As President Donald Trump considered and eventually chose to conduct strikes on the Iranian regime’s nuclear sites on Saturday, American anti-war proponents were gearing up — and their rhetoric highlighted a concerning reality.
The one thing uniting the radical left and far right in their anti-war stance is a shared willingness to blame the Jews.
Ranging from radical-left figures asserting that America is controlled by a “Zionist regime” to far-right conspiracy theorists propagating narratives about Jewish manipulation of foreign policy, the political fringes in the U.S. are distorting productive democratic discourse and undermining authentic policy conflicts about international interventions.
In a discussion questioning America’s support for its ally Israel, Tucker Carlson suggested last week that Sen. Ted Cruz is influenced by Jewish organizations like AIPAC.
Meanwhile, left-wing figures like Mehdi Hasan and Hasan Piker continue to make wild accusations and amplify narratives that demonize the world’s only Jewish state.
“The one silver lining to all this is that everyone, left, right, and center, now knows that Israel controls US foreign policy, and that most politicians and conservative media personalities are foreign agents,” Holocaust revisionist Darryl Cooper, who has guested on Joe Rogan’s podcast, wrote on X.
“US policy: America takes a back seat, Israel takes the wheel,” Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations posted. “Netanyahu calls the shots. Trump pretends to be in charge.”
And Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, wrote in a Facebook post that “Congress and the White House” are “Israeli-occupied territories.”
No need to dive into the bowels of the online world to hear these theories; they were coming from major political influencers.
Minutes after the White House announced the successful US strike, former Obama National Security Council official and popular podcaster Tommy Vietor posted that the “weak” Trump “got manipulated into doing Netanyahu’s dirty work.”
Some anti-war groups went so far as to post “Death to America” in Farsi, removing their pacifist masks to reveal something far more malevolent.
And when Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) appeared on MSNBC, host Ayman Mohyeldin pressed him to discuss Israel’s responsibility for getting America involved in an “unprovoked war . . . knowing, ultimately, that America was always going to come to Israel’s defense.”
The use of such accusatory language by a so-called journalist was shocking — an example of the barely concealed activism so prevalent in newsrooms today.
You could hear it in the surprised response from Smith — who, while not supportive of Trump’s action, felt the need to state the obvious: “This isn’t Israel’s fault that Donald Trump decided to bomb [Iran] . . . He’s the president of the United States, he doesn’t have to do what Israel wants.”
Smith then corrected Mohyeldin’s framing, noting that “Iran has definitely been provoking Israel” and pointing to the double standard the host had applied to Israel’s right to self-defense.
The exchange was remarkable for what it revealed: Even a Democratic Trump critic felt compelled to reject the antisemitic assumption underlying the question.
It demonstrated just how deeply these conspiracy theories have penetrated mainstream media discourse.
In response to Tehran’s “forever war,” which has been aggressive and unrelenting since 1979, Republican and Democratic presidents alike have made it a stated policy that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon.
Multiple commanders-in-chief have been clear that the United States would not preclude military force to prevent that from happening — and to his credit, Trump was the first president to take concrete action.
Any country has a right to respond preemptively to an open danger. But critics consistently delegitimize the actions of the Jewish state — to the point where observers deny Israel even the ability to protect its citizens from an explicitly existential threat.
Today, as Americans debate Trump’s military action against Iran, the same dangerous patterns are emerging.
Whether dressed up as “anti-Zionism” or presented as high-minded foreign policy analysis in coded language, legitimate policy debates have become vehicles to spread antisemitism.
As the Anti-Defamation League has documented, violent antisemitic incidents are now occurring at historically high levels.
We see a direct correlation between anti-Israel rhetoric and global anti-Jewish incidents.
Every person claiming to oppose war in the name of human dignity must reject antisemitism completely — whether intentional or not.
This isn’t about American foreign policy or even Jewish safety, though both matter enormously.
What’s at stake is whether we will allow conspiracy theories, and hatreds that have poisoned societies throughout the centuries, to poison ours.
It should not be a difficult choice.
Jonathan A. Greenblatt is CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
