Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest, its first since the killing of its founder and leader Charlie Kirk in September, kicked off on Thursday with prominent names on its four-day agenda, including Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).

Some speakers, such as Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, have spread anti-Israel and even antisemitic messages through their platforms, while others, including Ben Shapiro and Glenn Beck, have been strong advocates for Israel.

Joining them on the program on Friday is Omer Shem Tov, who was held hostage by Hamas in Gaza for 505 days.

Shem Tov, 23, arrived at the Nova Festival near the Gaza border on Oct. 6, 2023, with his friends, siblings Itay and Maya Regev. On the morning of Oct. 7, when they heard gunshots, they attempted to flee, but Hamas terrorists fired on them, loaded them onto a pickup truck and drove them to Gaza. Itay and Maya Regev were freed in the first hostage deal in November 2023, and Shem Tov was moved into tunnels, where he was held in darkness and with little to eat until his release in February of this year.

Since then, Shem Tov has regularly traveled abroad to advocate for the release of the rest of the hostages and speak about Israel and the war. 

Shem Tov told Jewish Insider that he’s speaking to TPUSA because “we can see on social media that something is changing on the American right. You can see more and more people coming out with all kinds of antisemitic statements and anti-Israel statements.”

“It’s very concerning, because these are people who vote for Trump, people who are supposed to be good for us,” he added. “This is the time to go to them and explain to them what is really happening in the war and make them understand that the friendship between the U.S. and Israel is one of the greatest things for both countries.”

Shem Tov said it wasn’t until he was freed from Hamas captivity that he became aware of TPUSA and Charlie Kirk’s work. “To see someone who is not Jewish, not directly connected to Israel, go to universities and the largest audiences and fight for Israel was very touching,” Shem Tov said of Kirk. “He did a better job than most Israelis. It was amazing to see him.”

Shem Tov was in the U.S. when Kirk was murdered and said he was “shaken.”

“It’s scary because [public speaking] is what I’m doing now, too, but on the other hand, it should not silence us. We must continue to fight. We have been fighting for our freedom for thousands of years, and we will continue,” he said.

Shem Tov plans to tell the audience at AmericaFest the story of his captivity, in addition to paying tribute to Kirk and discussing the importance of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

Israelis have come to know a story of Shem Tov’s heroism while in captivity, which he repeated for JI.

“During a difficult period [of the captivity], the IDF was right above me. I heard tanks over my head, and even soldiers speaking at night, through the air vents,” he recalled. 

“[Hamas terrorists] set up bombs in the building above us and brought the cables underground,” Shem Tov said. “I asked what it was, and they told me. One of [the captors] said that when soldiers get to the house above us — there were cameras, so we could watch — I need to blow up the house.”

“I looked at him, the leader of the tunnel, and I said ‘I won’t do it.’ He looked at me and was in shock that I said no. He said, ‘If you don’t do it, we’ll shoot you in the head.’ I said, ‘So shoot me in the head. I won’t hurt my brothers.’ After that, they abused me,” Shem Tov recounted.

Debates on college campuses pale in comparison to the terror of captivity and the threat of immediate death, so Shem Tov said he is “always ready” for any anti-Israel audience members who may come for him.

“I know the facts,” he said. “If they come with a claim that sounds logical and rational, then I am prepared to debate and bring the truth. I know the truth, I saw it with my own eyes.”

Shem Tov recalled speaking at an event at University of California, Berkeley, where he was disappointed to find a totally supportive audience. He set up a table on campus the next day with an Israeli flag and a sign that read “I was a hostage in Gaza for 505 days, ask me anything.”

“Pro-Palestinian people came up to me with keffiyehs and watermelon pins. I think they were more calm and pleasant because I was a hostage. I told them my story, but I was open to hearing what they had to say. I think I succeeded in changing people’s minds. It was amazing to see,” he said.

Asked about Shem Tov’s address and the mix of pro- and anti-Israel voices appearing at AmericaFest, Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said in a statement to JI, “You can recognize that there is a legitimate foreign policy debate within the right while simultaneously recognizing that abducting young people at a music festival and holding them hostage for 505 days is a horrific evil.” 

“Omer’s heroism should absolutely be celebrated, and we pray that the peace in Gaza, made possible by President [Donald] Trump’s strong and steady leadership, proves durable and long-lasting,” Kolvet stated.

