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Tucker Carlson’s Absurd Chabad Conspiracy
The people who run Chabad Houses are not global conspirators. They are families. (Photo by Nikita Payusov/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
In hundreds of cities and remote corners of the world, Chabad Houses offer meals, community, and a safe haven. Now Carlson thinks they’re part of a sinister plot to orchestrate war with Iran.
By Jillian Lederman
03.07.26 — Antisemitism
Antisemitism

Keeping tabs on the world’s oldest prejudice—and the people fighting back—as it once again rears its ugly head.

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Of course he did.

That was my first thought when I heard that Tucker Carlson, in a recent podcast episode, had directed his ire over the Iran war at none other than the Chabad movement—one of the largest Jewish organizations in the world.

The reason? According to Carlson, it all stems from a small fabric patch that some members of the Israel Defense Forces have chosen to wear on their uniforms. The patch depicts the Third Temple, referring to a vision in some Jewish traditions of one day rebuilding a holy place of worship on the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism, third-holiest in Islam, and the current location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“How exactly,” Carlson asks, as images of several soldiers flash across the screen, did members of the IDF “wind up wearing patches suggesting the point of this war was the destruction of one of the holiest places in Islam, and the rebuilding of a temple that is totally anathema to Christianity?”

Naturally, he has an answer.

“This has been going on a long time in public through, in part, the efforts of a group called Chabad. C-H-A-B-A-D.”

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Jillian Lederman

Jillian Lederman is a staff editor at The Free Press. Previously, she was a Joseph Rago Memorial Fellow at The Wall Street Journal.

Tags:
Judaism
Faith
America
Religion
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