrates that “useless” people end up with billions.

Ackman called the speech “defamatory.” But the financier took the criticism so seriously he sought to show how he had made his money honestly.

Then Ackman hosted a gathering with Charlie Kirk in August in the Hamptons to discuss Kirk’s Israel messaging. Reports suggest that Ackman demanded that Kirk cancel Carlson for his views and Kirk refused.

Another pro-Israel donor cut off funds to Kirk over the Carlson issue. Tech billionaire Robert Shillman angrily withdrew a $2 million donation in the days before Kirk’s death, Max Blumenthal reports.

Ackman is the most important player in this controversy.  The 59-year-old hedge fund manager from Chappaqua, NY, is, as Carlson has said, “super aggressive.” After the Gaza war began, he became a terror to liberal and left critics of Israel, because of his financial clout and uninhibited twitter feed that reaches 1.8 million followers. Wielding a donor boycott, Ackman helped to bring down Harvard President Claudine Gay and Penn President Liz Magill nearly two years ago by claiming that they fostered an “explosion of antisemitism on campus” including “calls for violence against Jews.”

Like other Israel lobbyists before him, Ackman jumps from one party to the other depending which is more pro-Israel. Long associated with Democratic candidates, Ackman announced in spring 2024 that he was not voting for Biden because of his supposed lack of support for Israel, then he backed Donald Trump, and has backed Trump’s actions as president.

Despite his support for Trump and attacks on DEI initiatives, Ackman has the run of liberal institutions—surely because of his Israel bona fides. He routinely justifies Israeli killings of civilians as the responsibility of Hamas. He is married to an Israeli academic and former Israeli military officer (whom he met through Marty Peretz).

Charlie Kirk’s waffling left Ackman in a difficult position. He has thrown around the antisemitism charge against the left for pro-Palestinian statements. Now the rightwing base is turning, with even more venom toward the Israel lobby, and Ackman is stuck with the right.

If you watch Kirk’s July focus group, you will see that smart young activists on the right are as aware of Israel’s human rights abuses as those on the left, setting aside the bible verses.

Recent polls show that the “seismic” shift in American public opinion on Israel extends to the right. Roughly a third of Republicans call for an end to the Gaza military campaign and say that Israel is intentionally targeting civilians.

A reflection of those numbers is Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing Georgia Congress member, who said Christians see Israel committing a genocide, in an interview with the New York Times last week:

“You can’t un-see dead children…That’s not fake. It’s not war propaganda. They’re not actors. And journalists getting murdered and blown up? I don’t see that happening in any other war, and that’s shocking to me…

“I spoke to several Christian pastors. They’re saying this is really a genocide, innocent people are being killed.”

The right-wing awakening is a big problem for the Israel lobby. It has lost traction in the Democratic Party because the base despises Israel, and candidates such as Zohran Mamdani are running against Israeli genocide, and a growing faction of politicians seeks to end military aid to the apartheid country.

Young conservatives are also sickened by the genocide. Netanyahu sought to dismiss these voices as the “woke right” in a discussion with young influencers at the Israeli consulate last month.

Charlie Kirk’s memorials demonstrate that these voices will only get louder and threaten a political “earthquake.”

Israel cranks up the propaganda

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JTA: Israel to spend up to $4.1M to bolster support among Christians in western US, filings show

San Diego firm contracted to geofence churches, recruit pastors and tour an “October 7th Experience” exhibit as part of Israel’s expanded global outreach efforts.

By Asaf Elia-Shalev 

With its popularity in the United States crashing, Israel is bankrolling what organizers say will be the largest campaign of its kind to bolster support among evangelical churches, until recently seen as an unshakable base of support for the Jewish state.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry has hired an American firm to run the campaign, with plans to spend as much as $4.1 million on marketing aimed at Christians across the Western part of the country, according to newly filed federal disclosures.

The documents, filed last week under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, reveal that Show Faith by Works, LLC will execute what it bills as the “largest Christian Church Geofencing Campaign in U.S. history.”

A newly formed company with a San Diego address, Show Faith by Works is run by Chad Schnitger, a prominent Christian conservative activist in California.

The initiative is designed to reach churchgoers with digital ads that are explicitly “pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian,” while dispatching a mobile “October 7th Experience” exhibit to church parking lots and Christian colleges.

The campaign adds a new prong to Israel’s U.S. communications blitz, complementing a $1.5 million-per-month contract for AI-driven social media activity with former Trump campaign strategist Brad Parscale and a contract with a firm called Bridge Partners to create an influencer network called the Esther Project.

