by Patrick Lawrence, The Unz Review:
If Charlies Kirk’s well-documented defection from the Zionist cause confirmed one thing above all others, it is that the Israeli lobbies’ grip on American politics has slipped—measurably, and I would say beyond any kind of restoration—since the events of Oct. 7, 2023.
It would take more hasbara than the Israelis could ever produce to persuade me Kirk did not pay for his abandonment of the Christian–Zionist orthodoxy when he was assassinated before a crowd of conservative youth last Sept. 10.
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Andrew Cockburn has an excellent piece on this question in the current edition of Harper’s, published under the headline “Turning Point.” Andrew’s subhead goes to the point of this turning point: “How the GOP consensus on Israel cracked.”
As he makes clear, Kirk’s desertion of the ideological temple wherein he had worshipped the whole of his life as a public figure was highly significant given his stature and influence. But it was symptom, not cause.
No, the Zionist army’s savagery in Gaza is the cause: This accounts for the now-evident fissures in the wall Zionists — Israeli, American, Israeli–American — have built to protect Israel from even the mildest expressions of doubt or dissent among conservative Americans.
A month after Kirk’s murder Cockburn stood outside an auditorium at Indiana University where he, Kirk, had been scheduled to speak and where Tucker Carlson took his place. “Christian values? Israel massacres innocents.” “Would Jesus ignore this? Will you?”: These were among the things inscribed on placards people held as they waited for the program to begin.
This betokens a breach not only among Christians who have long given Israel their unalloyed support. It also signals a generational divide that seems to widen with every poll taken since it was first detected.
The U.S.–Israel relationship, the censure of sympathy for Palestinians and support of their cause, the tiresome anti–Semitism-everywhere trope tone-deaf Zionists persist in trying to put over on the public: When evangelical Christians call all this into question you can safely call this a crisis.