Shem Tov said he had no background in public speaking or Israel advocacy before being released from Gaza.

“I wasn’t a good student,” he said. “I would disturb in class and be kicked out a lot. I went to the army, and when I finished, I worked as a waiter to try to make money to go on a big trip, and then I was kidnapped.”

Shem Tov said he is often asked whether it is hard for him to speak so frequently about what he endured as a hostage.

“I do it for the hostages. Up to the very last one. … It’s not over until Ran Gvili” — the final hostage whose body remains in Gaza — “comes home,” he said.

“Second, it’s advocacy for Israel. It’s very important for people to understand what happened on Oct. 7,” he added.

Shem Tov said, “I thank God. God brought me home for a reason and with a story that I can tell so people will be strengthened and to spread light, love and truth. It’s hard, but it is fulfilling to see the change happening with my own eyes.” 

“I think I learned to get some gifts from this terrible thing that happened. I learned not to just be sad, but to get up and strengthen others,” he said.

As to the terrorist attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia, on Sunday in which 15 were killed, Shem Tov said “it really brought me back” to the Nova Festival.

“A month and a half ago, I was there in Bondi Beach. I know the area; I know what it looks like; I know a lot of people there. It was very painful to see that this had to happen to more people,” he said. “We went through this once in Israel. It should have brought a change and made people understand… but here, it’s happening again. It’s scary and painful and disappointing to people who don’t understand that we need to fight terrorism. It’s not fighting for freedom; it’s not resistance.”

Shem Tov expressed appreciation to Jewish communities around the world that advocated for his release.

“It’s a privilege to meet people who I don’t know and didn’t know me, but did whatever they could to pray for me and fight for me, to shout in the streets. … They dedicated so much of themselves and so much time that it is a privilege to look them in the eyes and say thank you,” he said.

Shem Tov added that he salutes all of the IDF soldiers who fought in the war: “I appreciate them so much for fighting, whether in their prayers or in the field.”

Under pressure from Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr. and prominent right-wing activists in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Anti-Defamation League is removing from its website the Glossary of Extremism and Hate, one of the organization’s signature anti-hate resources. 

The database identifies over 1,000 terms relating to extremist ideologies and groups, and it has faced scrutiny in recent days after viral social media posts revealed that the Glossary of Extremism included an entry about the slain Turning Point USA founder and his organization. 

Musk, Trump Jr., Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) and other conservatives slammed the civil rights organization for its apparent portrayal of Turning Point and Kirk, just weeks after his death, as extremists.

An ADL spokesperson confirmed to Jewish Insider that the organization removed the glossary entirely and that it does not consider TPUSA an “extremist group.” The glossary no longer appears on the ADL website. 

“With over 1,000 entries written over many years, the ADL Glossary of Extremism has served as a source of high-level information on a wide range of topics for years. At the same time, an increasing number of entries in the Glossary were outdated. We also saw a number of entries intentionally misrepresented and misused,” the spokesperson told JI. “At ADL, we always are looking for how we can and should do things better. That’s why we are moving to retire the Glossary effectively immediately. This will allow ADL to explore new strategies.” 

But although the Glossary of Extremism and Hate has been deleted from the ADL’s site, material about Kirk and TPUSA — including criticism of the group for its ties to “a variety of extremists” — still appears in another resource on the ADL’s website. A spokesperson described that “backgrounder” as one of “a multitude of resources on its website that address extremism and its many expressions.” 

The ADL first published its backgrounder on Turning Point in February 2019. The piece was then updated in January 2023 and again on Monday afternoon, after screenshots of the page itself and the glossary entry on TPUSA circulated on social media. The edited version softens some of the ADL’s language about TPUSA while holding firm on its description of the group’s more extreme elements.

The ADL’s page on TPUSA, which will remain on the website, but not as part of a searchable glossary entry, appears in a section about “Extremism, Hate or Terrorism.” Prior to this week, the entry stated: “Since the group’s founding, Kirk has moved further to the right and has promoted numerous conspiracy theories about election fraud and COVID-19 and has demonized the transgender community.”

