Once again, the far right and the far left have found a common cause: inciting hatred against Jews-but this time, with a particular twist.
Tucker Carlson, appearing recently on Megyn Kell’y’s podcast, asserted that conservatives who support Israel are “under a spell." The Jews have a “witchcraft-like" influence in American politics, he charged.
That was consistent with what Carlson said a few weeks earlier, when he claimed that the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Gov. Mike Huckabee, appears to be “operating under a spell" and is the victim of something “metaphysical."
All of which is reminiscent of an infamous remark made by someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum-someone whom Carlson often denounces on other issues.
Ilhan Omar, now a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, tweeted in 2012: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."
In the Middle Ages, Martin Luther and the Catholic Church were bitter enemies. But they saw eye to eye when it came to the Jews. In his 1543 book, On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther asserted that Jewish religious practice “abounds with witchcraft" and “sorcery." Many medieval Catholic leaders said and wrote the same thing.
In modern times, Carlson and Omar are not the only ones to think along these lines. Similar themes appear in the antisemitic propaganda spread by Palestinian Authority-salaried religious officials.
In a sermon broadcast on PA Television in 2002, for example, the religious preacher Dr. Mahmoud Mustafa Najem declared that “the Jews" tried to murder Muhammad, the founder of Islam, “by witchcraft."
Similarly, Sheikh Khaled Al-Mughrabi, a PA-salaried preacher at the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, said in a 2015 sermon: “The Freemason lodges are witchcraft gatherings of the Children of Israel. One of the ceremonies, for instance if someone wants to be accepted as a new member, or rise in rank... he has to somehow bring one of his sons or daughters, or his wife or one of his male or female relatives, and put them on the table and slaughter them with his own hands as a sacrifice to Satan, in order to rise in the ranks of the Freemasons. My brothers, this exists until today."
(Translations courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch.)
Although separated by religion, geography, and political philosophy, Tucker Carlson, Ilhan Omar, and the Palestinian Authority represent one of the most frightening-and dangerous-ideological alliances of our times.
Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news.