I first met Charlie Kirk in December 2023 at AmericaFest, the annual Turning Point USA convention in Phoenix. It happened to fall over Shabbat, so I and a few colleagues from Israel365 hosted a small Friday night dinner. One of our group had let Charlie’s office know, and to our surprise, he showed up.
That evening was my first glimpse of a side of Charlie the public rarely saw. He spoke about how he and his wife had embraced the Jewish Sabbath. Every Friday at sundown, he shut down his phone, stepped away from the relentless demands of his public life, and devoted 24 hours to God and family.
For the founder of the largest grassroots political organization in America – someone constantly besieged by requests, interviews, and events – it was a radical act of spiritual discipline. He was even preparing to publish a book on Shabbat, telling me its title: Stop in the Name of God. This book is being published, now posthumously, in the coming months.
Charlie’s embrace of Shabbat rest reflected his conviction that spiritual life must shape political life. The Ten Commandments themselves capture the dynamic he described: The first three are about honoring God, the fourth about Shabbat, the fifth about honoring one’s parents, and the sixth through tenth are the laws that undergird a just society. In Charlie’s telling, Shabbat observance strengthens family, and strong families sustain civilization. That was the framework through which he thought about politics: God first, family second, society built on both.
Over time, we developed a friendship. I appeared on his show multiple times, and in the last months of his life, we corresponded almost daily about Israel. Charlie’s views were more complicated than either his harshest critics or his most zealous admirers acknowledged.
Support and criticism of Israel
Yes, he was a steadfast supporter of Israel. At campus events – the settings that made him famous – nearly half the questions he fielded were hostile challenges about Israel. Again and again, he defended the Jewish state. Behind the scenes, he resisted pressure from voices within the America First movement urging him to drop that support. He knew full well that it cost him political capital to stand with Israel, and he did it anyway.
YET, CHARLIE also had criticisms of Israel: about policies, about leadership, about what he saw as missteps. He was not afraid to voice them either. That honesty sometimes unsettled the pro-Israel community. It made him difficult to pigeonhole.
That same openness informed his decision to platform controversial figures like Tucker Carlson, who has expressed views hostile to Israel. Many in the Jewish community condemned him for it. I shared their frustration; I, too, was unhappy with those choices. But I also understood Charlie’s conviction. His career was built on going to hostile college campuses and debating opponents. He believed – to a fault, perhaps – that every idea should be heard and tested in the open marketplace.
To interpret this as Charlie abandoning Israel is simply wrong. It hurt him deeply when Jewish organizations accused him of betrayal. Few of them realized how much time he spent defending Israel – both in public forums where it was unpopular and in private conversations where it was costly.
The very last meeting Charlie convened before he set out on his final campus tour was about Israel. On a Tuesday evening, hours before his murder, he gathered a small group of us on Zoom to prepare himself for the barrage of anti-Israel questions he knew he would face from students. He wanted to be ready to defend the Jewish state with facts and clarity.
That detail should not be overlooked. With everything on his plate, the final thing he did before stepping back into the fray of campus life was to sharpen his defense of Israel.
In death, Charlie Kirk is already being claimed by competing narratives. Some are eager to portray him as the ultimate Christian Zionist, an uncritical defender of Israel at all costs. Others are equally eager to insist he had abandoned Israel by giving a platform to anti-Israel voices. Both are wrong.
The truth is that Charlie Kirk’s relationship with Israel was complex, thoughtful, sometimes frustrating, and always honest. He loved the Jewish people and believed deeply in Israel’s place in the world. He also asked hard questions and insisted on hearing hard answers. That is not abandonment. That is friendship.
The pro-Israel community – and the Jewish community more broadly – would do well to remember this. A real friend is not a cheerleader. A real friend is someone who will defend you when you are attacked, even at personal cost, and still tell you when he thinks you are wrong. That was Charlie Kirk.
He will be remembered as a voice of courage in the America First movement, a leader who could unify factions that often mistrusted each other, and – though it may surprise some – as a defender of Israel. We may not always have agreed with him. Still, we should be grateful for him.
The writer is director of Israel365action.com and cohost of the Shoulder to Shoulder podcast.