The Wrong Kind of Friend – Rethinking Charlie Kirk’s Support for Israel
In the weeks following the October 7 massacre, Israel initially drew widespread sympathy from across the world. Yet, that sentiment quickly faded. As criticism mounted, many Israelis were outraged at what they saw as hypocrisy: “How can we, a democracy that values human rights and free elections, be cast as the villains, while our enemies, people who execute LGBTQ individuals, are embraced as victims? Our war is your war too!” Still, Western public were not convinced. Support dwindled steadily, and among the few who remained vocal, some were hardly allies we should celebrate. One of them was Charlie Kirk.
Kirk was a fervent supporter of Israel. When news of Kirk’s death broke, many Israelis grieved. Television studios devoted full-day coverage. Social media filled with clips of him passionately defending Israel, alongside touching images of his family. The pain was real. He did not deserve to be murdered, and in a decent democratic society, no one should be killed for their views, however extreme. As John Stuart Mill argued, silencing opinions, even dangerous or mistaken ones, is an act of arrogance, as if we alone hold the truth.
But we must ask: was Kirk’s support ever truly helpful to Israel?
Most Israelis knew him only from pro-Israel clips, which earned him admiration in the country. Yet, few realized that on American campuses, in debates, and in rallies, Kirk championed views that stood in stark contradiction to the very values we claim to uphold.
Consider just a few examples: he claimed that Western culture was inherently “superior” to all others and urged audiences to stop listening to rap, a genre tied to African American communities, insisting people should return to the “music that built Western civilization.”
He once said that, if he were to find out that the pilot of the plane he was set to board was a Black man, he would inherently question his competence. He openly dismissed the very concept of empathy. He even suggested reviving public executions, joking they could be “sponsored by Coca-Cola.”
He argued that women were depressed because they pursued careers instead of submitting to their husbands and raising children. He told a gay teenager that he did not agree with his “lifestyle,” even as the boy declared support for Republicans.
When asked whether he would force his daughter to give birth if she were raped, Kirk replied yes. At a rally, when a woman introduced her child conceived through her father’s sexual abuse, Kirk applauded her decision not to have an abortion. Finally, he compared abortion to the Holocaust, stating the former is even “worse,” and used it as a rallying cry for his movement.
The list goes on, but the point is clear. Charlie Kirk was an extremist: racist, misogynist, fascist. Undeniably, Kirk was an evil man who dedicated his life spreading hate. It is doubtful that his devotion to Israel stemmed from genuine solidarity with Jewish history and Zionist ideology, which sought to find a safe haven for the Jewish people. More likely, it was rooted in his evangelical belief that the return of Jews to the Land of Israel is a step toward a messianic end-times prophecy.
Either way, Israel should not be flattered. Even in this era of unprecedented isolation, our cause is not so desperate that we must welcome with open arms every supporter, at any cost. When figures like Kirk become our loudest defenders, it says more about us than about them. It suggests that the moral foundation of Israel’s legitimacy is being eroded until only voices utterly alien to the values upon which the State of Israel was founded remain. And if that is the case, then we should ask ourselves: were these ever the advocates we needed in the first place?
