NatCon Conference Dials Up Islamophobia (on Israel’s Behalf)
This past week, a flock of Israel supporters jetted to Jerusalem to attend this year’s “National Conservative” conference, the project led by Israeli political thinker Yoram Hazony. Days later, the offspring of neoconservatism’s godfather Norm Podhoretz, John, revealed the conceit and deception behind the “National Conservatism” project:
“[Yoram Hazony] wants to secure intellectual support in America and the West for the annexation of the West Bank and the creation of what people call Greater Israel… but that’s not what he says he’s doing,” Podhoretz explained. “What he says he’s doing is ‘understanding nationalism’ and trying to make a bond between Israel and the rest of the conservative world by saying, ‘We’re nationalist and you’re nationalist… We’re all the same…But in fact, that is disingenuous…I’m right because I’ve talked to him about it, and I talked to him about it standing on the West Bank at his house in 1996 or 1997. So, I know that that’s what he wants.”
As support for Israel crumbles within the United States as a consequence of Israeli behavior, principally its livestreamed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and Lebanon, Israelis have revived an old strategy for creating “a bond between Israel and the rest of the conservative world”: ginning up fear and hatred of Muslims. As Drop Site News previously reported, a study commissioned by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and conducted by Mark Penn’s Stagwell Global concluded that the “best tactic to combat” Israel’s increasingly negative public image “is to foment fear of ‘Radical Islam’ and ‘Jihadism,’ which remain high.”
“By highlighting Israeli support for women’s rights and gay rights while elevating concerns that Hamas wants to ‘destroy all Jews and spread Jihadism,’” Drop Site reported, “Israeli support rebounded by an average of over 20 points in each country.” The study added: “Especially once the situation in Gaza is resolved, the room for growth in all countries is very significant.”
Speeches at this year’s National Conservatism conference suggest that Israel and its powerful lobby have embraced that tactic, fearmongering over the supposed Muslim hordes plotting to take over Europe and the U.S. Amichai Chikli, who heads Israel’s primary state propaganda organ, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, used his speech to warn of what he called “the Islamist offensive [on the West]”: “First, entry into politics… then, positions of power… finally, an Islamist culture forced on neighborhoods, cities, and eventually entire countries.” Israeli Diaspora Minister Chikli used this same refrain earlier in the year, telling an Israeli-government-sponsored conference on antisemitism in January that he seeks to “mobilize all forces in the ideological and physical struggle against the heirs of the modern Nazis,” adding that “this is not just the struggle of the Jewish people. This is the struggle of the free world against the imperialism and tyranny of radical Islam.” Describing the conference, Chikli said that “the real threat to European Jewry is radical Islam” and that “our goal is [to] form a broad camp to fight together the lethal antisemitism that is coming from within.” Chikli’s Ministry was revealed in 2024 to have paid Stoic, a Tel Aviv marketing firm, roughly $2 million for a covert influence campaign launched shortly after October 7, which ran hundreds of fake accounts that pushed Pro-Israel and Islamophobic content. One affiliated site, “United Citizens for Canada,” labeled Muslim immigrants a threat to the country.
At the National Conservative conference this month, Priest Benedict Kiely similarly decried what he called “the myth of the Andalusian paradise,” telling the Jerusalem audience that “from the start, Islam has aided persecution.” Sebastian Gorka, the sitting NSC deputy for counterterrorism, told the conference that “President Trump is working 20 hours a day to not just save America, but to save our joint civilization,” which he said is under threat from “The Red-Green Alliance…The Islamists working with the Marxists.” A few weeks earlier, Gorka said that under the theology of Islam, “Allah could decree tomorrow that murder is just…Our [Christian] G-d can’t do that. In the theology of Islam, that is deemed to be heretical. There can be no limitations on Allah. Therefore, he can have a capricious attitude to morality.”
The wave of Islamophobia spewing out of Tel Aviv ultimately reaches American shores with consequences on local communities. In Delray Beach — whose county is the world’s largest holder of Israeli bonds — residents earlier this month packed a council meeting to protest the construction of an Islamic center. A similar demonstration against a proposed Islamic center occurred in August at a McKinney City Council meeting in Texas after the county’s Congressional representative Keith Self — who receives significant backing from Israel’s lobby — declared that “The McKinney Planning and Zoning Commission just UNANIMOUSLY approved plans for a new mosque in your neighborhood” and urged residents to “STOP the spread of Sharia in Texas.”
As the U.S. approaches the midterm elections, Islamophobia has found a home in the mainstream of the GOP, with President Trump labeling Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El Sayed “a jihadist” and Representative Nancy Mace posting that “every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.” Both Trump and Mace are loyal servants of Israeli interests. With Israel’s popularity declining rapidly, Americans should expect more of this variety of intolerance from our uniparty class of Pro-Israel elected officials.
Harrison Berger is an independent journalist who has contributed to Drop Site News, The American Conservative, and The Nation. Previously, he was a researcher and producer for System Update with Glenn Greenwald. His work focuses on civil liberties and U.S. foreign policy. He holds a BA in Political Science and Russian Studies from Union College (NY).
