Three rebuttals to the crackpot Charlie Kirk-Israel conspiracy theory

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It should go without saying that Charlie Kirk was not assassinated by Israel‘s Mossad foreign intelligence service. Unfortunately, some commentators continue to push this narrative. They do so in pursuit of attention, listeners, and revenue.

Two notable purveyors of salacious deception are Candace Owens and Ian Carroll. When Owens isn’t claiming that the main problem with Adolf Hitler was that he was a globalist, making herself a puppet for Vladimir Putin, or accusing the French president’s wife of being a man, she is inventing other mad conspiracy theories. A devoted antisemite, one of Owens’s favorite theories is that Israel was involved in the September 2025 assassination of Kirk.

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Owens advanced that claim last Wednesday by posting a video of conservative commentator Ben Shapiro saying that Kirk’s security detail had called his own detail shortly after Kirk was shot, presumably in case a coordinated attack on conservative commentators was underway. Referencing a speech Shapiro made shortly after the assassination, Owens then claimed, “I clocked that Ben was TOO invested in this. … Ben Shapiro is Satanic.”

Owens was only getting started. In another X post last Thursday, she added that “nobody in the world outside of Zionists believe Tyler Robinson murdered Charlie Kirk and that Israel’s hands are clean.”

Reposting Owens’s first post, Carroll added, “What??? Ben screwed up reeeall good by making this claim. [Kirk’s] security team called Ben Shapiro’s IDF security team before they called anyone else….? Before they’d even gotten [Kirk] to the hospital? When they should have been stopping bleeding and protecting the spine.” Showing his lack of understanding of firearms and ballistics, Carroll subsequently posted spurious theories questioning whether Tyler Robinson was the shooter.

This is astonishingly absurd stuff. To borrow a great line from the movie Lethal Weapon, Owens and Carroll “are out there like f***in’ Pluto!” Fortunately, suggestions of Israeli involvement in Kirk’s murder are also easily repudiated in three ways.

First off, the evidence (or utter lack thereof)

There is, put simply, no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Israel was involved in Kirk’s assassination. There is no evidence to suggest that Kirk’s security detail was involved in a conspiracy with Shapiro’s detail, let alone Israel. And while I haven’t found any evidence that Shapiro is protected by former Israel Defense Forces personnel as Carroll claims, considering the professional reputation and dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship of many IDF personnel, it wouldn’t be surprising. Nor would it be evidence of a criminal conspiracy (more on this in point three).

In contrast, there is an abundance of video, DNA, confession, and other evidence to suggest that Tyler Robinson, the accused suspect, shot and killed Kirk, and that he did so alone from an identified rooftop position. We also know that Kirk’s security detail and local police failed to secure or obstruct the rooftop lines of sight to Kirk. But just as the similar failure of the U.S. Secret Service during the July 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania, attack on Donald Trump did not involve Secret Service collusion with Iran (which is actually plotting to kill Trump), nor does the failure of Kirk’s security detail evince an Israeli conspiracy. The evidence overwhelmingly points to one individual taking advantage of a security failure to kill Kirk. Israel is utterly irrelevant to this tragedy.

An antisemitic stench wafts around those who suggest otherwise. Indeed, saying that Israel killed Kirk offers a contemporary companion to the insane 14th-century claim that Jews caused the Black Death by secretly poisoning wells.

Second, Israeli motive (or counter-motive)

Does Israel have the motive and ability to conduct high-profile assassinations on the soil of foreign allies? Sometimes. Does Israel ever do so? Very rarely and only in extreme circumstances. That said, there is no evidence that Israel has ever carried out an assassination on U.S. soil. There is an extremely good reason for this.

Namely, that Israel knows assassinating an American, on American soil, would carry an extreme risk of causing existential damage to Israel’s relationship with the United States. That relationship is the strategic linchpin of Israeli security. Even if an American were both a major threat to Israeli security and deeply unpopular with Americans (which is plainly not the case with Kirk), Israel would know that the U.S. government would gravely punish such a serious affront to U.S. sovereignty. On the contrary, Israel seeks to boost its U.S. relationship by targeting those with American blood on their hands and gathering information of high value to American policymakers. And suggesting that because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorizes espionage on U.S. soil, he also authorizes assassinations on U.S. soil, is like stating that a grain of sand is the same as a beach.

Of course, Israel had absolutely no motive to kill Kirk.

Yes, Kirk had increased his critiques of the U.S.-Israel relationship before he died. But Kirk had also continued to speak out against antisemitism and remained broadly supportive of Israel. Moreover, many other prominent and far harsher American critics of Israel in politics, academia, and the media have made their views known for years. Some prominent Israelis have adopted similar views, damaging their country’s international standing. None of these people have been killed by Israel.

The bottom line: The Israeli motive just doesn’t exist here. On the contrary, had Israeli intelligence learned of a plot against Kirk, they would rapidly share that information with U.S. authorities.

Third, there’s the issue of the Israeli assassination form

Different intelligence services have their own preferred ways of killing people. The Russian services like theatrics. They use nerve or radioactive agents to poison, pulsed microwave devices to attack their targets brains, or push people out of windows. The Chinese like to kidnap and then disappear people. Iran likes to use organized crime networks for its assassinations. The U.S. likes to use aerial drones. And while Mossad often uses bombs and bullets, it does so only where its operatives can escape. However, they manifestly would not use a sniper to kill a prominent American on American soil.

The aforementioned factors notwithstanding, the Israelis are too clever for that. Hence, how their assassins have operated in Iran without capture for so long, tracking and eliminating dozens of well-guarded targets. Hence, how Israel secretly got an explosives-laden phone next to Hamas bombmaker Yahya Ayyash’s head. Hence, how thousands of the Lebanese Hezbollah’s pagers suddenly blew up on them.

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In Kirk’s case, Israel would certainly leave no connection point between its citizens (such as the former IDF personnel that Carroll alleges protect Shapiro) and the assassination. Similarly, a sniper carries an identity and history that investigators could piece back together after the fact. Had Israel really wanted to kill Kirk, it would have done so abroad where it could better control the environment and political risks. It would also have made his death look like an accident. Think a heart attack blamed on a drug overdose or an unexplained allergic attack.

Again, none of this should need stating. Kirk was not killed by Israel. He was killed by a lone gunman. Israel had no rationale to kill Kirk and every reason not to. This is a simple but sad story of one man who killed another. Those believing otherwise show only that they have summited a great peak of delusional prejudice. They should read and listen more widely.