“Kirk also promotes Christian nationalism: the idea that Christians should dominate the government and other areas of life in the US. TPUSA continues to attract racists to the group. Numerous TPUSA representatives have made bigoted remarks about minority groups and the LGBTQ+ community,” the TPUSA entry continued. “White nationalists have attended TPUSA events, even though the group says it rejects white supremacist ideology.” 

Kirk was one of the most influential conservative activists in the country until he was shot and killed at a Utah university speaking engagement this month by a perpetrator who wrote in text messages to a romantic partner that he “had enough” of Kirk’s “hatred.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox said earlier this month that the suspect was “deeply indoctrinated with leftist ideology.”

The ADL’s webpage about Kirk, which remains active, still says that Kirk “created a vast platform that was used by numerous extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists. A number of such individuals speak and attend his annual AmericaFest and other events sponsored by TPUSA.”

But the updated page edited some of the language about Kirk and took a more subdued tone towards TPUSA. The ADL now describes the group as “a political student organization that appeals to a wide range of conservatives, from moderate Republicans to the far-right. TPUSA has played a significant role in GOP politics and elections, helping to galvanize young people.” 

The ADL also added a lengthy section about Kirk’s support for Israel, and goes on to say that TPUSA and Kirk “publicly supported the state of Israel and spoke out against its critics. These views made him a target of prominent voices from the extreme right such as the Groypers.”

Still, the ADL states that TPUSA “has promoted some conspiracy theories,” and that some people tied to TPUSA “have a history of bigoted statements about the Black community, the LGBTQ community and specifically transgender people, and other minority groups.”

The ADL spokesperson told JI that an organization’s inclusion in its Glossary of Extremism did not necessarily mean the group was a hate group. “To be clear, inclusion in our glossary did not mean that the purpose of the group was to promote extremism or hate, and Turning Point USA is not an extremist group,” the spokesperson said. 

“We recognize that TPUSA repeatedly stated that it rejects white supremacist ideology; however, as we noted in our materials, white nationalists openly attended their events and some people affiliated with the organization had a history of bigoted statements about minority groups. So we felt it important to have it covered both in the glossary and as a fuller backgrounder with more in-depth research on the group,” the spokesperson added.

On Sunday, prior to the changes, Musk decried the ADL’s descriptions of Turning Point as “deeply wrong” and in need of an immediate correction. 

“The ADL needs to change this now,” Musk wrote on his X platform.

Trump Jr. wrote that ADL’s inclusion of TPUSA in its glossary was “disgraceful.”

In a tweet alongside a screenshot of the organization’s prior page about Turning Point, Luna, who represents Florida’s Gulf Coast, said the ADL “has some explaining to do.” “Seems to me like if they don’t agree with you, they will label you a ‘hate group,’” she wrote on X on Monday morning.

“‘America First’ is not hate speech. Turning Point USA is not a hate group,” Luna wrote in a subsequent tweet later Monday. 

Andrew Kolvet, the longtime executive producer of Kirk’s podcast, posted earlier in the day: “Good morning to everyone except the pro-Antifa, anti-Christian hate group known as the ADL.” The Antifa remark was in reference to criticism from conservatives over how the ADL classifies the far-left group on its site.

This is not the only time the ADL has recently reassessed its educational resources. In late 2023, the organization eliminated a major educational program, “A World of Difference,” after 40 years. The organization published a slew of anti-racism resources in the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, but some of them have since been removed from its website. In 2022, the ADL promised to review its educational content following a Fox News investigation that slammed the group’s use of “concepts from critical race theory.” 

Under CEO Jonathan Greenblatt’s leadership, the ADL has had to fight off critics from both the ideological left and the right as it grapples with its mission amid rising antisemitism within both political parties. 

When Greenblatt took the helm of the organization a decade ago, replacing longtime ADL chief Abe Foxman, he faced criticism from some on the right for taking the organization in a liberal direction. In the first Trump administration, the ADL came out against the White House on several occasions, including by signing onto a lawsuit challenging the president’s policy banning travelers from several Muslim nations. 

Greenblatt has also taken on progressive critics who disagree with the ADL’s stalwart support for Israel, and his assertion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. After the Oct. 7 terror attacks, the organization has leaned more deeply into its pro-Israel ethos and its work targeting antisemitism, stepping back from some of its focus on other forms of hate. 