The PR blitz was anticipated after Israel’s Foreign Ministry was allocated $150 million in this year’s budget for public relations efforts.

Public attention to Israel’s efforts surged last week following reporting by an online outlet called Responsible Statecraft, which is published by the Quincy Institute, a dovish foreign policy think tank in Washington DC.

Together, the deals underscore how Israel’s government is deploying unprecedented resources to shape American opinion amid what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as the country’s “eighth front”: the battle of narratives and public opinion around the world.

The campaign comes at a time when Israel’s once-reliable support among U.S. evangelicals is showing cracks with recent surveys showing that younger evangelicals are less likely to support Israel than previous generations. Americans. Though initiated months earlier, the campaign also comes shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, who was perhaps the most prominent evangelical pro-Israel voice speaking to young Americans.

According to invoices attached to the filing, Show Faith, which was formed on Aug. 5, expects to receive more than $3.25 million over five months, paid in equal installments routed through the global ad giant Havas Media, while also floating an “ideal additional budget” of $835,000 for equipment and expansion.

The firm reported receiving an initial payment of about $326,000 on Sept. 18, days before it formally registered with the Department of Justice Department as a foreign agent. The arrangement mirrors the structure of the Parscale and Bridges contracts, which also list Havas as an intermediary, pointing to the company’s role in coordinating Israel’s foreign-agent activities in the United States.

Show Faith’s scope of work blends high-tech targeting with old-fashioned religious outreach.

Campaign documents detail plans for geofencing, a technique to target ads to worshippers’ phones within specific geographical boundaries around churches and Christian campuses in California, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado.

The firm has pledged to recruit pastors to write op-eds and distribute “Pastoral Resource Packages” by mail, to hire social media influencers and produce television-style commercials, and to tour a branded trailer exhibit featuring tents, virtual reality headsets and kiosks designed to immerse audiences in narratives of Israel’s conflict with Hamas for a program that will be called the “October 7th Experience.”

The filings project 47 million ad impressions across display, audio and connected TV channels over the course of a year.

The filings name five people involved with Show Faith, led by its founder, Schnitger, who is listed on LinkedIn as a managing partner of Graystone Public Affairs, a political consulting and grassroots organizing firm based in Riverside, California. Schnitger also leads the state chapter of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, a conservative Christian political advocacy group.

Among the others are Melissa Lundie, who reported recent volunteer work with the Los Angeles County Republican Party and contributions to the California GOP, and Richard Tuong Do, who disclosed paying $350 in dues to attend a California GOP convention this month.

In its pitch materials, Show Faith by Works also floated the idea of recruiting celebrity spokespeople to amplify the campaign. A presentation slide attached to the filing lists figures such as actors Chris Pratt, Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg, televangelist Joel Osteen, and former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow as potential endorsers who could bring star power to pro-Israel messaging in Christian communities. It is unclear whether any outreach to these celebrities has taken place, and the names appear in the documents as aspirational targets rather than confirmed partners.

Presentation slides outline a series of talking points divided into two sections: pro-Israel and “anti-Palestinian state.”

The campaign’s pro-Israel messaging is designed to speak directly to pastors and Christian audiences about Israel’s biblical and historical significance. The materials emphasize the Jewish presence in the land before 1948, the state’s legitimacy and record of protecting non-Jewish populations, and Israel’s efforts to uphold civilian safety and “moral superiority” in wartime. Other talking points highlight Israel’s democratic freedoms, its partnership with the United States, and its place in the Christian New Testament, suggesting a Christmas message about the birthplace of Jesus. One bullet point says to “question the longstanding policy of a 2-state solution.”

The “anti-Palestinian” section of the plan characterizes Palestinians chiefly through the prism of Hamas. It asserts that Palestinians are complicit in Hamas’s leadership, financing and military operations, and accuses them of sheltering terrorists, hiding weapons in schools and hospitals, and celebrating the Oct. 7 attack. The materials stress that there has never been a Palestinian state, that Hamas’s and Iran’s goals are “genocidal” rather than “land-focused,” and that Palestinians have squandered opportunities for modernization in favor of violence. The filings also note attacks on American Christian aid workers in Gaza.

The new campaign is the latest in a string of foreign-agent registrations linked to Israel’s Foreign Ministry this month. On Sept. 18, Parscale’s firm, Clock Tower X LLC, registered as a foreign agent, committing to produce 100 ads per month, with 5,000 variations, to combat antisemitism in the United States. Documents revealed plans to deploy AI-driven search engine optimization tools and shape outputs of GPT-based chatbots.

