A sick axis now deforms the conservative movement. I call it the Axis of Tucker. The symptom of the sickness is a familiar disparagement of the Jews and/or Israel. It is symptomatic of a lethal disease. It should in any event be called out, confronted, and refuted.
That is what Michael Doran does in his masterful Tablet column “The Jewish test.” In this Tablet column Doran builds on the argument he sketched out in the recent Jewish Chronicle column more narrowly addressed to the mania spinning up the perturbations of the Axis of Tucker.
Doran, by the way, is not Jewish. He is a non-Jewish scholar who draws on his knowledge to comprehend and articulate the phenomena — i.e., to teach. One incidental pleasure of his Tablet column is the use he makes of the perceptive elements of Mark Twain’s essay “Concerning the Jews.” Readers are likely to learn from the column some things they didn’t know even if they know quite a bit.
Here is one small piece of Doran’s argument:
Among states, Israel occupies the position that Jews occupy among peoples: It produces capabilities far beyond what its size alone would predict, a fact now central to the strategic debate. Under persistent threat, Israel’s human capital sharpens itself for survival, generating intelligence, scientific, and technological capabilities with a level of precision, speed, and operational daring that larger, more insulated societies rarely require—and often cannot replicate.
The Mossad-assassin scenarios advanced by Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Candace Owens invert reality. They implicitly acknowledge that Israel possesses unusual operational reach—but they fundamentally misrepresent how that reach is exercised. Israeli intelligence services do not operate on American soil. They do not target American nationals anywhere in the world. Beyond that, they take extraordinary care in the planning and the execution of their operations to avoid actions that would disrupt, embarrass, or complicate American interests. Where possible, they do the opposite: They assist, defer, and align with American priorities. In practice, Israel is not an unaccountable actor exploiting American power, but one of the most responsive and disciplined intelligence partners the United States has ever had.
In August 2020, the CIA identified Abu Muhammad al-Masri—al-Qaeda’s deputy leader—as living openly in Tehran under Iranian regime protection and asked Israel to carry out the operation. Israeli operatives assassinated al-Masri and his daughter Miriam, the widow of al-Qaeda figure Hamza bin Laden, on a street in the Iranian capital. Al-Masri had played a central role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed more than 200 people. Israel executed the operation without U.S. personnel on the ground and without public American attribution.
States rarely endanger their own operatives for another nation’s objectives. When they do, it reflects a level of subordination and trust that is unusual in international politics. Israel’s assassinations on behalf of the United States fall squarely into that category—yet are rarely acknowledged as such.
The New York Times account of the cited assassination is accessible here.
This is the conclusion of Doran’s long column:
The alliance with the Jews—first as a people, later as a state—has always been a test of political maturity. Jews are few, visible, and unusually capable; Israel is small, exposed, and unusually effective. A great power that fears and resents talent will make bad strategic choices and will pay dearly for them. That cost remains largely unacknowledged in a debate increasingly dominated by people riddled with resentments and wrestling with demons.
History, including American history, has already run the experiment that Carlson and his cohort are foisting on us. The empires that labeled Jewish talent as a threat lie in ruins. To repeat their mistakes would be an act of colossal stupidity at odds with our history and traditions. The founders of our republic knew better.
Whole thing here.
