OPINION:
Last week, I heard an outrageous conspiracy theory that suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israel Defense Forces to “stand down” amid the Hamas terror attacks, a maneuver he purportedly executed to gain political power.
The baseless assertion reminded me of the conspiracy theories that suggested the Roosevelt administration had foreknowledge about Pearl Harbor but kept quiet so it would have a pretext to enter World War II, and the urban legends that the George W. Bush administration orchestrated the 9/11 attacks to give the U.S. a reason to invade Iraq.
While most of the post-Oct. 7 anti-Israel rhetoric has emerged on the far left, this theory was being circulated by some of the same far-right isolationists who accused Ukraine of being controlled by Nazis despite having a Jewish president. I initially declined to write about the theory to avoid giving it any attention, but since then, Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk took care of that.
On an Oct. 12 podcast with Patrick Bet-David, Mr. Kirk floated a conspiracy theory that Mr. Netanyahu allowed Hamas to attack his own country as part of a desperate plan to remain in power. Variations of the conspiracy theory have since gone viral on the internet.
“Just so we’re clear: @charliekirk11 is now implying Bibi Netanyahu purposely let Hamas murder 1,200 Israelis, behead children, take 100+ people hostage—all part of a plan to acquire more power in Israel. Unbelievable,” Townhall contributor John Hasson wrote on X.
Mr. Kirk raised the subject by talking about his “many” visits to Israel, asserting that the “whole country is a fortress … I’ve been to that Gaza border. You cannot go 10 feet without running into a 19-year old with an AR-15 or a machine gun.”
He then said: “The whole country is surveilled, so let me just kind of go through this. We don’t talk about Israeli politics very often, and most Americans don’t know this. The last nine months Israel was on the brink of civil war. That’s not an exaggeration. This judicial stuff, there were hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets because Bebe Netanyahu was basically redefining the Israeli constitution. That’s not an exaggeration, right? He said the judicial branch has too much power.
“There were protests this week against Netanyahu where they anticipated tens of thousands of people to take to the streets. That’s all gone, Patrick. Netanyahu now has an emergency government and a mandate to lead. I’m not, not willing to say, to go so far to say that Netanyahu knew or there was intelligence here, but I think some questions need to be asked: Was there a stand-down order? Six hours? I don’t believe it.”
He then added: “Israel is the size of New Jersey. When I took a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to the Gaza border, it was 45 minutes. [It took the IDF] six hours! [Hamas was] livestreaming the killing of Jews.
“Did somebody in the government say, stand down? That is a legitimate, nonconspiracy question. The whole country is the IDF, the whole country is! And you’re trying to tell me that they’re going to concerts and kibbutz’s, and schools?”
Mr. Kirk’s outlandish comments come a year and a half after he blamed Ukraine as Russian forces lined up 190,000 troops to invade, and even after its forces began bombing civilian locations. On Feb. 16, 2022, Russian state-controlled press falsely reported that Ukraine “fired mortar shells” at a Russian separatist enclave in occupied areas.
According to The New York Times, Mr. Kirk quoted the false report on his Telegram channel to 256,000 subscribers, and subsequently minimized the brewing illegal invasion as a “border dispute.”
On March 7, four days after Russian forces bombed a hospital in Ukraine, Mr. Kirk tweeted, “If you are mindlessly supporting Ukraine and don’t know what the Above Battalion is you might be cheering for literal Nazis.”
Just last month, Human Events reported Mr. Kirk denigrated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “grifter” and accused him of having “so many Nazis in [his] military.”
Mr. Kirk’s comments demonstrate a pattern of political gaslighting, interchanging good and evil. In Mr. Kirk’s Bizarro World, where everything is the opposite of the real world, Ukraine deserves to be abandoned because its Jewish president leads an army of Nazis, and Israel’s leadership allowed terrorists to attack its own civilians. This suggests Jewish leaders allowed babies to be beheaded while their parents were being murdered and the corpses of naked women were paraded in the streets, so they could gain power.
Some might say Mr. Kirk’s comments demonstrate ignorance, but he may just lack a conscience or be evil. Bolstering terrorist propaganda is evil because it casts aspersions on heroes and mitigates the guilt of those responsible for crimes against humanity.
On Oct. 15, Fox News contributor Ben Domenech tweeted, “If Charlie Kirk remains the head of TPUSA, the right has an anti-Semite problem that will follow them into the coming elections.”
The conventional wisdom of the mainstream media is to refrain from writing about conspiracy theories because it inadvertently amplifies them. But Mr. Kirk’s comments are a warning sign that Israel’s enemies are now channeling propaganda to the fringe right as well as the radical left. Such theories should be confronted and discredited, not ignored. Those who lend credence to such propaganda should be held accountable.
In 1957, author Ayn Rand wrote in “Atlas Shrugged”: “The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.”
Mr. Kirk should resign or be removed as the head of TPUSA, or the right will — and should — suffer the consequences of its inaction.
• Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is a former Washington prosecutor who served as adviser to and director of the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting from 2017 to 2021. He now serves as a Washington Times editorial board member.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.