The National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) kicked off its latest event Tuesday, bringing together American and Israeli conservative intellectuals, academics, and influencers dedicated “to the idea of the nation, to the principle of national independence [and] to the revival of the unique national traditions.” The conference also invited fanatical members of the Israeli government, as well as an Israeli rabbi who once called for the mass slaughter of innocent civilians.
Founded in 2019 by academic Yoram Hazony, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, NatCon has since hosted five conferences in the United States and smaller events in Brussels, London and Rome. NatCon’s 2022 manifesto outlined its “Nationalist Conservative” principles, one of which states that “a world of independent nations each pursuing its own national interests and upholding national traditions that are its own” is “the only genuine alternative to universalist ideologies now seeking to impose a homogenizing, locality-destroying imperium over the entire globe.”
NatCon’s decision to host the conference in Jerusalem this year comes at a time when conservatives are fiercely debating America’s relationship with Israel and whether it serves U.S. interests, and when more and more American citizens are expressing disapproval of the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. They even decided to welcome a notorious member of the Israeli government, the pro-genocide finance minister and leader of the Religious Zionism Party, Bezalel Smotrich.
In a speech Tuesday, Smotrich said that Israel “can and must bear a growing responsibility for its own security” but that he “can and must show why the alliance with Israel is in America’s interests, too.” He claimed that while the U.S. and Israel are shifting “from a relationship of dependence to a partnership between two independent nations,” it is also time to “deepen the alliance” and that the two countries share common enemies, such as the Iranian Regime. (RELATED: Top Israeli Official Openly Calls For Genocide As US Seeks Peace: ‘All Of Lebanon Must Burn’)
“Israel recognizes the American friendship and support it received over the years, but it’s precisely because of that the time has come to deepen the alliance, to move from dependence to partnership between two independent nations,” Smotrich said.
Smotrich’s history of extremist and incendiary rhetoric directed at civilians is well-documented. In 2023, he said a West Bank village “need[ed] to be wiped out.” In 2024, he called for the “total annihilation” of Rafah, Deir al-Balah, and Nuseirat, three urban and refugee areas in the Gaza Strip. And in August of that year, Smotrich said that causing two million Gaza civilians to die of hunger “might be justified and moral,” but that the world would not allow it.
Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, an Israeli rabbi and extremist whose visa was revoked by the Biden administration in 2022, was also among those scheduled to speak Tuesday, as was Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
In May 2007, Eliyahu called on Israel to “carpet bomb the general area from which the Kassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life” in a letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
“If they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill 1,000,” he said of Palestinians. “If they do not stop after 1,000, then we must kill 10,000. If they still don’t stop, we must kill 100,000, even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop.”
In 2008, Eliyahu urged the Israeli government to carry out “state-sanctioned revenge” against Arabs after a terrorist attack killed eight students, Israeli media outlet Haaretz reported at the time.
“I’m not talking about individual people in particular, I’m talking about the state,” Eliyahu wrote in a newsletter, according to Haaretz. “[The state] has to pain them to the point where they scream ‘Enough,’ to the point where they fall flat on their face and scream ‘help.’ Not for the sake of satisfying the need for revenge but for the purposes of deterrence.” (RELATED: ROOKE: Anti-Vance Crew Turn To The Worst Possible Allies To Influence The MAGA Base)
Sharing the same stage with Smotrich, Orthodox Christian Rod Dreher gave a speech Tuesday, as did Jeremy Boreing, a Christian and host of “The Jeremy Boreing Show.” Dreher argued that “Western civilizational renewal requires a radical change of life for all of us. To use an old-fashioned word, it requires repentance.” Boreing called on Americans “to become a moral and religious people once again” to prevent illiberal factions of the right or left from taking over the government and turning it into an instrument of tyranny.
Other speakers Tuesday included Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, and Rusty Reno, editor of the conservative Christian magazine First Things. During his speech, Roberts described Jerusalem as the “perfect place for conservatives across the West to gather this week so that we can unite.” Reno argued that if an “American or English or French patriot can achieve just one-tenth of what has been achieved, built, celebrated, and defended in this place [Israel], I would submit that the future of Western civilization will be the brighter for it.”
Several of Wednesday’s speakers, however, struck a noticeably different tone. Whereas Tuesday’s speeches seemed to dismiss the foreign policy divide on the American Right — which has only grown wider since the start of the Iran War — and the fact that a vast majority of Americans now view Israel and Netanyahu unfavorably, several younger speakers openly discussed it. They also called into question whether labeling critics of the Iran War or America’s relationship with Israel “antisemites” is a smart and effective strategy.