The exchange happened during a one-on-one stage interview. The moderator pressed Slotkin on whether the term still fit her politically. Slotkin's response went further than a yes. "I can say that in the same breath that I criticize the military policy of Bibi Netanyahu," she said. She acknowledged the political climate had shifted, adding that it "used to be easier" to say she considered herself a Zionist publicly.

Michigan is home to over 300,000 Arab Americans and the highest concentration of Muslim American voters in any swing state. Slotkin won the seat in 2024 by less than 20,000 votes after Dearborn and Hamtramck broke for third-party candidates in protest of the Biden administration's support for Israel's war in Gaza. Slotkin's continued public alignment with Zionism is a deliberate choice. It is also one she will be asked to defend if she enters the 2028 Democratic primary, where Michigan delegates and donors are central to the path.

Slotkin is one of a small number of sitting Democratic senators willing to use the word "Zionist" to describe themselves on the record. Within the Democratic coalition, even pro-Israel senators have largely shifted to language like "supporter of Israel's right to exist." Slotkin's choice to retain the older term, in front of a Politico audience, in the middle of an active war, is the news.

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“Just Quit and Leave”: Scott’s Iran War Solution

Horton’s position on the Iran war is straightforward. The United States should declare victory, give Trump a parade and a gold medal, and leave the region permanently. “The entire bluff of America’s military predominance in the Middle East has already been called as of six to eight weeks ago,” Horton said. “We’re living in the future now.”

In Horton’s analysis, Iran is now the dominant force in the region, in significant part because the George W. Bush administration installed an Iran-friendly government in Iraq in 2003. There is no military solution short of nuclear weapons that would reverse this, and the American public has no interest in continuing to die for dominance over the Persian Gulf. The political class refuses to acknowledge the setback, and that refusal is what keeps the United States stuck.

How Netanyahu Manipulates Trump

Asked about Netanyahu’s 60 Minutes appearance, where the Israeli prime minister told CBS the Iran war is not over, Horton offered a candid theory: Trump is being flattered into war.

“There’s a national intelligence estimate in Israel that just says flatter him,” Horton said. The pitch, he believes, runs something like this: forget being compared to Lincoln. If Trump finishes the Iran war for Israel, he will be compared not to Abraham Lincoln but to the biblical Abraham. He will be the leader who stopped the existential threat to the Jewish state. He will go down as a hero of all history.

Horton noted that Trump’s family has taken money from interests aligned with Israel, including significant donations from Miriam Adelson, and that those donations came “with certain assurances.” But blackmail or bribery, in Horton’s reading, may be less important than simple ego. Trump is uniquely susceptible to flattery, and Netanyahu knows it.

Where Is Israel Headed: Carpet-Bombing, Demographics, and Collapse

On Israel’s trajectory, Horton was sobering. He sees little chance of regime change in Iran from the Israeli side, but a real chance that Israel will, in coming years, escalate against the West Bank in ways comparable to what it has already done in Gaza. “I’m afraid they could just start carpet-bombing the West Bank,” he said, “and just be like, yeah dude, we said greater Israel, didn’t we. We told you Iran, didn’t we.”

The internal Israeli demographic picture is grim by Israeli design. Horton cited the work of Arnon Soffer, the Tel Aviv University demographer who advised Ariel Sharon on the 2005 Gaza disengagement. The disengagement was framed by some as a peace gesture. Soffer described it more bluntly as a way to ensure Israel’s Jewish demographic majority by removing 1.4 million Palestinians from the population count without granting them sovereignty.

What Americans Can Actually Do

I closed by asking Horton what ordinary Americans should do. His answer was civil disobedience, business boycotts, and personal refusal to participate.

“I’m for completely abandoning Israel 100 percent,” he said. “All aid, all military aid, all vetoes in the UN Security Council on their behalf, and all of that. I would never buy anything knowingly that came from Israel, no matter what.”

