Ted Cruz and the Meaning of Israel (1)

On June 18, 2025, Tucker Carlson—conservative political commentator and former Fox News host—interviewed Ted Cruz—Republican Senator from Texas—for his podcast, “The Tucker Carlson Show.” Several clips from this interview quickly went viral, including the one where the podcast host interrogates the Senator about the latter’s definition of the word “Israel.” The clip shows Ted Cruz trying to justify his ambition to become, as well as his claim to be, “the leading defender of Israel” in the U.S. Senate. He provides two reasons, one personal and the other geopolitical. While both are important, Tucker Carlson interrupts and challenges the Senator only on the first reason. Below, I examine this four minute exchange in detail, in the hope of illuminating several major issues that go well beyond what may appear to be a brief, though entertaining, quarrel between two men.

Earlier in the interview, Tucker Carlson aggressively questioned the Senator about the merits of the U.S. support for Israel and the influence of AIPAC on U.S. politics. It seems that Ted Cruz had not anticipated a direct challenge on this issue, nor had he expected that Tucker was going to be so combative in his approach. Being used to talking with people who share his pro-Israel views, the Senator must have been taken aback by Tucker’s relentless interrogation. He was visibly annoyed at having been put on the defensive, as well as frustrated by Tucker’s repeated interruptions and mocking tone. Not receiving the kind of polite deference to which he is accustomed, Cruz felt that he had to justify his loyalty to Israel—to proactively rationalize, in other words, why he was “the leading defender of Israel.”

SENATOR TED CRUZ: So you still haven’t asked why, but I’m going to tell you why.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay.
SENATOR TED CRUZ: And the reason is twofold. Number one, as a Christian growing up in Sunday school, I was taught, from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things.

This is all that Ted Cruz wanted to say regarding the first of his two reason, but Tucker wasn’t going to passively accept that rationale. From Tucker’s viewpoint, Cruz had just gifted him a huge opportunity and the interviewer was going to exploit that opportunity to the maximum extent possible. Pretending that he didn’t understand what Cruz was talking about, Tucker went on to grill him for several minutes, ostensibly asking for clarifications while exposing the absurdity of the Senator’s reasoning.

TUCKER CARLSON: Those who bless the government of Israel?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Those who bless Israel, is what it says; doesn’t say the government of, it says the nation of Israel. So that’s in the Bible. As a Christian, I believe that.
TUCKER CARLSON: Where is that?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: I can find it to you. I don’t have the scripture off the tip of my . . . . You pull out the phone and use the . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s in Genesis. But . . . . So you’re quoting a Bible phrase, you don’t have context for it. You don’t know where in the Bible it is. But that’s like, like your theology? I’m confused. What does that even mean?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Tucker . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m a Christian. I want to know what you’re talking about.
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Okay. Where does my support for Israel come from? Number one, because biblically, we are commanded to support Israel. But number two . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: Hold on, hold on. You’re a senator and now you’re throwing out theology. And I am a Christian and I am allowed to weigh in on this. We are commanded as Christians to support the government of Israel?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: : We are commanded to support Israel and we’re . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: What does that mean? Israel?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: We’re told those who bless Israel will be blessed.
TUCKER CARLSON: But hold on. Define “Israel.” This is important. Are you kidding? This is a majority Christian country.
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Define “Israel”? Do you not know what Israel is? That would be the country you’ve asked, like, 49 questions about.

Here, Tucker Carlson is making a number of points. First, because he is a Christian living in a Christian majority country, he is justified in demanding that an argument based on the Bible be clearly explained. Second, as a sitting U.S. Senator, Cruz is in a weak position when he claims biblical authority for pushing certain government policies. Third, and most importantly, Cruz is using a sleight of hand by conflating two different meanings of the word “Israel.” The biblical term refers to a particular religious community—i.e., a community formed on the basis of a covenant with God—and not to a modern nation state, let alone a particular government of the said nation state. Notice how Tucker continues to express his pretend incredulity while hammering on the Senator’s deeply flawed argument.

TUCKER CARLSON: So that’s what Genesis . . . . That’s what God is talking about?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: The nation of Israel, yes.
TUCKER CARLSON: And he’s . . . . So is that the current borders, the current leadership? He’s talking about the political entity called Israel?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: He’s talking about the nation of Israel, yes. Nations exist. And he’s discussing a nation. A nation was . . . the people of Israel is the nation. They’re the descendants of Abraham.

