The Man Who Needs You to Blame the Wrong People

Why Tucker Carlson’s sudden concern for Gaza is the oldest trick in the imperial playbook – and how to spot it

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

You have seen the images from Gaza. You have watched the death toll climb. You have felt, in your gut, that something is deeply wrong with how this is covered, how it is explained, how it is justified. You have searched for someone – anyone – with a platform to say what you know to be true.

So when Tucker Carlson started talking about Gaza, about the suffering, about the money flowing to Israel while Americans struggle at home, you might have felt a flicker of recognition. Finally. Someone is saying it.

I need to ask you to look harder at that flicker.

Not to dismiss it. To examine it. Because what Carlson is selling is not solidarity with Palestinians. It is the oldest framework of deflection in human history, updated for 2026, wrapped in an American flag, and delivered to an audience that desperately needs someone to blame.

And if you repeat his talking points – if you share his segments, if you nod along when he says America is a captive of Israeli power – you are not helping Palestinians. You are helping the very structure that destroys them, by ensuring that when people finally get angry enough, they get angry at the wrong people.

Let me show you what is actually happening.

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The Feeling Is Real. The Framework Is a Trap.

Your anger is justified. The suffering in Gaza is real. The coverage has been skewed for decades. The explanations you have been given – that this is a complex conflict between two equal sides, that both sides have valid claims, that the violence is somehow symmetrical – are lies.

But the explanation Carlson offers for why this is happening is also a lie, and it is a more dangerous one because it sounds like truth.

He tells you that the United States government acts at the “behest and demand” of Israel. That a foreign power has captured the levers of American empire. That Americans are victims of manipulation by a cunning and alien force.

This is not a flawed description. It is the engine of the grift. And it is also, if you look closely, the oldest story ever told about Jews.

The truth – the truth that requires no secret cabal, no Elders of Zion, no conspiracy theory – is both simpler and harder to look at.

Israel is not a foreign power that captured America. Israel is a strategic asset that America built and maintains.

The relationship is not between two equal nations who found common cause. It is between an empire that needs a permanent military and economic foothold in the most contested piece of land on earth, and a state that functions as that foothold. The $3.8 billion in annual military aid is not “aid” in the sense of helping a friend. It is a subsidy to American defense contractors that flows through Israel as a pass-through account. Seventy-four percent of that money must be spent on American weapons. It is maintenance costs for the asset.

The United States does not have an alliance with Israel. It has an aircraft carrier parked in the Levant. And aircraft carriers do not give orders to the navies that build and maintain them.

This is not a theory. This is the publicly stated, endlessly documented arrangement that both governments have operated under for decades. The only mystery is why we keep accepting a framework that reverses it.

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The Idea Was Never Jewish to Begin With

This is where the historian Regina Sharif’s work becomes essential. In her 1983 study Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History, she asked a simple question: why is Western support for Israel so widespread, so automatic, so deeply assumed?

Her answer traces the idea not to Jewish nationalism but to seventeenth-century English Puritanism – to Christians who believed the Jews must return to Palestine before the Second Coming could occur. This was, she shows, a project rooted in European imperial expansion, transmitted through British policy, and later adopted by American evangelicals. “Pro-Zionism,” she writes, “has its roots deep in the Protestant theological revolution of the 17th Century.” The Zionist movement was able to enlist support among non-Jews throughout the Western world long before it attracted large-scale Jewish support.

Sharif contributed a chapter to the 1979 collection Zionism, Imperialism, and Racism titled “Non-Jewish Zionism: its roots and origins in England in relation to British Imperialism, 1600–1919.” The title says it all. The desire for a Jewish state in Palestine was a Christian European project, developed in relation to British imperial interests, for three centuries before political Zionism emerged as a Jewish response to European antisemitism.

The face gets the attention. The colony does the work.

The Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, killed by a car bomb in 1972, understood this analytically. Throughout his work, he argued that Zionism was not a movement of the Jewish people but a colonial project enabled by Western imperialism, using Jewish suffering as its instrument while serving the interests of European capital and empire. In his analysis of the 1936–1939 revolt, he described how British rule was “transforming it from a mandate into Zionist settler colonialism.”

Kanafani and Sharif together give us the complete picture. Sharif provides the historical genealogy: the idea originated with Christians, was nurtured by empires, and was only later embraced by Jews fleeing Christian violence. Kanafani provides the analytical framework: whatever its origins, Zionism functions as a colonial project serving imperial interests. The face is Jewish nationalism. The body is the empire.

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The Laboratory: What the Weapons Tell Us

Here is where the inversion becomes deadly.

Carlson tells you that Israel controls America. But if you follow the weapons – if you trace where they are developed, where they are tested, where they are proven before they are sold to the world – you arrive at a different conclusion.

Think about what you have seen in footage from Gaza.

The F-16s that appear in every escalation. The drones that circle overhead, invisible until they strike. The Iron Dome interceptors arcing into the sky. The Merkava tanks advancing into neighborhoods. The surveillance systems that track every movement.

