Charlie Kirk, fatally shot on September 10 while he was speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, was for years a strong defender of Israel, while occasionally pressing its leadership with pointed questions during the Gaza war.
Below is a selection of Kik’s remarks about Israel since the October 7 attacks.
After Oct. 7 Hamas Attacks:
Unequivocal backing Israel—and a warning shot at Hamas
In the first days after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks, Kirk went on his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, arguing Israel’s right to self-defense.
“It’s a very heavy day. A lot of numbness to be perfectly honest. The horror and the barbarism here is hard to even comprehend. Israel is now at total war,” he said.
“But I’ve got to be very honest with you here, I want to make sure we ask the right questions. Israel is by far the most alert country in the world… It is a country built as a fortress. Maybe the Israeli government was double-crossed, maybe they had intelligence about this. We don’t know.”
“Usually there’s helicopters flying all over the place … But you’re trying to tell me that the CIA, Mossad, Israeli intelligence, everybody missed this? Israel cares about its border deeply. They work hard to secure it. They have billions of dollars of technology built completely and totally on border security. How did this happen?”
“It’s hard not to just be emotional with the suffering that is occurring right now in Israel. These savage animals, in the name of Islam … said, ‘We have kidnapped the girls, we killed the ugly ones and we’re raping the pretty ones.’ This is what you’re dealing with. Quite quite a worldview.”
“The Israeli government is far from perfect… It’s a very complicated country. But Israel has a right to exist, and Israel has a right to defend itself. One of the reasons why Israel should have a right to defend itself is Israel is a civilized country. Hamas are a bunch of savage animals. And I hate to be that simple, or that black and white, but it really is that way.”
Questioning Israel’s security after Oct. 7 attacks
Days later, during an October 12, 2023, appearance on the Patrick Bet David Podcast, Kirk questioned how Israel’s vaunted security failed so catastrophically.
“I’ve been to Israel many times; the whole country is a fortress. When I first heard this story, I still have the same gut instinct that I did initially. I find this very hard to believe.
“I’ve been to that Gaza border. You cannot go ten feet without running into a 19-year-old with an AR-15 or an automatic machine gun that is an IDF soldier. The whole country is surveilled. Let me just go through this. We don’t talk about Israeli politics very often and most Americans don’t know this. In the last nine months, Israel was on the brink of civil war, it’s not an exaggeration. This judicial stuff, there were hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets because Bibi Netanyahu was basically redefining the Israeli constitution. That’s not an exaggeration, he said the judicial branch has too much power. There were protests planned this week against Netanyahu where they anticipated tens of thousands of people to take to the streets, that’s all gone. Netanyahu now has an emergency government and a mandate to lead.
“I’m not willing to go so far to say Netanyahu knew, or there was intelligence here, but I think some questions need to be asked. Was there a stand-down order? Was there a stand-down order?
“Six hours? I don’t believe it. Israel is the size of New Jersey, when I took a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to the Gaza border, it was 45 minutes. For six hours, they’re live-streaming the killing of Jews. Did somebody in the government say stand down? That is a legitimate non-conspiracy question.
“The whole country is the IDF, and you’re trying to tell me that they’re going to concerts and kibbutzim and schools for six hours?”
“It’s possible that the Netanyahu government was double-crossed by bad agents, okay? That’s dark, but it’s not as dark as what we’re talking about, okay. Another aspect is that Netanyahu might have traitors in his government, like legitimate traitors that infiltrated. I was texting with some senior people in the IDF, and they said, ‘Charlie, can’t say too much, but let’s just say the same problem you have with the left in America we have here in Israel.’ So there’s something to think about. Just something to thing about, right? Is that maybe there are some people within those intel agencies that aren’t as sympathetic.
“Or maybe, Patrick, maybe they might have gotten a tip, they might’ve gotten whispers, but no one thought it would be 1,200 Jews dead. That’s a potential, right, because here’s the essence of it. The essence is this. This is the closest thing to the Holocaust that any of us have lived through. But the fact is now Bibi and the Israeli hard-right government has a mandate.
“I’ve got to be careful the way I say this, they’re going to try to ethnically cleanse Gaza. And I don’t use that term lightly, okay? They’re talking about basically removing 2.5 million people from there. And honestly, they have a mandate to go seek justice and revenge. They do. This idea that they need to have a truce or a peace treaty, that’s morally crap after you see women and children be burned alive and dragged to the streets. But there are some serious questions here, Patrick. And let me tell you, my pattern recognition over the last five years has become pretty sharp. COVID, Maui fires, Epstein. When I see a story and it doesn’t click, our guts are usually right.”