So far, Cruz is just repeating his claim that God wants Christians to support “Israel” while Tucker is pointing out that the Senator is reading modern-day politics into an ancient religious text. Later in the interview, Cruz would call Ayatollah Ali Khamenei a “religious zealot” and a “lunatic” who is particularly dangerous because he is “driven by religious fervor.” According to this logic, we don’t have to fear a political leader who is driven by a lust for power or territory or racial superiority or economic domination or national self-aggrandizement as much as we ought to fear a political leader who is driven by religious fervor—presumably because secular motives are rational and religious ones are not. But the more relevant point is that Cruz is completely oblivious to the fact that he too presents himself as being “driven by religious fervor,” given that he identifies his personal motivation to become “the leading defender of Israel” as coming from the Bible. So, if both leaders are religious zealots, why is only one of them dangerous? One could argue that Cruz is more dangerous than Iran’s supreme leader because he doesn’t even understand his own religious argument. The Ayatollah is a Shi’ite scholar who has had decades of training in his particular religious tradition while, in sharp contrast, the U.S. Senator is a theologically illiterate layman who is allowing a single biblical verse that he heard as a child in Sunday school to shape his “mature” views on foreign policy—a verse that he can’t even locate in the Bible without looking it up on Google, let alone expound its context and interpretive history.

At this point, Tucker asks the same question again, but this time his phrasing elicits an unexpectedly strong reaction from Cruz. The alleged culprit is Tucker’s use of the phrase “run by.”

TUCKER CARLSON: So the nation God is referring to in Genesis, is that the same as the country run by Benjamin Netanyahu right now?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Yes. Yes, it is. And by the way, it’s not “run by Benjamin Netanyahu” as a dictator. It’s a democratic country that elected . . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: I am not saying he is the dictator. He’s the prime minister. Right?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: But just like, you know, America is the country run by Donald Trump. No, actually, the American people elected Donald Trump. The same principle.
TUCKER CARLSON: This is silly.

We can notice at least two aspects of what is going on in Cruz’s mind during the above exchange. First, he is quite uncomfortable, and perhaps even distressed, given that his sympathetic nervous system has activated the fight-or-flight response. More blood is flowing towards the large muscles in his arms and legs, which means less is going to his brain. He becomes increasingly vigilant, his mind actively looking for any sign of danger, any indication of an imminent attack. Then he hears Tucker use a phrase that, under more relaxed conditions, would have conveyed zero nefarious significance. Given his heightened state of arousal, however, Cruz’s mind interprets that phrase as an arrow headed straight for his heart, triggering an intense defensive reaction. Objectively, Tucker did not say anything offensive, and he is right when he calls the resulting exchange “silly.” From the perspective of Cruz’s (temporarily) paranoid imagination, it was a real attack that required an immediate and decisive response.

Second, even under relaxed conditions, Cruz is deeply committed to the idea that Israel is a democratic country, though a part of him knows that this is not true. He is, in other words, conflicted. One the one hand, the Texas Senator desperately needs to believe that Israel has full democratic credentials, given that it is an important component of how he justifies his unconditional support for Israel to himself. On the other hand, he cannot possibly be ignorant of the reality that Israel is a settler colony whose very existence depends on maintaining an apartheid regime. He knows—consciously or otherwise—that Israel as a democracy and Israel as a Jewish state are two different, and mutually exclusive, things. In order for Cruz to continue being “the leading defender of Israel,” which is both a necessary condition for his political career and a keystone of his personal identity, he must somehow repress the part of him that knows the truth. This makes him unusually sensitive to any suggestion, even if it’s extremely subtle and unintentional, that Israel may not be a real democracy. It is likely that when Tucker used the phrase “run by,” he inadvertently touched a nerve, allowing a momentary surfacing of Cruz’s repressed crisis of conscience, which, in turn, triggered his anger. If Cruz were truly unconflicted about Israel being a democracy, he couldn’t have been provoked into such a strong reaction by a neutral phrase like “run by.”

Let’s continue.

