By: Fern Sidman

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) issued an impassioned rebuke Thursday against what he described as a disturbing erosion of pro-Israel sentiment within segments of America’s conservative and Christian communities — a trend he blamed in part on Tucker Carlson’s anti-Israel rhetoric and the unwillingness of prominent institutions such as the Heritage Foundation to condemn it. Speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s (RJC) annual legislative conference in Las Vegas, Cruz delivered one of his most forceful defenses of Israel to date, warning that complacency among conservatives could allow anti-Israel narratives to metastasize in spaces once considered strongholds of Christian Zionist support.

According to a report that appeared on Friday at The Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Cruz’s remarks came just weeks after he had criticized Carlson during an address at the Heritage Foundation, where the senator accused the former Fox News host of normalizing antisemitic discourse. Carlson, who has increasingly embraced fringe voices and revisionist historical claims about the Holocaust, has sparked outrage across the conservative establishment — not least because of his growing influence among younger evangelicals.

Cruz, who did not mention Carlson by name in his RJC address, nonetheless made clear who his target was. “We are seeing young Christians and young evangelicals turning against Israel,” he said, as quoted by JNS, warning that the shift reflected not merely ideological confusion but the deliberate influence of “charismatic figures who are undermining the biblical and moral foundations of our support for the Jewish state.”

The Texas senator’s speech, originally intended for a private dinner celebrating the RJC’s 40th anniversary, was opened to the media at his request — a sign, JNS observed, of Cruz’s desire to “draw a line in the sand” against the growing normalization of anti-Israel sentiment among conservative commentators.

The controversy escalated after Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, released a video defending Carlson following weeks of criticism. In the clip, Roberts praised the former Fox host as “a close friend of Heritage” and rejected calls to distance the think tank from him. “The Heritage Foundation didn’t become the intellectual backbone of the conservative movement by canceling our own people or policing the consciences of Christians, and we won’t start doing that now,” Roberts said, in remarks cited in JNS report.

Roberts’s statement went further, vowing to “always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda.” He specifically included Carlson in that defense, arguing that “attempts to cancel him will fail.”

But as JNS reported, Roberts’s refusal to repudiate Carlson — who has hosted white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes on his online programs — has prompted widespread condemnation, particularly from Jewish and pro-Israel conservatives.

Carlson’s conversations with Fuentes included grotesque revisionist claims about Adolf Hitler, with guests suggesting that “Hitler was very, very cool” and that “America should never have intervened on behalf of the Jews in World War II.” Cruz seized on those remarks in his Las Vegas speech, condemning both the content and the silence that followed.

“If you sit there and nod while someone says there’s a very good argument America should have intervened on behalf of Nazi Germany in World War II … if you sit there while someone says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool, and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry — and you say nothing — then you are a coward and you are complicit,” Cruz said to thunderous applause, according to JNS coverage of the event.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, which represents one of the GOP’s most influential pro-Israel blocs, reacted strongly to Heritage’s defense of Carlson. RJC CEO Matt Brooks told Jewish Insider — in comments highlighted in the JNS report — that he was “appalled, offended, and disgusted” by Roberts’s remarks and suggested the RJC would “reconsider its relationship” with Heritage going forward.

Brooks’s response reflected growing frustration among Jewish conservatives who view the flirtation with antisemitic voices on the right as a betrayal of the movement’s historic alignment with Israel. As the JNS report noted, the RJC has long served as the Republican Party’s conduit to the Jewish community, emphasizing bipartisan support for Israel as a moral and strategic imperative.

“The Heritage Foundation’s statement was a breaking point for many of us,” one RJC board member told JNS. “We expect ideological diversity in the conservative world, but not moral equivocation when it comes to Holocaust denial or hatred of Jews. That’s not conservative — that’s evil.”

Cruz used his platform to deliver a broader warning about the decline of Christian support for Israel — a constituency that has historically underpinned the American right’s pro-Israel stance. According to the JNS report, Cruz lamented that “young Christians and young evangelicals are turning away from Israel,” influenced by “a toxic mix of misinformation, moral relativism, and demagoguery disguised as patriotism.”

“I am very proud to be a Christian Zionist,” Cruz declared, invoking the alliance between faith and statecraft that has defined much of his career. “There are some people, who are embraced at the highest level of government, who said there is no one they hate more than Christian Zionists. Well, I’ll tell you what: there’s no one I hate more than communists and jihadists who want to murder us.”

That last remark, JNS observed, was a pointed retort to Carlson’s on-air comment expressing disdain for “Christian Zionists” such as Cruz and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Trump. Carlson had mocked the two as “Bible-thumping warmongers” whose support for Israel “betrays American interests.”

Huckabee responded with characteristic humor. “I wasn’t aware that Tucker despises me,” he told reporters. “I do get that a lot from people not familiar with the Bible or history. Somehow I will survive the animosity.”

Cruz, in his RJC speech, defended Huckabee in equally personal terms. “Mike Huckabee is a pastor and a patriot who loves America, loves Israel, and loves Jesus,” he said. “I’m proud to be in his company.”

The Jewish News Syndicate has chronicled the growing unease within conservative circles over Heritage’s position. Once the intellectual anchor of the American right, the foundation now finds itself under fire from its own allies. “By aligning itself with voices like Carlson and Fuentes, Heritage risks losing credibility among Jews and Christians alike,” wrote a JNS analyst in a recent editorial.

The think tank’s president, Kevin Roberts, insists that “open debate” must not be stifled, framing his defense of Carlson as a principled stand against “cancel culture.” But critics — including Cruz — argue that moral clarity must trump rhetorical neutrality when it comes to antisemitism.

As JNS reported, Cruz’s argument resonates with a growing number of conservative leaders who see the danger of moral drift. “You cannot defend Western civilization while cozying up to those who idolize its destroyers,” one senator told JNS following the event. “This is about drawing boundaries — not political ones, but moral ones.”

For Cruz, the fight over Carlson’s rhetoric is about more than one media figure — it’s about the identity of the conservative movement itself. As he reminded the RJC audience, “Support for Israel is not optional for anyone who claims to defend Judeo-Christian values.”

The senator warned that failure to confront antisemitism, whether from the radical left or the isolationist right, could erode one of the most vital alliances in American politics: the partnership between evangelical Christians and the Jewish state.

“Our enemies — from Tehran to the corridors of academia — understand that Israel’s moral legitimacy depends on the moral clarity of its friends,” Cruz said, according to the JNS report. “If we abandon that clarity, we don’t just weaken Israel; we weaken America.”

The audience’s standing ovation — the third of the evening — underscored the resonance of that message.

As JNS noted in its coverage, Cruz’s fiery address laid bare a widening schism within the conservative world: one between those who view antisemitism as an urgent moral and strategic threat and those who treat it as a matter of “free expression.”

For Cruz, that distinction is nonnegotiable. “If you claim to love freedom but defend those who glorify tyranny and murder,” he said, “you have lost the plot of what conservatism — and Christianity — are supposed to stand for.”

In the halls of the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, where the RJC conference marked four decades of pro-Israel advocacy, Cruz’s words carried both warning and rallying cry. As the JNS report observed, “The senator’s message was unmistakable: silence in the face of antisemitism is complicity — and complicity is not an option.”

For a conservative movement wrestling with its moral bearings, it was a moment of reckoning.