Every one of those systems tells a story.

· The F-16, built by Lockheed Martin, is the backbone of air forces across NATO and beyond. The ones over Gaza are the same ones over Eastern Europe. The difference is that in Gaza, they are tested on real people in real time. The software updates, the tactical refinements, the maintenance protocols – all of it is developed using Palestinian bodies as the quality control mechanism.

· The drones that now patrol the borders of Europe and the battlefields of Ukraine – Predators, Reapers, and their successors – were tested and improved using Palestinian towns as the proving ground. The tactics developed over Gaza appear in drone doctrine worldwide.

· The Iron Dome, developed with American funding and now sold to American allies and integrated into American air defense, was tested against Gaza rockets. Every intercept over Sderot was data for the system that now protects American bases.

· The Trophy active protection system on American Abrams tanks was perfected on Merkava tanks in Gaza encounters. The software that stops a rocket in Gaza is the same software that will stop a rocket wherever American tanks roll.

· The AI targeting systems that generate bombing lists at industrial speed – systems like “Habsora,” documented by Israeli journalists – were trained on Palestinian data. The machine learned on Gaza. The bodies are the training set.

· The surveillance technology, facial recognition software, and crowd-control tools now sold to American police departments were tested at checkpoints in the West Bank and on the streets of East Jerusalem. The occupation funds the development of domestic pacification.

This is not collateral damage. This is not an unfortunate byproduct of conflict. This is a deliberate and continuous feature of how the American military-industrial complex develops its hardware.

The occupied territories function for the empire the way the Nevada Test Site functioned for nuclear weapons development. It is where you prove the hardware works before you sell it to the world and integrate it into your own forces.

The weapons exist. The testing happened. The bodies are counted. The profits are banked.

Now ask yourself: In what world does the asset control the empire that uses it as a laboratory? In what world does the test subject control the doctor?

Carlson’s framework requires you to believe that inversion. The material evidence requires you to reject it.

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The Access That Refutes the Performance

Let us sit with something for a moment.

Carlson tells his audience that he is being persecuted for telling the truth about Israel. That he was detained, interrogated, had his passport confiscated. That he is standing up to a hostile foreign power that has captured the American government.

And yet.

· He remains welcome in the White House.

· He was there in January for a roundtable on Venezuela’s oil.

· He was there again in February, the same week his “detention” story was breaking.

· He speaks regularly with the President on foreign policy.

· His son works for the Vice President.

These are not disputed facts. They are public. They are documented. They are the opposite of persecution.

Even figures who share most of Carlson’s politics have noticed the contradiction. Laura Loomer, who will never see the inside of the White House, has spent weeks calling him a fraud. She is angry because she sees what his audience does not: he performs persecution while remaining welcome in the rooms she will never enter. Whatever one thinks of Loomer, her accusation lands because the access is undeniable.

The difference between them is instructive. Loomer is genuinely locked out. Carlson strolls through the gates, gets his advice heard, and then goes back to his platform to tell his audience how persecuted he is.

This is not a contradiction that requires explanation. It is evidence. Let us treat it as such.

If Israel really controlled the American government, if the Jews really captured the levers of power, if Carlson really posed a threat to that arrangement – why is he still on the inside?

The only explanations are:

1. He is lying about the control, or
2. 1. He is part of the control.

There is no third option. And he will never answer this question, because the answer would destroy his entire brand.

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Why He Needs You to Believe the Inversion

Carlson isn’t deluded or uninformed. He has access to the people who make these decisions. He knows that American firepower, American revenue, American jobs depend on the occupation of Palestine as a testing ground. He knows that Israel is not a foreign captor but a domestic asset.

He also knows that his audience needs a villain.

They need an explanation for their declining living standards, their endless wars, their sense that something is wrong. The actual explanation – thatthe empire they love is designed to serve the imperial class at their expense , that their taxes fund weapons tested on Palestinian children, that their jobs depend on an occupation they are told to oppose – is too threatening. It would require them to question America itself.

So Carlson gives them the Jews.

He lets the empire off the hook. He redirects the anger. He performs outrage at the asset while remaining in good standing with the empire that owns the asset. And in doing so, he protects the actual structure of power from scrutiny.

This is not anti-Zionism. It is the oldest diversion in the book, updated for streaming.

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If You Care About Palestinians, You Cannot Repeat His Lines

Here is where I need to speak directly to you.

If you are sharing Carlson’s segments. If you are nodding along when he says America is a captive of Israel. If you are using his framing to explain the horror you see in Gaza – you are not helping Palestinians. You are helping the empire by spreading the very narrative that protects it.

Because the Carlson framework does not challenge American power. It explains American power in a way that leaves the empire innocent. The problem is not the 2,000-year imperial project to control the Levantine corridor. The problem is not the military-industrial complex that profits from Palestinian bodies. The problem, in Carlson’s telling, is that the Jews stole the empire.

