\n<\/p>\n
The podcaster Megyn Kelly and the Fox News host Mark Levin are two of the country\u2019s best-known conservative influencers. She opposes the war in Iran. He supports it. <\/p>\n
Ms. Kelly, herself a former Fox News host, recently argued that the war was sold to the American people by \u201cIsrael firsters like Mark Levin<\/a>.\u201d He called her an \u201cemotionally unhinged, lewd and petulant wreck.\u201d It only got uglier from there.<\/p>\n As the joint U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran rolls into its third week, leading figures of the MAGA movement have attacked each other with increasing vehemence over the wisdom of the war, and more broadly, what the American relationship to the Jewish state should be.<\/p>\n The <\/span>debate reflects a widening rift within the American conservative movement. For decades, conservatives were stalwart supporters of the Jewish state, but over the last few years, some have grown disenchanted with Israel and its role in American politics. The <\/span>disagreements have only intensified since the attacks began on Feb. 28. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Trump, a president uniquely solicitous of, and sensitive to, the right-wing media sphere, weighed in over the weekend on the dispute between Ms. Kelly and Mr. Levin, taking the latter\u2019s side.<\/p>\n \u201cThose that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside,\u201d Mr. Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social. Despite repeatedly pledging on the campaign trail to avoid foreign conflicts, he defended the current war as consistent with the precepts of his movement \u201cTHEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n Joining Mr. Trump\u2019s side of the debate are politicians like Senators Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, and media figures like Ben Shapiro, a prominent podcaster who has called those who oppose the attacks on Iran \u201ccowards, liars and America haters.\u201d Mr. Shapiro, who, like Mr. Levin, is Jewish, also singled out Ms. Kelly as an \u201cunbelievable coward\u201d for believing, as she said, that \u201cno one should have to die for a foreign country.\u201d <\/p>\n The critics have been equally withering. Tucker Carlson, the well-known podcaster, has been selling ball caps, T-shirts and coffee mugs emblazoned with messages like, \u201cNeocons are Gay For Israel\u201d and \u201cAIPAC An Offer You Can\u2019t Refuse,\u201d crude and unsubtle attacks on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group, and other defenders of Israel.<\/p>\n Mr. Carlson has called the strikes \u201cabsolutely disgusting and evil\u201d and said they occurred because \u201cIsrael wanted it to happen.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Similar anti-Israel sentiments have been expressed by other far-right figures, including the podcaster Alex Jones and <\/span>former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as by more moderate voices like the podcaster Joe Rogan and <\/span>the influential conservative intellectual and Trump critic Andrew Sullivan.<\/p>\n Mr. Sullivan wrote last week that he believed the attack was essentially an Israel first, rather than an America first, proposition. <\/p>\n \u201cIn plain English,\u201d Mr. Sullivan stated, \u201cthis is what is in front of our nose: a corrupt, deranged monarch pursuing an illegal and immoral war primarily to benefit a foreign country.\u201d<\/p>\n White House officials contend that Mr. Trump\u2019s base is with him on this war, citing recent polls <\/span>showing<\/a> that majorities of self-identified \u201cMAGA Republicans\u201d support it. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cClaims that the noble Operation Epic Fury will somehow fracture the president\u2019s base are not backed by or reflected in the data,\u201d said Olivia Wales, a White House spokeswoman, in an email.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But the heated disagreement over attacking Iran, which shows no sign of abating, sets this conflict apart from previous military actions in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq, which began with more unified support from conservatives. <\/p>\n The division has colored conversations about recent attacks, threats and vandalism within the United States since the war began. After a Lebanese immigrant attacked a Michigan synagogue last week, Laura Loomer, the pro-Israel right-wing influencer, posted<\/a> that \u201cTucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens all have blood on their hands,\u201d referring to Mr. Carlson and two antisemitic right-wing celebrities. \u201cThis is what they have been pushing for with their rhetoric and attacks on Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n The internecine brawling could also inject an element of drama to the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference this month in Dallas. Planned speakers at the event include Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former shah of Iran, who supports the military action, and Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump campaign manager and podcaster, who recently accused Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of tricking Mr. Trump into a \u201cregime change\u201d war.<\/p>\n It remains to be seen whether the war will have a lasting impact on American attitudes toward Israel. Polling shows that sizable support for Israel still exists, but that it is eroding, especially among Republicans younger than 50. A March 2025 poll by Pew Research<\/a> found that 50 percent of these younger Republicans had a negative view of Israel, compared to 35 percent in 2022. Republicans 50 and older also had a more negative view of Israel, rising to 23 percent last year from 19 percent in 2022.<\/p>\n Overall, the 2025 poll found that 53 percent of Americans held a negative opinion of Israel, an increase of 11 percentage points compared to three years earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIn general, there\u2019s been a transformation, and that transformation has, you know, just shifted the way people see Israel and its role,\u201d said Shibley Telhami, a politics professor at the University of Maryland who tracks American attitudes about Israel.<\/p>\n Older Americans, versed in the horrors of the Holocaust, grew up seeing Israel as the lone democratic outpost in a complex, strife-ridden part of the world and an essential homeland for an oppressed people. Few in Gen Z, by contrast, have ever met a Holocaust survivor. Their views are instead informed by having come of age during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and they tend to view Palestinians, rather than Jews, as the oppressed people, especially after the conflict in Gaza erupted in October 2023.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung people don\u2019t get it \u2014 they don\u2019t understand why we are so close to Israel,\u201d said Curt Mills, editor of the American Conservative, which was founded by an ardent anti-interventionist, Pat Buchanan, who was frequently accused of being antisemitic.<\/p>\n Critics of the war have seized on the March 2 comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told reporters that the United States had initiated its attacks only after learning that Israel had already planned to strike<\/a>. \u201cWe knew that would precipitate an attack on U.S. forces,\u201d Mr. Rubio said. \u201cIf we didn\u2019t pre-emptively strike before they launched those attacks, we would suffer more casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n Although he tried to walk back the comments, critics widely interpreted them as an admission that the United States was acting at Israel\u2019s behest rather than in pursuit of its own national interests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cRubio\u2019s statement did nothing to disabuse the crazier conspiracy theorists from going down that rabbit hole,\u201d said David Myers, a professor of Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles. \u201cIt\u2019s potentially really combustible.\u201d<\/p>\n For now, it is difficult to know how the hostilities within the conservative movement, much like the war itself, will end, and what that end might look like. For conservatives like Laurie Cardoza Moore, an Israel supporter and critic of Mr. Carlson, the question could not be more serious.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is going to be the defining moment of the Republican Party, of the conservative movement,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n