Jeremy England, Ph.d., is a theoretical biophysicist, former professor and founder of Conquest Labs, who lives in Modiin, Israel. He is noted for his argument that the spontaneous emergence of life may be explained by the better heat dissipation of more organized arrangement of molecules compared to that of groups of less organized molecules.
People get it wrong when they call Tucker Carlson an anti-Semite. Leave aside the question of money for a second - you can always accuse a media pro of pandering to an audience; fine, but let’s give the man’s words their due. What is he really saying? To call Tucker an antisemite and leave it at that is to “shut down the conversation.”
So here’s a conversation: Why would Tucker invite on to his show a Jewish comedian who chose to abandon Jewish law, a popular history buff who likens the Allied bombing of Germany to human sacrifice by pharisees, a bible-blogging chemistry professor who wonders if just maybe Roosevelt should’ve sided with Hitler, and a nun desperate to correct the all too common misconception that Hamas wants anything more than to simply “serve” and “protect” their people”?
Is it because Tucker is a “racist”? Is it just that he’s “blinded by hate”?
The antisemite, as often as not, does not know why he hates Jews, although he’s got a million reasons. The deranging resentment comes first, and only then does he gobble and spew one morsel of dumb-as-rocks explanatory nonsense after another like a starving man at a buffet. Jews have the advantage in sniffing out this kind of garbage because we know for sure we don’t actually drink human blood or get warning calls about 9/11s, and so we also know for sure that Tucker is guilty of peddling anti-Semitic slander.
But it’s not because he is an anti-Semite, it’s because he sincerely opposes Judaism and the Torah.
This gets confusing, because although Tucker clearly knows very little about Judaism, plenty of Jews who know just as little are just as opposed to the Torah as he is, in the sense that they may agree with many summary statements of principle (Love your neighbor! Don’t steal!) while disagreeing with many particular obligations of the nation (Keep Sabbaths! Conquer the Holy Land!).
Even more confusingly, there are a great many Christians who are as committed to helping and loving the modern State of Israel as Tucker seems to be obsessed with hindering and defaming it. Charlie Kirk was one such Christian friend of Zion, as is Ambassador Mike Huckabee. Listening to Huckabee talk about Israel makes me want to hug him every time, and Jews who love Israel owe real thanks to supporters like him and Charlie.
Which is why it is so hard for Jews to stand clear of disagreements between Christians like Mike and Christians like Tucker.
Yet, stand apart we should. Recently, former US Ambassador David Friedman tweeted a collection of New Testament bible verses meant to prove the sensibility of Christian Zionism (alas, they were rebutted in a matter of minutes by commenters with other New Testament bible verses). Meanwhile, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire just gave a million dollars to Kirk’s TPUSA organization, in part to help “bring the nation back to Christ”—just like Charlie always wanted.
When Jews who love Jews encounter Christians who love Jews, we are often overcome by gratitude and want nothing other than to reciprocate that new-found love unconditionally. We’re overcome though, because of a collective memory of nearly two thousand years of being hunted for sport by nations that had already been thoroughly brought to Christ. I would never want to suggest for a second that every version of Christianity has to square with Torquemada or Luther, but to suggest, like Friedman or Shapiro, that the only true Christianity is Zionist or at least tolerant of Torah Judaism, is dangerously naïve.
When Tucker Carlson locked horns with Senator Ted Cruz over whether Genesis commands Christians to bless the Jews and their Jewish state, he was not playing bible study gotcha; he was treating his viewers to a doctrinal dispute at the core of Christianity that never has been easy to resolve: Did the Church replace the Jews as the party to God’s covenant? Are Jews supposed to keep the Torah God gave them or accept Christianity as an alternative “fulfillment” of the Law? American Jews on the political right would do well to remember that Christians spent centuries killing each other over smaller doctrinal disagreements.
Of course, there are versions of Christianity that engender less hostility towards Jews than others, and it is sensible to offer friendship and encouragement where it’s deserved. The authentically Judaic way of being a good friend, however, is not to choose sides as they duel over their bible, but rather to teach them about the true meaning of ours.