Palestinians have been saying for generations that the empire is the problem. They have been naming the weapons, the funding, the diplomatic cover. They have been pointing to Washington, not Tel Aviv, as the source of the power that destroys them. Carlson’s framework makes their struggle invisible. It turns them into props in a story about Jewish power.

A framework that actually serves Palestinians would name the empire as the primary actor. It would acknowledge Palestinian humanity and rights. It would reject both unconditional support and the “capture” narrative. It would face actual consequences – because if you genuinely challenge the imperial project, the empire does not keep you on the advisory list. It locks you out.

Carlson faces no such consequences. He remains on the inside. And that is the only evidence you need.

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Two Frameworks

You now have two ways of understanding what is happening.

Framework A: The Carlson Framework

· America is a victim of Jewish power

· Israel captured the government

· The problem is foreign manipulation

· The solution is to resist the captors

· Palestinians are props in a story about American victimhood

· Tucker Carlson is a truth-teller facing persecution

Framework B: The Material Framework

· America built and maintains Israel as a strategic asset

· The idea of a Jewish state originated with Christian Europeans, was nurtured by empires, and serves imperial interests

· Palestine functions as a weapons laboratory for the military-industrial complex

· American jobs and revenue depend on this arrangement

· The problem is the empire, not the asset

· Palestinians are the human subjects of an ongoing military R&D program

· Tucker Carlson performs outrage at the asset while serving the empire that owns it

Framework A requires you to believe in a secret cabal that controls the most powerful government on earth. It requires you to ignore the White House access, the son’s job, the policy advice. It requires you to accept that the empire is innocent and the Jews are guilty. It requires you to forget that Palestinians have been naming the empire for generations.

Framework B requires you only to follow the money, the weapons, the history, and the access. It requires no conspiracy. It requires no secret knowledge. It requires only that you look at what is in front of you and refuse to look away.

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The Question You Cannot Unask

The next time Carlson appears in your feed. The next time someone shares his segment with the caption “finally someone is telling the truth.” The next time you feel that flicker of recognition.

Ask yourself one question.

If American weapons are tested on Palestinians. If American jobs depend on that testing. If American revenue flows from that occupation. If the very idea of a Jewish state was a Christian imperial project for centuries before political Zionism existed. And Tucker Carlson is pro-American.

How can he possibly be anti-Israel?

He cannot. The two are not separable. They are the same apparatus. And his performance of opposition is designed to make sure you never see it.

The weapons exist. The testing happened. The bodies are counted. The profits are banked. The history is documented.

Carlson’s job is to make sure you blame the wrong people.

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What the Bodies Know

The people of Gaza do not need to read Medium articles to understand who is killing them. They know the names of the bombs. They know the markings on the drones. They know which empires supply the planes and which countries vote against ceasefire resolutions at the UN. They have been telling us for seventy-five years.

The poet Refaat Alareer, killed by an Israeli airstrike in 2023, wrote words that have traveled the world:

“If I must die, let it bring hope / let it be a tale.”

The question is whether we will hear the tale, or whether we will keep falling for frameworks that make it about someone else.

Carlson’s framework makes it about the Jews. The material framework makes it about the empire.

One of these frameworks serves the people being bombed. The other serves the people doing the bombing.

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If This Framework Is Useful

There are people who have been living this reality and building from it for generations. They do not need my permission or your attention to continue. But if you want to align yourself with their struggle, here are organizations doing the work on the ground, documented by decades of presence and international observers:

· Al-Haq, documenting human rights violations since 1979

· The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, operating through every assault

· Medical Aid for Palestinians, providing healthcare where the bombs fall

· The BDS National Committee, coordinating the global boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement

Follow them. Listen to them. Amplify them. They have been telling the truth longer than Carlson has been performing it.

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Choose

You have two frameworks. One requires a conspiracy. One requires only looking at what is in front of you.

One blames the Jews. One blames the empire.

One lets you feel angry without changing anything. One might actually cost you something – because if you name the empire, the empire notices.

Carlson has made his choice. He remains on the inside, welcome in the White House, performing persecution while serving the power that destroys.

The question is whether you will make the same choice.

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Sources and Further Reading

· Sharif, Regina. Non-Jewish Zionism: Its Roots in Western History. London: Zed Press, 1983.

· Sharif, Regina. “Non-Jewish Zionism: its roots and origins in England in relation to British Imperialism, 1600–1919.” In Zionism, Imperialism, and Racism, edited by A.W. Kayyali. London: Croom Helm, 1979.

· Kanafani, Ghassan. The 1936–1939 Revolt in Palestine. New York: Committee for a Democratic Palestine, 1972.

· Kanafani, Ghassan. On Zionist Literature. Ebb Books, 2022 (first English translation).

· Schoenman, Ralph. The Hidden History of Zionism. Santa Barbara: Veritas Press, 1988.

· +972 Magazine, various investigations on AI targeting systems (“Habsora”).

· US Foreign Military Financing: Congressional Research Service reports.

· Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch: documentation of surveillance technology transfer from occupied territories to US police.