‘Murdered for speaking truth’: Netanyahu and US Jewish leaders mourn Charlie Kirk

Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk at the White House in May. Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

By Louis Keene and Ron KampeasSeptember 10, 2025

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk was “murdered for speaking truth,” a cry of grief that highlighted how close the alliance between the Israeli and American right has become.

A gunman shot and killed Kirk, 31, while he was speaking to college students in Utah. A manhunt is currently underway for a suspect in the assassination. Two persons of interest had been arrested and released as of Wednesday evening.

“Charlie Kirk was murdered for speaking truth and defending freedom,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “A lion-hearted friend of Israel, he fought the lies and stood tall for Judeo-Christian civilization.”

Netanyahu was one of an array of Jewish and Israeli leaders who expressed their horror. The Orthodox Union called the killing a “horrific act of political violence” and the Jewish Federations of North America likewise said it was “horrified.”

“We extend our prayers and send our deepest sympathies to his loved ones during this difficult time,” JFNA said.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a group often identified with progressive outlooks, decried political violence. “We should all be horrified by this — and make unequivocally clear this violence has no place in our politics or our society,” the group said.

But the Israeli reaction — unusually fierce for a non-elected official — reflected how Israel’s government has intensified its outreach to the American right since Donald Trump’s reelection last year to the presidency. Israel wants to nip in the bud skepticism of the U.S.-Israel alliance among some Trump supporters. Kirk, who founded the hugely influential Turning Point USA youth movement, was a key and enthusiastic conduit to that cohort.

Before Kirk’s death was announced, Netanyahu posted on X that he was praying for Kirk, as did his minister for Diaspora affairs, Amichai Chikli. The Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, added his prayers and said, “Truth cannot, and will not be silenced.” Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right minister of national security, said he was “devastated” by the shooting.

Kirk was one of Trump’s loyal boosters.

Trump in announcing Kirk’s death said he was “Great and even Legendary.” He ordered flags flown at half mast.

In a video address from the Oval Office, Trump blamed liberal rhetoric for fueling violence, saying some “have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis,” which he called “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He vowed to target the groups that fund or support such attacks.

The American Jewish right was similarly rattled by the assassination.

“RIP to an American treasure,” wrote Dov Hikind, a Trump booster and a former New York State Assemblyman on X. “Tragic day for our country. 💔”

“Aish, the Jewish people and the pro-Israel community deeply mourn the senseless assassination of Charlie Kirk,” said Rabbi Steven Burg, the chairman of the Orthodox Jewish outreach group. “He was a steadfast ally of Israel and a courageous advocate for our people.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a conservative American Jewish activist, urged his followers: “Please stop what you’re doing and pray for our friend Charlie Kirk. Many in the Jewish community are reciting chapters from the Book of Psalms, and I ask you do the same. Something is deeply broken in America. The political violence must END. GOD HELP AMERICA.”

Going to thread some of the reaction from American Jewish leaders and organizations to the assassination of Charlie Kirk below ⬇️

— Louis Keene (@thislouis) September 10, 2025

Kirk was addressing an outdoor crowd of an estimated 1,000 people on the campus of Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, when he was shot once in the chest or neck area, according to videos of the incident uploaded to social media and verified by people in attendance. No other shots were fired.

On Jews

Kirk frequently characterized himself as a defender of the Jews and Israel, even as he faced criticism from across the spectrum over his comments about Jews and from the Anti-Defamation League and others over his role in the mainstreaming of the far right.

Kirk’s concerns about the erosion of status for white Americans were central to his politics, and he also railed against what he called “Marxism,” efforts to curtail gun rights, and transgender people, about whom he was answering a question when he was shot.

In April 2024, as pro-Palestinian protests spread across American campuses, Kirk backed Republican crackdowns and urged them also to confront what he called “institutional hatred of white people.”

“I’m loving all the GOP unity against Jew hatred. It has no place in America,” wrote Kirk. “Can we get the same unity about the institutional hatred of white people on campus? It’s even more embedded than the antisemitism.”

After Kirk was given a prime time speaking slot at the 2024 Republican National Convention, the Democratic Majority for Israel launched a petition calling on them to rescind their pick over what they called Kirk’s “long record of antisemitic statements.”

In a backgrounder about Turning Point USA from the Anti-Defamation League, the ADL accused Kirk of creating a “vast platform for extremists and far-right conspiracy theorists” and promoting Christian nationalism.

Rejecting the criticism, Kirk long framed himself as a defender of the Jews.

“No non-Jewish person my age has a longer or clearer record of support for Israel, sympathy with the Jewish people, or opposition to antisemitism than I do,” he posted on X in April as part of a critique of David Friedman, the former U.S. Ambassador to Israel, challenging his view of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. He said he rejected the idea of punishing people for their speech.

“Once ‘antisemitism’ becomes valid grounds to censor or even imprison somebody, there will be frantic efforts to label all kinds of speech as antisemitic — the same way the left labeled all kinds of statements as ‘racist’ to justify silencing their opposition,” he said. “Not only that, but all of this won’t even work.”

In a post on X in August, Kirk called on his supporters to reject antisemitism: “Jew hate has no place in civil society. It rots the brain, reject it.”

Back in 2023, Kirk read a tweet on his show that said, “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” a sentiment he agreed with, in a spirited defense of Elon Musk — himself under fire for antisemitic dog whistling — and went on to say, “Some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans.”

Some conservatives decried his comments. Erick Erickson, a Christian radio host, posted on X that Turning Point USA was “looking like not just a grifting operation, but an anti-Semitic grifting operation.” Ben Domenech, the editor of The Spectator, wrote that if Kirk remained the head of his organization, “the right has an anti-Semite problem that will follow them into the coming elections.”

Kirk had denied any antisemitic intent, touting his advocacy for Israel as an evangelical Christian.

On Israel

Kirk was a vocal backer of Israel, visiting the country multiple times and more recently staunchly supporting its war in Gaza amid mounting headwinds from an isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

After visiting Israel in May 2018 for a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and again in 2019, Kirk described his visits to the country as eye-opening.

He told a crowd at a Jerusalem bar during his second trip: “I’m very pro-Israel, I’m an evangelical Christian, I’m a conservative, I’m a Trump supporter, I’m a Republican, and my whole life I have defended Israel.”

In July, he posted a segment from his show on X in which he defended the country against allegations that it is starving Palestinians.

Last month, he hosted a discussion with Gen Z Turning Point USA students in which they discussed waning support for Israel among Republicans and rampant antisemitism in the United States.

“As you’ll see, they don’t hate Israel or Jewish people, but they are skeptical about the state of America’s current relationship with the country, and they want to be confident America’s leaders are putting their own country first,” wrote Kirk in a post on X about the discussion. “I have been working hard to help conservative politicians, donors, and friends of Israel better understand this dynamic.”

For a while, it seemed possible that Kirk’s baggage would block his assimilation into the Republican mainstream. More established conservatives once said his presence in the party signaled an antisemitism problem. But the longtime Trump supporter — Turning Point was one of the sponsors of the Jan. 6, 2021, rally falsely claiming Trump won the 2020 election — spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention, and in Trump’s second term was considered part of the president’s close circle.

Kirk is survived by his wife and two young children.

JTA contributed to this report.

Correction: This article misstated the timing of a tweet Charlie Kirk read on his show and then defended.