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Ben Shapiro goes off on Tucker Carlson over his ‘ugly’ isolationist view of Israel

October 25, 2023 | | Print Article

Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro has unloaded on Tucker Carlson over the former Fox News’ host’s isolationist view of Israel.

In the latest episode of Carlson’s X show published Monday, he and retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor discussed the ongoing crisis in Israel.

Besides accusing Israel of committing “war crimes,” the two also suggested that America’s intervention in the crisis could precipitate a regional conflict involving Iran.

Listen:

Responding to Carlson and Macgregor on Wednesday’s edition of his daily radio show/podcast, Shapiro accused them of being “disingenuous” and siding with the left.

“There are some people on the right who I think are being fully disingenuous and who are looking for an excuse to jump right on the same moral equivalency bandwagon as the left. I think there are certainly people like that. We’ve talked about them on the show before. I’m sure we’ll talk about them on the show again,” he said.

He continued by pushing back on the idea that American intervention is what would incite a regional, Armageddon-like response involving Iran. Indeed, to hear Shapiro it, the inverse — a lack of American intervention — is what’d cause hell to unfold.

“One of the moves that’s being made in order to stifle Israel’s response to this is to claim that if Israel does respond, as it has to respond, to root out Hamas entirely, that this will end in World War III. So yesterday, Tucker had on his program a general named Douglas Macgregor. Macgregor has in the past suggested that Jewish money is behind American support for Israel and all the rest,” he said.

“But MacGregor has military expertise and he is essentially now warning that Armageddon is coming and his proposed solution would be that Israel does nothing. Which, by the way, absolutely promotes the idea of Armageddon, because if Israel does nothing after 1,500 of its citizens are slaughtered and Hamas remains in place, the chances of a broad-scale multi-front attack on Israel that will require American intervention go up radically,” he added.

Shapiro then pushed back on the idea that the U.S. should be trying to deter Iran from getting involved by backing off and letting Israel handle everything itself. Instead, he argued, America should be attempting to achieve peace through strength — an idea that he noted has long been central to conservatism.

“When MacGregor says things like ‘we are right on the verge of war,’ the whole point is deterrence. Deterrence is a thing. You know what emboldens Iran? Weakness. This has been true for literally ever. But there’s been this equation that’s now happened on the right where if you stand up to a terror power, the idea is that it somehow puts America in a position that is weaker, which again, is a not right-wing position. That is not a conservative position. It’s never been a conservative position so far as I’m aware. Peace through strength has been a conservative position for as long as I’ve been alive,” he said.

“This idea that you are heightening the chances of a world war if America actually flexes its muscles sometimes, it’s a bizarre one when what we know is precisely the opposite. The reason this attack was launched by Israel in the first place is because the Biden administration was conciliatory toward Iran. That’s one of the reasons. The pullout from Afghanistan is another reason. So McGregor says this thing won’t stay contained, which would be mostly true if America weren’t there to keep a lid on it. The whole point of America having aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean is to say keep a lid on it. Don’t open up a second front with Hezbollah, because that is going to tear the lid off,” he added.

And lastly, Shapiro outright dissected Carlson’s thesis that a desire for America to intervene in Israel’s crisis means the same thing as a desire for war with Iran.

“First of all, everyone has an interest in keeping this contained. Everyone. So but again, there’s this ugly thing that’s been happening. Tucker does it a lot, in which he suggests that if you disagree with him on the tactic to keep the thing contained … that if you think America should flex its muscles in order to push Hezbollah off the ball, for example, then this means that you actually want the war with Iran, which of course is really scurrilous. It is not true,” he said.

The episode of Shapiro’s show prompted some pushback on X, where critics argued that Israel’s crisis isn’t America’s problem. Some critics also accused him of being a warmonger.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
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