Sen. Ted Cruz sounded the alarm this week, telling viewers on Life, Liberty & Levin that America faces a fundamental crossroads over a surge of antisemitism that cannot be ignored by decent conservatives. He made it plain that this is not academic hand-wringing: it is a real threat to Jewish communities and to the moral backbone of our party and country, and leaders must act.
What prompted Cruz’s blunt wake-up call was a series of disturbing moments on the right, including the widely condemned interview in which Tucker Carlson hosted Nick Fuentes, a known Holocaust denier, without forcefully challenging his vile claims. Cruz rightly declared that while free speech exists, so does a duty to call out hate when it appears in our own ranks — silence equals complicity.
The senator didn’t mince words: in the last six months he has seen more antisemitism on the right than at any time in his life and warned it is metastasizing into an existential crisis for the Republican Party. That is a brutal diagnosis, and it should shame any conservative who pretends the problem will go away if we look the other way.
Cruz has called on church leaders, elected officials, and everyday Americans to draw clear moral lines and defend the U.S.-Israel alliance as part of our national security and moral commitments. That kind of leadership — unafraid to tell uncomfortable truths about our own side — is exactly what conservative movement conservatism needs right now.
There has been pushback and finger-pointing inside the GOP, with some colleagues scrambling and others quietly acknowledging the problem — proving Cruz’s point that courageous leadership, not cowardice, will steer this ship. The debate is uncomfortable, but better that it be aired now than for apathy to let poison spread through our institutions.
Americans of faith and patriots of every stripe should applaud Cruz for refusing to play partisan games when Jews are under threat; defending a people and an ally is not a test of ideology, it’s a test of character. Conservatives must stop treating antisemitism as a political cudgel and start treating it as the moral emergency it is — discipline and consequences belong to those who traffic in hate, no matter where they sit on the political spectrum.
If we are to preserve our party and our country, grassroots activists and leaders alike must answer Cruz’s call: condemn the haters, defend Israel, and restore honor to a conservative movement that stands for God, country, and the universal dignity of every human being. The choice is clear — courageous leadership or cowardly silence — and history will judge which side we choose.