TUCKER CARLSON: I’m talking about the political entity of modern Israel . . .
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Yes. And that is . . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: You believe that’s what God was talking about in Genesis?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: I do.
TUCKER CARLSON: But that country has existed since when?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: For thousands of years. Now there was a time when it didn’t exist, and then it was recreated just over 70 years ago.
TUCKER CARLSON: But I’m saying, I think most people understand that line in Genesis to refer to the Jewish people, God’s chosen people . . . .
SENATOR TED CRUZ: That’s not what it says.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, Israel.

What’s going on here is quite remarkable. Cruz is not only conflating the biblical term for a specific covenant-based community with the name of a modern nation state, just because both words have the same spelling and pronunciation, he is also claiming a continuity—as well as an identity—between the biblical “people of Israel” and the totality of modern Jews conceived as a “nation” in the political sense. To be sure, these views aren’t unique to Ted Cruz; they are widely held among evangelical Christians in the U.S. who enjoy an outsized influence in the Republican Party. In other words, Cruz is merely saying what his voters want to hear.

In the next segment of the interview, quoted below, Tucker returns to his earlier criticism that the Senator doesn’t know the citation of the verse on which he is basing both his theology and his politics. The reason why Tucker is repeating this point seems to be that the whole interview has so far been a clash of two enormous egos, and that Cruz being ignorant of the book of the Bible where his favorite verse appears, let alone chapter and verse, is such a juicy and delicious opportunity that Tucker is tempted to squeeze it again and again. It is clearly a pleasurable experience for Tucker when he asks questions to which he already knows the answers, just to demonstrate the ignorance of his guest—a move that we don’t usually see in a normal interview. Asking such a question, and then providing the answer when the guest fails to do so, allows Tucker to feel superior, even if it’s only for a moment. This is especially true whenever Tucker is dealing with someone who holds a lot more political power than he does, such as Ted Cruz. In fact, Tucker would make this move again later in the interview, asking the Senator if he knew the population of Iran or the country’s ethnic makeup. I suspect that we all experience some degree of joy in seeing the mighty fall, which is probably the reason why these clips went viral in the first place.

TUCKER CARLSON: But you don’t even know where in the Bible it is. So I don’t know . . . .
SENATOR TED CRUZ: I don’t remember the scriptural citation, but okay, I keep . . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s like, Genesis 16, or something like that. But yes, it’s in the earlier part of the book. But the point is . . . .
SENATOR TED CRUZ: All right, Tucker, you keep interrupting me before I finish my sentence.
TUCKER CARLSON: It’s important to know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what you’re . . . . So you’re saying, as a Christian, if I believe in Jesus, I have to support the modern state of Israel?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: No, I’m not saying that. I’m explaining, for me, what my motivation is.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, so I’m just trying to understand. You said God tells you to support the modern state of Israel in the Bible, in some place in the Bible that you heard about but you don’t know where it is. That’s your theology?
SENATOR TED CRUZ: You’re going back . . . . Am I a sleazy feline again? I mean . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: If you accuse me of Antisemitism again I will say that, but I don’t think you will.
SENATOR TED CRUZ: Try to be a little less condescending. I’m trying to have a conversation . . .
TUCKER CARLSON: I’m not condescending. You’re throwing this stuff out, and it’s my job to figure out what you’re talking about. And I don’t understand . . .
SENATOR TED CRUZ: but you’re not letting me.
TUCKER CARLSON: Okay, I’m sorry. I want to be polite.
SENATOR TED CRUZ: That is for me a personal motivation. But I also, what I was about to say, I don’t believe my personal faith . . . . Not everyone who I represent is a Christian. It’s not an argument for me to give that we should do this because of my faith. And so as an elected official, I don’t give that as the reason we should support Israel. That is a personal motivation for me, but I don’t think it is the reason we should . . . .

Some commentators have criticized Ted Cruz on the grounds that he is violating the separation of Church and State when he uses a biblical verse as a justification for supporting Israel. I don’t think that this criticism is valid. The U.S. Constitution prohibits the Congress from making any laws that amount to “an establishment of religion,” which means (in my understanding) favoring one religion over all other religions, or one religious interpretation over all other religious interpretations. At the same time, it also prohibits Congress from preventing the “free exercise” of religion. When Ted Cruz describes his personal motivation for supporting Israel in terms of a religious belief, misguided as it might be, he is involved in the “free exercise” of religion in his individual capacity, without requiring that other people—let alone the U.S. government—must also do the same. Cruz is not trying to convince Tucker, or anyone else, that his interpretation of the biblical verse is correct and/or that it ought to be accepted by all Christians and made into the law of the land. Consequently, we cannot accuse the Senator of violating the separation of Church and State.

