The assassination of Charlie Kirk prompted fierce debate over where the 31-year-old conservative organizer stood on Israel, and where his youth movement was headed in its support for the Jewish state.
Shortly after Kirk’s death in Utah, online influencers like Candace Owens, a former Turning Point USA employee, claimed Kirk was on the verge of abandoning his pro-Israel stance, citing private text messages.
The leaked chat, confirmed by Turning Point USA as authentic, appeared to show Kirk frustrated about “Jewish donors” who pulled their funding after Kirk hosted conservative commentator Tucker Carlson at events.
“I cannot and will not be bullied like this,” Kirk appears to say in a screenshot of texts. “Leaving me no choice but to leave the pro Israel cause.”
Owens advertised this response as evidence Kirk was coming closer to her views. Over the past few years, Owens has increasingly focused her commentary on conspiracy theories related to Israel controlling the U.S. government.
Carlson has also drawn ire from the American Jewish community after hosting a podcaster who downplayed Hitler’s role in the Holocaust, and for saying Jews should not be able to have dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship.
Kirk’s closest friends said the text exchange did not reveal a change of heart for Kirk. The Turning Point USA founder frequently criticized what he called “Jew hate” and defended America’s ally in the Middle East.
How did Charlie Kirk view Israel?
During a Student Action Summit attended by the Deseret News in July, Kirk repeatedly rebutted comments from students suggesting that Israel exercised covert influence over American domestic or foreign policy.
When a young attendee asked whether Israel was behind the 9/11 attacks, Kirk said, “No, I think that’s insane.” But in private, Kirk worried views like this were becoming more common among Gen Z conservatives.
In a May letter to Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Kirk expressed his “deep love for Israel” and described a negative shift in public opinion toward Israel as reaching the level of “a five-alarm fire.”
“Israel is getting CRUSHED on social media and you are losing younger generations of Americans, even among MAGA conservatives,” Kirk wrote. “In my opinion, you are losing the information war which will eventually translate into less political and military support from America.”
A ceasefire in Gaza brokered by President Donald Trump earlier in October does not seem to have slowed this trend.
During a Turning Point USA event two weeks ago, students pressured conservative radio host Glenn Beck — who was filling in for Kirk — to condemn Israel’s “overwhelming lobby over the U.S. government.”
When Beck resisted the idea that Israel controlled U.S. officials, a student shouted, “Are you America First or Israel First?” another asked “Where’s the evidence?” for the Oct. 7 massacre against Israelis, and a third questioned “the societal taboo around criticisms of Israel.”
For years, anti-Israel rhetoric has largely been isolated to the political left. Following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, thousands of campus protests swept the country, often with overtly anti-semitic messages, condemning Israel.
This movement was driven by young, very online progressive voters. Now some American Jews worry a similar sentiment toward Israel, albeit with different ideological motivations, is spreading to young voters on the right.
What do the polls say?
Polls from the past two years show a decline in support for Israel among U.S. voters on both sides of the political aisle, particularly among younger voters.
In March 2024, Gallup recorded a 26-percentage-point drop in favorability toward Israel among 18-34-year-olds compared to the year prior, with just 38% of the age group having a positive opinion of the country.
An August Harvard-Harris poll found that 60% of Gen Z voters, ages 18-24, expressed more support for Hamas than for Israel in the Gaza conflict. Older age demographics each supported Israel at far greater rates than Hamas.
A Pew survey from April found that the share of U.S. adults with an unfavorable opinion of Israel increased from 42% in 2022 to 53%. The increase was most notable among older Democrats where the share with negative views went from 43% to 66%.
Democrats of all ages viewed Israel negatively, according to the poll. Overall, 69% of Democrats, or those who leaned Democratic, said they had an unfavorable view, compared to 71% of those under 50 years old.
But the second largest increase in negative opinion of Israel was among Republicans under 50. The share of this group who had unfavorable views of Israel increased from 35% to 50% over a three-year period.
“Israel is facing a real problem,” among both parties, Bethany Mandel, a Jewish conservative columnist, told the Deseret News. “It’s a crisis in the Zionist world, in the pro-Israel world.”
Israel has long had its critics on the progressive left, highlighted by the success of democratic socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, Mandel said. But now criticism is also coming from the populist right.
Mandel attributes this to the remarkable shift in tone from prominent personalities like Owens and Carlson over the past few years, as well as the reliance of young people on social media platforms for news.
The percentage of young voters who regularly get their news from TikTok more than quadrupled over the past five years, increasing from 9% in 2020 to 43% in 2025, according to a Pew survey published in September.
Clips of destruction in Gaza and videos blaming Israel for U.S. problems quickly go viral and have an emotional appeal for young viewers, according to Dan Cox, the senior fellow in public opinion at the American Enterprise Institute.
A study at Northeastern University found that the ratio of pro-Palestinian to pro-Israeli posts on TikTok was 19:1, and that the average view count for pro-Palestinian content was nearly five times higher than pro-Israel content.
Will this lead to antisemitism?
But the negative shift in attitudes toward Israel cannot be explained only by algorithms, Cox said. It also stems from the way Israel is framed in higher education and the amount of cynicism young people feel toward the government.
“They don’t trust the federal government to do what is in the best interest of the American people,” Cox said. “And that kind of suspicion is so pervasive, it kind of hangs over everything.”
Jenessa Jimoh, a 26-year-old progressive activist in Utah, also cited distrust in institutions as one of the primary drivers behind young voters’ views on America’s relationship with Israel.
Content on platforms like TikTok show a tragedy unfolding in Gaza that Jimoh said many in Gen Z consider to be part of a broader global struggle for social justice.
“I think for many young people, Gaza isn’t just a foreign policy issue, it’s more of like a moral litmus test,” Jimoh said. “Many young people perceive the conflict through a human right lens, more than a geopolitical lens.”
While Jimoh sees criticism of Israel as being an entirely separate issue from antisemitic views toward Jewish people, the polling data shows the two often become linked, according to Cox.
An April 2024 poll by Pew Research found that as young people have developed increasingly negative attitudes toward Israel, the share of adults under 30 with a favorable view of the Israeli people has fallen 17 percentage points.
For the 12-month period from Oct 7, 2023 to Sept 24, 2024, the Anti-Defamation League recorded over 10,000 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. — a 200% rise from the previous year, and the highest annual total on record.
“Attitudes towards Jewish people are strongly correlated with views of Israel,” Cox said. “Young people tend to have a little bit more negative attitude toward Jewish Americans than older Americans, and that’s something that is fairly recent.”