Days later, a newly registered firm called Bridges Partners disclosed that it had been retained to run the Esther Project, a code-named influencer campaign designed to recruit five to six social media personalities at a time, each posting dozens of pieces of content monthly across Instagram and TikTok. Both firms were also contracted through Havas, which appears to be serving as a hub for the ministry’s U.S. spending.

Larry Ellison Vetted Marco Rubio for Fealty to Israel, Hacked Emails Reveal

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Jewish influence quite often comes down to Jewish money…and willing goyim.

The billionaire Oracle founder is on track to take control of the American media.

Ryan Grim

and

Murtaza Hussain
Oct 02, 2025

Everything is coming together for Larry Ellison. The billionaire co-founder of tech giant Oracle, on-and-off-again the richest man in the world and a staunch supporter of Israel, is set to take a lead role in reshaping TikTok in the United States. His son, David Ellison, is moving to take over large swaths of the media, including CBS News, CNN, Warner Brothers, and Paramount, reportedly bringing in the Free Press’s Bari Weiss to shape editorial direction.

“The Ellison family is cornering the market on attention and data the same way the Vanderbilts did railroads and the Rockefellers did oil,” as Wired recently characterized it. How they plan to operate that monopoly is on course to be tested out in what President Donald Trump is calling “New Gaza,” the techno-dystopian free trade zone that is to be administered by a Board of Peace led by Trump and Ellison’s longtime political and business vehicle, Tony Blair. Ellison has given or pledged more than $350 million to the Tony Blair Institute, which Blair has used to advance Ellison’s vision of a marriage between government, corporate power, and tech surveillance. Oracle, by providing database infrastructure and cloud-computing services to other huge enterprises like FedEx and NVIDIA, has quietly become one of the most powerful companies in the world.

As the nation’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also played a role in the TikTok talks that steered the company toward Ellison, after playing a lead role as a senator in demonizing the app; he was also closely involved in the rollout of Trump’s plan for Gaza’s future, which hands the enclave to Blair. Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner tasked the Blair Institute in the spring with coming up with a post-war plan for Gaza, which was recently completed, the Times of Israel reported.

That Rubio finds himself in such a central position is in part thanks to Ellison, who has been a major patron of the Cuban-American former senator from Florida. Ellison first vetted Rubio for his fealty toward Israel back in early 2015, according to previously unreported email correspondence reviewed by Drop Site. Rubio rose to prominence as a Tea Party-backed conservative Senate upstart in 2010, launching a presidential campaign in the 2016 cycle. As secretary of state, Rubio launched an unprecedented crackdown on speech, detaining and attempting to deport critics of Israel precisely for the crime of their criticism of Israel.

Continues…

Eko: THE J6 MATRIX: THE CONSTITUTIONAL KILL SWITCH

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THE J6 MATRIX: THE CONSTITUTIONAL KILL SWITCH

How Three Minutes of Chaos Prevented Supreme Court Review

EKO
How Three Minutes of Chaos Prevented Supreme Court Review
At 1:00 PM on January 6th, Representative Paul Gosar rose to object to Arizona’s electoral votes. Representative Andy Biggs stood ready to second. These constitutional motions, once entered into congressional record, would trigger mandatory debate and create standing for Supreme Court review.

At 1:03 PM, before the motions could be floored, Capitol Police informed leadership of an imminent breach. Pelosi suspended the session. The motions died unspoken.

The Mechanism

The Constitution requires specific procedures when electoral votes are challenged. Written objection, signed by both a Representative and Senator, triggers mandatory two-hour debate in each chamber. This debate, regardless of outcome, creates standing for judicial review.

The Founders designed this safeguard for precisely such moments—when states dispute federal election integrity. The Supreme Court that had rejected all 2020 challenges for “lack of standing” would have been forced to hear a case with proper congressional standing.

This is what those three minutes prevented. Not certification—that was never in danger. But the creation of a constitutional record that would have compelled Supreme Court review.

Continues…

Max Blumenthal on Israel, Iran, and the Middle EAST

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Media and Trump Agree: Epstein Files NOT Interesting

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Voters: ‘What About Epstein?’ Press: ‘Let’s Talk About Tariffs’

In a recent installment of the media’s daily “DISAPPOINTED TRUMP VOTERS” piece, The Washington Post suggests that the MAGA base is mainly upset about tariffs. At least that’s what I gleaned from an article headlined, “Is Trump keeping all his promises? This MAGA couple doesn’t think so,” followed by 20 solid paragraphs about tariffs.

