The rebellion of Tucker Carlson Premium

Tucker Carlson challenges Christian Zionism and U.S. support for Israel, advocating a Christian duty against war and violence.

“If you wake up in the morning living in the kind of country that thinks it’s okay to kill — not simply military officers — but their daughters… That country is not worth fighting for,” American conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said on Monday (March 9, 2026), about an airstrike on the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab, southern Iran, on February 28, 2026. Multiple media platforms have blamed the U.S. for the attack that killed 168 children and 14 teachers.

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Going all out against Israel and war-supporting politicians including U.S. President Donald Trump, Mr. Carlson is taking the U.S. Christian conservative movement by storm. His views on war and politics, he says repeatedly, are guided by his Christian faith. This is a line of attack that war enthusiasts in the U.S. have not been familiar with.

His targets — among them Senators Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — defend their support for Israel as a Christian obligation. Support Israel and be blessed, oppose Israel and be cursed — that is the summary of this faith. Mr. Graham, the South Carolina Senator and a main proponent for many years of attacking Iran, said recently: “If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.” Mr. Carlson argues that opposing Israel’s wars, not supporting them, is the real Christian obligation.

Mr. Carlson confronts Mr. Graham and his ilk on the terrain of faith, arguing that support for the killing of innocents will bring god’s curse upon America. “The New Testament is against killing the innocent. We are not, as Christians, allowed to kill the innocent. Period,” he said at AmericaFest, the Turning Point USA annual conference in Phoenix, Arizona, on December 18, 2025. “You see elaborate arguments on behalf of doing so or ignoring it,” he said, referring to Christians who support Israel’s military operations in Gaza and calling for war against Iran. “And people who do it will be punished for it. And nations that endorse it will be punished for it. And you are seeing that now.” Mr. Carlson calls out the “genocide in Gaza” and says the Christian duty is to oppose, not endorse, this or any war.

Christian Zionism, the theological framework that guides the politics of many leaders such as those named above, is based on a literal reading of the Old Testament. Christian Zionists consider the Jews the chosen people of God, and the modern nation-state of Israel as the historical continuity of the Israel of the Old Testament. This is at odds with mainstream Christian theology, which holds the church as a universal promise of God, with no ethnic marker for the chosen people. The chosen community in the New Testament, the new Israel, is the universal community of the faithful, and has no connection to the modern nation-state.