This week, while Israel was focused on the war itself, another battle opened in the United States.
Joe Kent, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, resigned over the Iran campaign. Tucker Carlson, the conservative broadcaster and former Fox News host, quickly turned that resignation into a broader argument about Israel, loyalty, and American power.
Candace Owens, the right-wing commentator who has increasingly trafficked in anti-Israel conspiracies, kept feeding the same atmosphere in her own way. Reuters and The Washington Post reported that Kent was the first senior Trump administration official to resign over the war, and that he argued Israel and its allies had pushed the United States into the conflict.
That is the story Israelis and diaspora Jews should be watching. The immediate question is whether Republicans still back the war. For now, they do. The bigger question is whether the American right will remain reliably pro-Israel once this war fades and the debate shifts from missiles and headlines back to culture, loyalty, and identity.
My view is that the coalition is still intact, but the forces inside it are not equal. Trump still holds the party together. Congress remains far more supportive of Israel than the Democratic Party. But the deepest and steadiest pro-Israel instinct on the right still comes from one place above all: evangelicals.
Culture wars, not policy, could erode Israel’s US backing
Evangelical support for Israel is a religious habit. It is taught, repeated, prayed over, and tied to a story about covenant, blessing, prophecy, and shared civilization.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines Christian Zionism as a religious and political movement that supports Jewish return to a homeland in Palestine, and notes that many adherents tie that support to biblical promises. Genesis 12:3, the verse about blessing those who bless Abraham’s descendants, sits near the center of that worldview.
That is the world Mike Huckabee comes from. Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel and a longtime evangelical politician from Arkansas, does not hide the theological basis of his support.
In his recent interview with Carlson, Huckabee said that if Israel took the whole biblical land map, “it would be fine if they took it all,” before adding that Israel’s present aim is to protect its people. It was a very direct line, but it revealed something real.
For many evangelicals, support for Israel begins with scripture before it moves to actual decision-making.
Pastor John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, turned that instinct into an organized movement.
CUFI says it has more than six million members and teaches that Christians should support Israel because God promised the land to the Jewish people.
Hagee has expressed that idea in the plain language he prefers: “We support Israel because God and the Bible support Israel.” Hagee and people like him helped build one of the few large American constituencies in which support for Israel is moral, communal, and durable.
Johnnie Moore, an evangelical pastor, public relations adviser, and prominent Christian supporter of Israel (as well as being a true mensch), presents a smoother version of the same alliance.
Moore said last year, “As Christians, one of our obligations is to love Israel and to love the Jewish people.” That sentence captures the emotional core of evangelical Zionism without the more combustible biblical cartography.
Moore has spent years trying to translate evangelical support for Israel into the language of friendship, solidarity, and public diplomacy.
A fair point belongs here. Many Jews hear this theology and grow uneasy, sometimes for good reason. Some of it can sound instrumental. Some of it can sound too biblical for a modern alliance between states.
Historic churches in Jerusalem said as much in January when they called Christian Zionism a “false teaching” that distorts the biblical message. That discomfort is understandable. But serious analysis has to begin with reality, not how it makes you feel.
Whatever one thinks of the theology, evangelical churches have built one of the few large American constituencies in which support for Israel is rooted, repeated, and passed down in real communities.
That is why the numbers are so important. Pew found in 2025 that white evangelicals remain the most supportive major religious bloc on Israel. Gallup argued in 2024 that Protestants and highly religious Americans still form a traditional bulwark of support for Israel, even as their share of the US population shrinks.
That is both reassuring and worrying. Israel still has a real base on the American right. But it is older, more church-based, and less dominant in the places where younger conservative instincts are formed.
The Washington Post reported in January that among evangelicals, approval of Israel stood at 70% for those over 60, but only 39% for those aged 18 to 29.
Tel Aviv University, summarizing survey work on young evangelicals, found that support for Israel among that group had dropped sharply in recent years, while the share backing neither side rose to 42.2% in 2021 from 25% in 2018.
The researchers tied that shift to a “different informational environment” from the one that shaped their parents and grandparents.
That phrase says a lot. Older evangelicals learned about Israel in church. Younger conservatives learn the Middle East from clips, podcasts, feuds, and an online culture that teaches suspicion before it teaches memory.
Carlson sits at the center of that world. He is no longer just a television personality. He is one of the most influential narrators of right-wing grievance in America. He recently called the Iran attack “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
He has called Christian Zionism “a brain virus” and “a dangerous heresy.” This is a very different language from the one heard in evangelical churches. It treats Israel less as a moral ally and more as a symbol of manipulated foreign policy, elite pressure, and someone else’s war.
Owens pushes the same turn in a rawer form. Earlier this month, Owens was spreading “false flag” claims accusing Israel of orchestrating major events and using rhetoric that echoed classic antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The pattern matters more than any single post. Israel becomes the hidden hand. Jews become untouchable operators. Pushback becomes proof. The whole performance is sold as courage and forbidden truth. That language becomes viral online because it is emotional, flattering, and easy to consume.
There is an obvious counterpoint, and it is a real one. Republican voters still back Trump on Iran in large numbers. Trump still commands the coalition. The congressional GOP has not broken. Much of the chatter on the right is still chatter.
But coalitions rarely weaken first in the whip count. They weaken in the imagination. First, the old moral language gets mocked. Then it gets replaced. Israel stops being a friend and starts being described as a burden, or a trap, or the pet cause of people who supposedly do not care enough about America.
By the time elected officials move, the cultural ground has often shifted already.
That is why Kent's example is important for us to notice. That is why Carlson shouldn't be ignored, but fought against. That is why Owens still has followers. They are not the Republican Party. But boy, do they influence their voters.
That is also why I keep coming back to evangelicals. They are still the ballast. They are still one of the few large constituencies in America for whom support for Israel is tied to faith, memory, community, and obligation. A podcast can create a mood. A church can build loyalty that will last longer.
Israel should understand both, but it should know the difference between them.
If I were mapping the future of American support for Israel from Jerusalem, I would spend less time admiring a reassuring vote count and more time asking who inherits this alliance. The party still holds. The coalition still works. The real question is who will carry it when Trump no longer can, the pastors or the podcasters.