Steve Bannon, former adviser to Donald Trump, during the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 20. Photo by Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh March 2, 2025

More than a week after Steve Bannon made a straight-armed gesture resembling a Nazi salute, the former adviser to President Donald Trump headlined a dinner for Orthodox pro-MAGA activists, using the stage to dismiss accusations of antisemitism and accept a “Warrior for Israel” award.

“I’m one of the most pro-Israel people out there,” Bannon told the crowd Saturday night at a Dallas event hosted by Israel365 Action, a conservative Orthodox advocacy group. “I’m considered a raving antisemite. Why? Because I’m a populist nationalist, I’m a threat to the system.”

The Anti-Defamation League condemned Bannon after he made the gesture at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month, though Bannon insists it was “a wave like I did all the time.”

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Israel365 Action faced criticism for inviting Bannon — who has long been linked to white nationalists and some antisemitic rhetoric — to headline the event. Akiba Yavneh Academy, the local school originally set to host the event, canceled its venue after Bannon was announced as a featured speaker.

“For far too long, the Jewish community has been dominated by progressive left organizations that do not have the Jewish community’s interest at heart,” Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, the group’s executive director, said at the start of the event. “It’s about time that instead of just shaking our fist, that we actually do something about it.”

In his remarks, followed by a Q&A discussion, Bannon said Republican Jews and the far right are allies. “The biggest part of antisemitism in the U.S. is DEI in the progressive left,” he said, referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that the Trump administration is aggressively opposed to. “The greatest antisemitism in this nation is the progressive left.”

Bannon also embraced the label “crazy” as a positive term for radical change. “We are crazy,” he said. “People that change the world are not reasonable people.”

Bannon was not asked about the CPAC salute and didn’t address it in his opening remarks. Wolicki defended him in a video published last week. Last year, Wolicki called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “court Jew” of the Biden administration.

Defending isolationists, attacking Jewish groups 

Bannon also dismissed concerns that isolationist voices within the MAGA movement — including Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk — are anti-Israel. “I don’t believe they are anti-Israel voices, and I don’t think they’re antisemitic,” he said, describing them as wary of being “sucked into” another Middle East war. He also told the crowd that younger conservatives are being discouraged from supporting Israel due to its portrayal as a neoconservative position.

Bannon called for a “complete rethinking” of foreign aid and criticized Jewish groups — like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — for lobbying for more military assistance to Israel as the U.S. faces a debt crisis. They are “fueling the fire” for anti-Israel sentiment, he said.

At CPAC, Bannon said in a viral video that American Jews voting Democratic are the “number one enemy to the people in Israel, not the Islamic supremacists.”

At the Saturday event, the former Trump adviser praised the president’s recent moves on Israel, including his controversial Gaza relocation plan that includes a U.S. takeover of the enclave. “I guess we are not talking two-state solution anymore,” Bannon said. “On that one, he is definitely playing five-dimensional chess.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the name of the convention at which Bannon made the controversial gesture. It was the Conservative Political Action Conference, not the Conservative Policy Action Conference.

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