Having defended Ted Cruz’s Constitutional right to freely exercise his religion, I’d like us to consider the flip side as well. Given that Cruz seeks to ground his support for Israel in what he claims to be a biblical injunction, some of us might be tempted to try and change his mind on precisely that basis. I can image someone saying to him: “Senator Cruz! Since you are a Bible believer, why don’t you act on other divine commandments found in the same Scripture that would require you to stop the Israeli genocide?” That approach may seem perfectly logical but it cannot possibly work, since Cruz is not actually a Bible believer. We have to ask: Why is Cruz talking about a biblical verse at all? If this is really a part of his personal faith, why doesn’t he keep it to himself? More importantly, why does he share it with an unsympathetic interviewer in a way that makes him vulnerable to public ridicule? The answer is that by appealing to the Bible, Cruz is not expressing his faith at all; instead, he is signaling to a particular segment of the Republican base—i.e., Christians Zionists—that he is on their side and that they can trust him to do their bidding. Since his motivation is not actually religious, Cruz cannot be convinced to follow any biblical teaching that might conflict with his loyalty to Israel. We may be able to persuade a religious zealot by quoting the Scripture or by making a religious argument, but Cruz is impervious to this strategy—and this makes him worse than a religious zealot.

Put differently, even though Cruz claims that he defends Israel because he wants to be blessed by God, it is the politician in him that is making this argument, not the Bible believer. While Cruz the believer may feel that he is accountable to the Almighty God, Cruz the politician knows that it is infinitely more important to seek the blessings of his evangelical voters and his AIPAC donors—individuals whom he recognizes as collectively more real and more powerful than any deity. It follows that being cursed by God is not something he is trying to avoid; what he is really afraid of is being abandoned by his political supporters. Consequently, it is impossible to change the Texas Senator’s mind through any biblical arguments or any appeals to moral consistency, nor can he be shamed by accusations of hypocrisy or double standards. He will only change his mind if and when the political winds change direction.

Finally, Cruz is able to give us the second reason for his uncompromising support of Israel.

The reason that I am the leading defender of Israel is because Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, an incredibly troubled part of the world. And supporting Israel benefits America. And the clearest illustration of that is what is happening right now.

In response to the Senator’s last statement, Tucker Carlson could have asked so many pointed questions, any one of which would have further exasperated his guest and generated even more viral clips. Some examples: What is the evidence that Israel is actually a U.S. ally? What kind of role does Israel play in the region and in the world that benefits the U.S? Does the U.S. support for Israel make us more secure and more prosperous? Does it make us more liked and respected as a country? And why does the U.S. need an ally in the Middle East in the first place? What does the U.S. want to achieve in the region that requires a hyper-militarized Western regime in the heart of the Arab/Muslim world? Isn’t it true that all the Arab governments are also U.S. allies? What makes Israel so special? And what possible benefit can we get from a country whose very existence requires our constant economic, military, and diplomatic support? Isn’t Israel like a grownup but spoiled offspring who keeps asking his parents to pay his bills, who routinely picks fights with his neighbors and then expects his parents to defend him each time he faces a retaliation, who openly mocks the police and the judges because he knows that his rich parents will ensure that he never has to pay for his crimes? Is that the behavior of an ally or of a ravenous parasite? And why, Senator Cruz, is the Middle East “an incredibly troubled part of the world” in the first place? Might this have something to do with the violent and exploitative policies, both past and present, of our French and British friends, and of our own imperial ambition to establish “full-spectrum superiority” over the entire region? Do you really think that risking the total obliteration of the “rule-based international order” just to appease this one rogue state is something that God wants us to? As for “what is happening right now,” doesn’t it prove the opposite of what you are claiming? Doesn’t it demonstrate that Israel is a liability and not an ally? Doesn’t it show that the “the only democracy in the Middle East” is really the principal cause of division, discord, and destruction in the region? And don’t you think, Senator Cruz, that this is the main reason why the U.S. supports Israel?

Too bad Tucker Carlson didn’t ask any of these questions.