Demanding answers over the Gaza church strike
On October 23, 2023, after Israel acknowledged a strike near Gaza’s St. Porphyrius church that killed civilians sheltering there, Kirk publicly pressed for more transparency.
“Until now I’ve refrained from tweeting about the damage done to the 12th-century Greek Orthodox church of St Porphyrius in Gaza,” wrote Kirk on X.
“After last week’s hospital fiasco, I wanted to wait for more facts to be established. But it now seems confirmed that Israel did actually bomb a building adjacent to the church, killing Christians who were sheltering there, including family of Justin Amash.
“Frankly, it’s wrong that there was substantially more outrage when Gaza’s own militants shot their own rocket at their own hospital parking lot, than when Christians died sheltering in the oldest church in Gaza.”
Support for Israel as conservative consensus
At Turning Point Action’s “People’s Convention” in Detroit, June 21, 2024, Kirk said that the GOP base remains overwhelmingly pro-Israel.
“The vast majority of Republicans are resolutely pro-Israel. The only objections you might hear on the right is about the amount of money being spent, or whether there should be strings attached,” Kirk said.
“You do not hear anywhere in the conservative base that we should not support Israel in their war against Hamas. We will disagree on how that support should look, but not on who is in the right.”
Pushing back on “starvation” claims
In July 2025, Kirk, on his show, rejected allegations that Israel was starving people in Gaza.
“These lies against Israel are relentless. This is a mother holding a baby. And by the looks of it, this is pure visual warfare. This is propaganda, emotional, visual, optical warfare, optical warfare. And so no one likes to see what you’re looking at here. Looks like a kid who’s starving to death, right? So the whole story says this. The story says young. Old and sick, starved to death in Gaza. That is the front page of The New York Times. And so the picture they’re using is of Mohammad Al-Motawaq, a child with a muscular disorder, and they’re use that as the face of famine in Gaza,” he said.
“But you think about it from Hamas’s perspective, Hamas would want the people of Gaza to starve. Number one, they don’t care about their own people. They’re just cannon fodder for their radical Islamic aims. But secondly, if they can starve their people, then they can get a media narrative in the West to try to end the brokering of the war. So it’s a circuitous way. It is a loophole way of them to use their own kids to starve, blame the Israelis for the starvation to get the war against the terrorists to stop.
“It’s such a lie and it is creating so much hysteria here in the United States. And just so we are clear again, this is the only way that Hamas can quote unquote survive the war is through a narrative war where they win sentimentality in the West. So they are willing to have their people starve and they’re willing to invoked famine so that they can win points in the West and then blame it on Israel. These are the very same people that did this on October 7th against the innocent Israelis on October seventh. Why wouldn’t they also do it to their own people?”
Accusations of antisemitism
In August, when Kirk appeared as a guest on Megyn Kelly’s podcast, she said she felt the pro-Israel side had a “knee-jerk about calling you antisemitic or getting deeply offended if you say anything that doesn’t align with their narrative.”
He responded to her: “I’m so glad you brought this up, Megyn, I think I have a bulletproof resume showing my defense of Israel – both on campus, on social media – to great mockery and scorn sometimes, because I believe it.
“I believe in the scriptural land rights given to Israel, I believe in fulfilment of prophecy, and, again, I’m not a theologian but I’m a Christian, my life was changed in Israel, the spiritual energy is so amazing there. I want them to win, I’ve said that repeatedly.
“However, you’re hitting on something very potent and important. Now let me first say – I don’t want to judge an entire group, because there’s been many people in the pro-Israel group that have been very sweet, very kind, very nuanced…however, and I will say this, the behavior by a lot – both privately and publicly – are pushing people like you and me away.
“Not like we’re going to be pro-Hamas, but we’re like ‘honestly, the way you are treating me is so repulsive,’ I have text messages Megyn calling me an antisemite.”
He went on to repeat his love for Israel multiple times, but added that he feels he has “less ability to criticize the Israeli government without backlash than actual Israelis do.”
What Benjamin Netanyahu said about Charlie Kirk after his death
Following Kirk’s death, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement:
“Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom. A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization. I spoke to him only two weeks ago and invited him to Israel. Sadly, that visit will not take place.
“We lost an incredible human being. His boundless pride in America and his valiant belief in free speech will leave a lasting impact. Rest in peace, Charlie Kirk.”