How to Respond to Lies and Misinformation About Israel: Tucker Carlson

"Qataris are awesome, Israel controls Syria, and I'm a dumbass!"

Welcome to this installment of my How to Respond to Lies and Misinformation series. Up to now, this series has featured influencers who identify as progressives, but are really just antisemites with positions shrouded in modern ‘social justice’ language. This time, I’m pivoting to a WASP douchebag from the right. Same M.O., different end of the aisle.

As I’ve stated previously, I personally find Tucker Carlson to be one of the most dangerous figures from the right. What’s particularly unfortunate is that he and his friends from the GOP represent the party currently controlling all branches of government in the United States. Since they are also sycophants of Trump, it’s safe to assume that any views they espouse have also been pre-approved by our current orangutan-in-chief.

Here we have Tucker with Steve Witkoff, an As a Jew who happens to occupy what is supposed to be a peace-keeping diplomatic position within the Trump administration. So far, his primary accomplishment appears to be his participation in the pathetic failure of hostage negotiations with the Qataris, whose asses he refuses to remove his lips from.

During the part of the segment where Witkoff speaks about his undying love for the worst leader in Jewish history known colloquially as Bibi, Tucker responds with the following word vomit:

I think the core question is the map. For thousands of years it’s been about the land, but what does the map look like, who controls what? And it’s clearly had a destabilizing effect on some of the poorer, more populated countries, like Jordan and Egypt. I think it might be helpful for everybody for when this is all done, what does the map look like from Israel’s perspective?

First of all, since when have Jordan and Egypt been “poor”? Jordan has a wealthy royal family that owns numerous palaces, and Egypt has one of the largest militaries in the Middle East (to defend against what threat, exactly?).

What does the map look like “from Israel’s perspective”? It looks like a tiny nation the size of New Jersey, where the letters spelling out the country barely even fit horizontally on a visual map, wedged between the giant countries of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. It looks like a small, democratic, and pluralistic Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea that’s able to defend its borders. I don’t think that’s a lot to ask, but sadly, it appears to be too difficult of a concept for Tucker to grasp.

But there’s more:

Okay, so Israel has moved into Lebanon and Syria. They are not part of Israel, but they control them. So when this war is over, what does the Israeli government hope to control? If that were clear, it would have a calming effect if people knew what the goal was.

I had to restrain myself from throwing my laptop across the room when I heard Tucker utter these words—so much for the “calming effect.” In what universe does Israel “control” Lebanon and Syria? From what I’ve gathered, Syria is emerging from a civil war that claimed the lives of 500,000 people, and none of that horror had anything to do with Israel or Jews. During the current war, exactly what functions of the Lebanese government—other than blowing off the dicks of thousands of Hezbollah fighters, of course—has Israel interfered with to the point where it would constitute Israeli “control” over Lebanon?

Of course, as a Jew, Witkoff has the option to correct the misinformation that Tucker is peddling. Instead, he pivots to talking about how they’re going to deal with Iran, and how Hezbollah and Hamas “aren’t threats anymore” because they’ve been destroyed (as of today, absolutely false). But what does that have to do with Syria and Lebanon, which Tucker just stated that Israel “controls”?

If we can get these terrorist organizations eliminated as risks, we will normalize everywhere. I think Lebanon could normalize with Israel—meaning a peace treaty between the two countries. Syria too. The indications are that Jolani is a different person than what he once was. And people do change. I mean, you at 55 are completely different than how you were at 35.

Maybe at 55 I’ll be somewhat different than I am today in my mid-30s, however I can pretty much guarantee that I will never be appointed de-facto dictator of my ravaged country 20 years after joining al-Qaeda. Now that al-Jolani has taken the reins in Syria, I suppose we are all to assume that it’s all rainbows and sunshine there. I look forward to hearing this fine statesman’s plans for a democratic and peaceful Syria that signs a nice treaty with Israel in the near future. I think that scenario is about as likely as Leonardo DiCaprio returning my phone calls.

Functionally, what Tucker Carlson is doing is really no different from self-described progressives like Judith Butler or Francesca Albanese: single out Israel as a uniquely sinful actor, while whitewashing the sins of the various involved dictatorships who have a vested interest in keeping the war and its accompanying terrorism going. It doesn’t matter if what he says is true, only in how it informs the behavior of his audience of right-wing sheep. That is called religion—the religion of modern Jew-hate. It has no basis in fact, and in a world with no facts, influencers like Carlson wield an enormous amount of power over their cult followings.