But on closer examination, the Trump voters being interviewed, Carter and Jessie Meadows of Georgia, weren’t all that exercised about tariffs, certainly not as much as the Post obviously is. Yes, the levies have increased prices for fruit and berries at Jessie’s flower shop, and on something-or-other for one of the suppliers to Carter’s funeral home.

On the other hand, both of them said they were willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt. Carter said, “I’m not an economist,” noting that it’s “probably going to hurt before it gets better.” Jessie added, “We also really don’t have a suggestion on how to fix that. We don’t understand enough about it.”

The Meadowses were much more rattled about another matter, but only readers who made it to the second half of the piece will know that their main beef with Trump is his refusal to release the Epstein files. The whole article reads as if the reporter was peppering them with questions about tariffs, and they kept responding by talking about Epstein.

When discussing Epstein, the couple provided specific, telling details indicating that the cover-up was a genuine concern of theirs — not an idea planted by the reporter.

For example, they describe “sitting in the living room one day” and being shocked by a Facebook post that quoted Trump attacking what he called his “PAST supporters” for believing the “bullshit” of “the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax.” He called these (PAST) supporters “weaklings” and announced, “I don’t want their support anymore!”

“Jessie turned to her husband,” the article reads.

“’It’s gotta be fake,’ she said.

“They looked up Trump’s post and found that it was real. Briefly, Carter felt ashamed of his vote.”

They had a lot more to say about Epstein, too.

“[Jessie] thought the Epstein files probably contained embarrassing information about rich and powerful people who were bent on keeping it private.”

[As do we all.]

“When Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) filed a petition this month to force a House vote on releasing the files, she cheered him on. She called the office of her congressman, Republican Rick Allen, about it and soon received a generic email.

“Trump’s Justice Department said it found no ‘incriminating “client list,”’ the email said.

“Still, Jessie wondered: Why not put everything out there, if there was nothing to hide?”

Excellent question. Jessie said she’ll be voting for Rep. Allen’s primary opponent next year.

It certainly seems odd for the Post to start with tariffs, blather on and on about them, while tucking away Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files — manifestly, the couple’s main complaint. But consider Trump’s behavior. On this one issue, he and the Post are in total, 100% agreement: Epstein? That’s old news. Let’s move on.

Epstein, the notorious sex trafficker, may have finally brought Trump and the Post together in peace and harmony. (What’s the definition of “The Swamp,” again?)

The same day that the Post was downplaying Trump supporters’ wild interest in the Epstein files, The Wall Street Journal reported on Trump’s smooth handling of the matter. His crackerjack explanation is, “People don’t understand that Palm Beach in the ‘90s was a different time.”

Nice of Trump to try to implicate the entire island in a pedophile’s international sex ring, but assiduous readers will recall that Palm Beach considered Mar-a-Lago a nouveau embarrassment in the ‘90s. Many still do. Maybe he should stick to telling us what he was like in the ‘90s.

With his base up in arms, Trump responded to a reporter’s question about Epstein, saying: “Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy’s been talked about for years. That is unbelievable.”

You know how to ensure people continue talking about him for years? Keep stonewalling.

Speaking of things that have been said for years, White House spokesman Steven Cheung dismisses criticism of the Epstein debacle as “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and “fake news,” phrases that used to mean something other than “NAILED US.”

FBI Director Kash Patel told the MAGA base to move on, writing: “The conspiracy theories just aren’t true, never have been.”

We want to know who was funding Epstein and who participated in his sex ring. No one in Washington will tell us. That’s not a conspiracy theory — it’s a conspiracy.

COPYRIGHT 2025 ANN COULTER

Young Conservatives increasingly oppose Israel

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Israel is combatting this by paying social media influencers to promote Israel.

https://gab.com/PCleburne/posts/115293802262574854

Important article: lots of bad news for Israel Lobby:
“A younger wave of Republicans is steadily rejecting the party’s long-standing pro-Israel stance, shaped by the genocidal war in Gaza and new media currents.
52% of Republicans aged 35 + sympathize with Israel, only 24% aged 18–34 say the same. **After Oct 7 unfavorable views of Israel among Republicans under 50 jumped from 35% in 2022 to 50% in 2025. Only 36 percent of younger evangelical Republicans believe Israeli actions in Gaza are justified.**
The rise of social media has significantly accelerated this attitudinal shift on Israel . Conservative youth are consuming a radically different discourse, one that challenges the old dogmas.”
thecradle.co/articles/the-republican-israel-l

The Republican–Israel love affair hits a generational rift

A younger wave of Republicans is steadily rejecting the party’s long-standing pro-Israel stance, shaped by the genocidal war in Gaza and new media currents.

thecradle.com