More recently, the organization has taken steps in the second Trump administration to reach disaffected conservatives — angering some longtime supporters in the process. In January, the ADL hired a lobbying firm with close ties to Trump to assist on its antisemitism work. 

When Musk made a hand gesture during Trump’s inauguration that resembled a Nazi salute, Greenblatt took flak from some in the Jewish community for coming to Musk’s defense. He has since said he should have “framed” his comments differently. 

This story was corrected to note the timing of when the ADL eliminated its “A World of Difference” program.

Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson, who has hosted Holocaust deniers and antisemitic influencers on his podcast, used his address at the memorial for conservative influencer Charlie Kirk in Arizona on Sunday to compare Kirk’s assassination to the killing of Jesus. 

The former Fox News host began his remarks to the more than 70,000 people in attendance at State Farm Stadium in Glendale by noting that the political engagement brought on by Kirk’s killing “actually reminds me of my favorite story ever,” before offering an account of how Jesus was killed in Jerusalem. While he never brought up the Jewish people by name, he made references to Jewish culture to suggest that he was referring to the antisemitic trope that Jews were responsible for the killing of Jesus. 

“It’s about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem and Jesus shows up, and he starts talking about the people in power, and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do: just telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers. They hate it, and they become obsessed with making him stop. ‘This guy’s got to stop talking. We’ve got to shut this guy up,’” Carlson said.

“I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about, ‘What do we do about this guy telling the truth about us? We must make him stop talking.’ There’s always one guy with the bright idea, and I can just hear him say, ‘I’ve got an idea. Let me just kill him. That’ll shut him up, that’ll fix the problem.’ It doesn’t work that way,” he continued.

Carlson, who spoke for just under six minutes, then quoted the beatitude from Matthew 5:4: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” He connected the passage to Kirk’s political message, making the argument that the slain conservative activist “was bringing the gospel to the country. He was doing the thing that the people in charge hate most, which is calling for them to repent.”

“How is Charlie’s message different? Charlie was a political person who was deeply interested in coalition building and getting the right people in office, because he knew that vast improvements are possible politically, but he also knew that politics is not the final answer. It can’t answer the deepest questions, actually, that the only real solution is Jesus,” Carlson said. “Politics at its core is a process of critiquing other people and getting them to change. Christianity, the gospel message, the message of Jesus, begins with repentance.”

Carlson went on to praise Kirk for not having “hate in his heart” and being able to “forgive other people” by following “a call to change our hearts from Jesus,” before acknowledging his own shortcomings.

“Charlie was fearless at all times, truly fearless. To his last moment, he was unafraid. He was not defensive, and there was no hate in his heart. I know that because I’ve got a little hate compartment in my heart, and I would often express that surely about various people,” Carlson said. “He would always say, ‘That’s a sad person, that’s a broken person, that’s a person who needs help, that’s a person who needs Jesus’. He said that in private, because he meant it.” 

Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old Trump ally and conservative campus advocacy leader who was fatally shot at an event at Utah Valley University on Wednesday, was seen as a crucial bulwark against rising antisemitism and anti-Israel antagonism on the far right, friends and acquaintances told Jewish Insider.

While he was best known as a fierce and unyielding critic of what he assailed as the excesses of left-wing culture, Kirk, the founder of the youth activist group Turning Point USA, also cautioned against the risks of young conservatives embracing antisemitism and online conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel.   

“There is a corner of the internet, of people that want to point and blame the Jews for all their problems,” he said at a recent event. “Everybody, this is demonic and it’s from the pit of hell and it should not be tolerated.”

Jewish conservatives who were close with Kirk both personally and professionally lamented his death as a major loss for the long-term standing of pro-Israel sentiment in the MAGA movement, citing his continued defense of Israel and recent commentary warning against the embrace of antisemitism on the far right while visiting college campuses nationwide with TPUSA.

Kirk’s impact on the online right’s discourse was significant, and his views on Israel were closely watched as other right-wing podcasters turned more critical of the Jewish state. In the runup to the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Kirk drew outsized attention for cautioning the Trump administration against attacking Iran, citing the fallout from young conservatives, who supported the president over his promise to end foreign wars.

But after the attack was successful, Kirk praised Trump’s decision after the strikes degraded Iran’s nuclear threat without the U.S. getting involved in a wider war.

Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, executive director of Israel365 Action, a subset of Israel365, the advocacy group that describes itself as an “Orthodox Jewish institution that believes that Jews and Christians must respect one another,” spoke to Kirk on Tuesday evening for what he referred to as a “work meeting.” Wolicki said he could not get into details of the call, but noted that the two began communicating regularly as Kirk began facing pushback from the far right for refusing to abandon his support for Israel. 

“The fact is, Charlie didn’t agree with every decision that the Israeli government made, but he was one of the most avid defenders of Israel out there,” Wolicki told JI. “Most people’s exposure to Charlie visiting campuses is those viral clips they would release, but 40 to 50% of the questions Charlie would get on campuses for the last year and a half were about Israel. He didn’t go to those campuses to talk about Israel, but that’s where the students would always bring it to. Half the time he was on those campuses, he was defending Israel.”

While he and Kirk did not always align in their conversations about Israel, the GOP activist “was always wanting to learn, wanting to know what the truth is and what are the right ways to answer these questions,” Wolicki said. 

“All I saw in every conversation was sincerity and concern and just a love for Israel, even when he disagreed with Israel, even when Israel frustrated him,” he told JI. 

Even as Kirk faced criticism for defending Elon Musk after the billionaire tech mogul came under scrutiny for amplifying an antisemitic conspiracy theory, his allies said he had a strong connection to Israel and the Jewish community that motivated his advocacy.

Josh Hammer, a conservative political commentator and a personal friend of Kirk’s, argued that Kirk’s affinity for the Jewish people was grounded in his evangelical Christian faith and the fact that some of his earliest professional mentors were conservative pro-Israel champions like David Horowitz and Dennis Prager. 

Hammer said he and Kirk engaged regularly on the best ways to address rising antisemitism within the GOP, and that he was concerned about how Kirk’s absence going forward would impact that surge.

“He was a young conservative leader, and he very much had his thumb on the pulse of the fact that Gen Z is trending in a not so healthy direction on the Israel issue and on antisemitism in general,” he told JI. 

“We would talk about how to turn back the tide against that,” Hammer added. “He was really holding back some really nasty stuff in some very young, far-right online circles. He was doing more than maybe anyone in the country to fight that. Part of me kind of worries, frankly, about what that energy does from here in his absence.”

Kirk, an evangelical Christian, had been working on a book about the Sabbath that is set to be published in December, called Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life. 

“He would turn his phone off and generally disconnect for 24 to 25 hours,” Hammer told JI. “He was someone who genuinely believed not just in the New Testament and part of the Christian Bible, but he genuinely believed in the Hebrew Bible as well. He had a very special place in his heart for those who were called upon to be God’s chosen people in this world. He was of genuine conviction that the land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people.”

Jewish American and Israeli leaders expressed appreciation on Wednesday for Kirk’s support for the Jewish community and Israel, which he visited at least twice on trips he recounted as personally meaningful.

“Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on social media. “A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a former White House advisor, called Kirk “a close friend and a special human being,” saying he “represented the best of MAGA. Firm in his beliefs, compassionate, curious, and respectful.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition, in a statement on Wednesday, said that Kirk had been “a shining light in these troubled times for the American Jewish community, and we are deeply saddened at his passing.”

“Charlie was a fearless advocate for freedom, a supporter of Israel and the Jewish people, and a friend,” the RJC said. “He was cut down while doing what he loved to do, communicating with the next generation of American leaders on college campuses about the issues that affect us all.”

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said she was “devastated by the horrific, unconscionable, depraved murder of Charlie Kirk,” adding: “Political violence should have no place in this country, and it’s incumbent on political leaders on both sides of the aisle to make that clear.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish pro-Trump activist and outspoken opponent of campus antisemitism, said that Kirk’s death leaves a vacuum on the right as antisemitic figures including Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes find growing audiences. 

“Charlie repeatedly referred to antisemitism as ‘demonic’” and “hated it viscerally,” Kestenbaum told JI.

“Behind the scenes, Charlie was working with prominent Jewish individuals here in America to change the narrative surrounding Israel,” he said. “He was a mentor to me and millions all over this country. I fear for the future of the conservative movements’ attitudes towards Israel without Charlie.”