In the wake of Israel’s intensified military campaign against Palestinians following the October 7 Hamas attack, the American political landscape is undergoing a dramatic transformation. Nowhere is this more apparent than within the conservative movement, where long-standing support for Israel is fracturing amid rising isolationism, generational change, and the resurgence of antisemitic rhetoric.
This internal battle erupted into public view in early November 2025, when the Heritage Foundation, a storied conservative think tank, found itself at the center of a storm. The controversy began after Heritage president Kevin Roberts publicly defended commentator Tucker Carlson for hosting Nick Fuentes, a notorious white nationalist and Holocaust denier, on his show. According to The Nation, Roberts released a video reaffirming Carlson as “always a close friend” of the think tank and criticized what he described as a “globalist class,” stating, “conservatives should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government.”
While the statement might seem innocuous on its face, its context and Roberts’s defense of Carlson’s willingness to platform virulent antisemitism set off alarm bells among Heritage staff and donors. The internal backlash was swift: staffers involved in the video’s production were reassigned, with one, Ryan Neuhaus, resigning in protest. Donors threatened to pull funding, and Roberts issued repeated apologies, blaming the video’s language on a staff member. Yet the damage was done. A contentious staff meeting exposed a deep generational and ideological rift, with younger, more anti-Israel staffers challenging the older, traditionally Zionist leadership.
At the heart of the controversy was Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old far-right extremist whose rhetoric has made him one of the most visible and divisive figures on the American right. Fuentes, who first gained notoriety as a Boston University freshman attending the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, openly espouses white nationalist and antisemitic views. He has described Jews as “a stateless people” who are “unassimilable” and claimed, “they hate the Romans because the Romans destroyed the Temple. We don’t think that, as Americans and white people.” In a 2021 debate on Alex Jones’s InfoWars, Fuentes bluntly stated that Jews “have no place in Western civilization.”
During his October 2025 appearance on The Tucker Carlson Network, Fuentes doubled down on these beliefs, telling Carlson that “the main obstacle within the conservative movement was ‘these Zionist Jews,’” and advancing the dual-loyalty trope by arguing that Jewish Americans are loyal first to Israel. He claimed neoconservatism is “Jewish in nature,” stating, “As far as the Jews are concerned, you cannot actually divorce Israel and the neocons and all those things that you talk about from Jewishness: ethnicity, religion, identity.” While Fuentes tried to sanitize his antisemitism by claiming that some of his “best friends” are Jewish, he reiterated that “Jewishness” was the defining trait of his political opponents.
The interview was met with widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. Mainstream conservatives and Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Rick Scott, and Senator Ted Cruz, joined a chorus of criticism. At the Republican Jewish Coalition’s leadership summit, delegates openly denounced Carlson, holding signs reading “TUCKER IS NOT MAGA” in a bid to distance the movement from the growing anti-Israel right. Florida Representative Randy Fine emerged as one of Carlson’s fiercest critics, defending Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and, according to The Nation, using rhetoric that critics have called genocidal—stating that Gaza “must be destroyed” and celebrating the death of Palestinian children.
Yet, the pro-Israel faction within the conservative movement is now facing a formidable challenge from a rising anti-Israel camp. This wing, which claims to uphold Trump’s “America First” doctrine, argues that U.S. support for Israel contradicts nationalist priorities. However, it also includes voices like Fuentes who explicitly embrace antisemitic and extremist ideology. According to WBUR and NPR, political support for Israel among U.S. conservatives—once nearly automatic, especially among conservative Christians—is weakening amid this surge of isolationism and antisemitism.
Public-opinion data underscores the scale of this shift. Polling cited by The Nation found that negative views of Israel among Americans rose from 42 percent in 2022 to 53 percent in 2025, with nearly half of Republican voters under 40 now holding unfavorable views. This generational divide is evident within institutions like Heritage, where younger staffers voiced opposition to Christian Zionism on religious grounds, arguing that “Gen Z has an increased unfavorable view of Israel, and it’s not because millions of Americans are antisemitic. It’s because we are Catholic and Orthodox and believe that Christian Zionism is a modern heresy.”
The internal conflict is not confined to the right. The Democratic Party, too, is divided over Israel, with Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden facing criticism for their perceived lack of empathy for Palestinians. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reportedly refused to endorse New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, whose platform included sharp criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza. Mamdani’s victory was widely interpreted as a signal of growing public fatigue with the war and U.S. complicity.
Within the conservative movement, the debate over Israel is as much about identity and ideology as it is about foreign policy. The “America First” slogan, which Fuentes has repurposed for his own white nationalist movement, carries a historical legacy of antisemitism dating back to the 1940s. The original America First Committee, led by Charles Lindbergh, blamed American Jews for dragging the U.S. into World War II. Today, Fuentes’s followers—known as Groypers—spread conspiracy theories, deny the Holocaust, and oppose immigration, women’s equality, and LGBTQ+ rights, all while claiming to defend “traditional” American and Christian values.
Fuentes has been banned from most major social media platforms, though he was reinstated on X (formerly Twitter) by Elon Musk in 2024, and continues to stream on platforms like Truth Social, Telegram, and Gab. His “America First” podcast was removed from Spotify in 2025 for hate speech violations and remains banned from Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
The ideological rift within the Republican base is further complicated by figures like Candace Owens, a prominent MAGA commentator who has questioned U.S. support for Israel without aligning herself with extremist voices. Earlier in November, Owens hosted a podcast with noted Israel critic Dr. Norman Finkelstein, reflecting a broader questioning of traditional alliances.
As both left and right grapple with the moral and political contradictions of America’s relationship with Israel, the future of bipartisan support for the Jewish state is less certain than ever. The ongoing “civil war” within the MAGA movement has yet to draw comment from Donald Trump or his senior officials, but its outcome may well determine the direction of American conservatism for years to come.
For now, the battle lines are drawn, and the struggle over Israel’s place in U.S. politics shows no sign of abating.
