Vice President JD Vance warned pro-Israel advocates against seeing Israel and the U.S. as always aligned and cautioned against conflating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism, saying that “if everything is Jew hatred, then nothing is Jew hatred.”

In an episode of Christian conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey’s podcast podcast released on Friday, Vance said that “pro-Israel people in the United States make two critical mistakes. One … is not delineating between America’s interests and Israeli interests, because they’re not always the same.”

“But the second is conflating criticism of a particular government with Jew hatred. Because if everything is Jew hatred, then nothing is Jew hatred,” he continued. “And we have to be very careful not to, you know, in order to serve a certain foreign policy objective, try to criticize somebody as antisemitic when they’re just not.”

Asked by Stuckey if Israel has an “outsized influence in the U.S.,” Vance said, “I certainly think that Israel, like a lot of other countries, tries to influence American politics. I sort of take that as a given. And what I think is that American leaders have to be very careful that when we pursue something, we’re doing it for America’s best interest and not for any other country’s best interest.”

Vance added that the late conservative influencer Charlie Kirk “was very worried about Israeli influence in American politics. He also really disliked antisemitism.”

Stuckey raised the “the obsession that some people have, I would say on the right, with blaming all of their problems on Israel, all of their disagreements with Trump on some secret Israeli influence,” which she said she sees “more prominently on the right than I see the true ‘Israel first’ kind of obsession that you seem to be describing.”

“I see both, and I think both are bad,” Vance responded. But he said he’s “particularly sensitive” to what he views as the elevation of Israel’s interests because he’s “been defending the president’s decision to end the Iran [war], and I find often the arguments are, ‘Well, Israel doesn’t think this is good, therefore it’s bad.’ And my reaction is: Israel’s opinions matter, but fundamentally they are separate.”

“But you’re right. I mean, there are certainly people who take every frustration with the Trump administration, every policy disagreement becomes because of Israel, and that is absolutely wrong. And again, I think that that is one of those things that can bleed into some very dark places,” he continued.

Vance also defended the emerging deal with Iran, prior to departing over the weekend for direct negotiations with Tehran’s representatives in Switzerland. “You do still have terrorist elements within the regime, but you also have pragmatic elements within the regime who are actually affirmatively trying to have a better relationship with the United States,” he said.

Far-left antisemitic streamer Hasan Piker, replying to a video of Vance’s comments about criticism of the Israeli government and antisemitism, wrote on X, “I GOT BANNED FROM THE UK FOR SAYING THIS VERBATIM BTW.”