The boycott, in Horton’s view, is not only about depriving Israel of money. It is about starting conversations. Someone seeing you boycott Israel is forced to ask why, and that opens the door to actually explaining what is happening. “It’s a great conversation starter,” he said.

Horton’s work, including more than two decades of interviews on these issues, is available at scotthortonacademy.com.

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The Kentucky primary on May 19 is therefore not really about Thomas Massie. It is about whether the American political system can still produce representatives who answer to American constituents rather than to a foreign-policy lobby with effectively unlimited resources. That is the actual question on the ballot.

The Three Zionist Billionaires

The three named donors funding the bulk of the operation against Massie are not random political contributors. They are three of the most powerful pro-Israel donors in the United States, and the through-line connecting their political activity is consistent and documented.

Miriam Adelson is the widow of Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate who was the largest single donor to the Republican Party in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles. Miriam Adelson holds American and Israeli citizenship. She has spent more than a decade pushing US presidents toward maximalist pro-Israel positions, including the 2017 move of the US embassy to Jerusalem. She publicly supported the annexation of the West Bank and has been one of the largest financial backers of Donald Trump’s political career. Her stated criteria for political support is alignment with the Israeli government.

Paul Singer is the founder of Elliott Management, one of the largest activist hedge funds in the world. Singer has personally directed hundreds of millions of dollars to Republican candidates and PACs over the past two decades, with pro-Israel alignment as a consistent throughline. Singer has been credited as one of the architects of the institutional Republican Jewish coalition’s modern donor strategy.

John Paulson is the hedge fund manager who became a billionaire by shorting the US housing market in the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Paulson has been one of the largest individual donors to pro-Israel infrastructure in American politics. Massie has alleged publicly that Paulson appears in records connected to Jeffrey Epstein, an allegation Paulson’s spokesperson has denied. Whether that specific claim holds up under scrutiny, what is verifiable is that Paulson has been a top-tier financier of the pro-Israel donor class for over a decade.

These three donors, between them, have shaped Republican politics on Israel more decisively than any party institution. Their combined spending in any given cycle exceeds the resources available to most state party operations. The fact that all three have now united around a single Kentucky primary tells you the political stakes the lobby attaches to Massie’s removal.

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This is not because AIPAC has gone away. It is because AIPAC’s brand has become so toxic that public endorsement now actively damages the candidates the organization wants to win.

The Laundering Architecture

The mechanism by which AIPAC continues to spend tens of millions of dollars while publicly stepping back from formal endorsements is straightforward, well-documented, and almost entirely invisible to ordinary voters.

The architecture has four layers.

Layer one is the United Democracy Project. UDP is AIPAC’s super PAC, launched in 2022 to allow unlimited election spending. It entered 2026 with roughly $96 million in cash on hand, more than any other Democratic-aligned super PAC of any kind. UDP’s ad spending consistently avoids the words “Israel,” “AIPAC,” or “Middle East,” instead attacking AIPAC’s progressive opponents on unrelated topics like ICE funding, stock disclosures, or housing policy. The current UDP campaign against former Rep. Tom Malinowski in New Jersey’s 11th District is a textbook example: $2.3 million in television ads attacking Malinowski on issues that have nothing to do with Israel, even though Malinowski was previously an AIPAC ally and only became a target after he suggested he would consider conditioning some military aid.

Layer two is the affiliated PAC network. Democratic Majority for Israel, the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Joint Action Committee for Political Affairs, and 314 Action are all distinct organizations that share donor networks, strategic coordination, and policy alignment with AIPAC without being formally part of it. Reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer in April 2026 documented that 314 Action, ostensibly a science-focused PAC, has committed $2.5 million to the Pennsylvania 3rd Congressional District primary alone. The Inquirer noted that 314 Action has previously received money from UDP, completing the loop.

Layer three is the laundered super PAC ecosystem. This is the newest and most aggressive part of the strategy. AIPAC-aligned funders have begun creating super PACs with names that sound entirely unrelated to Israel: “Elect Chicago Women,” “Voters of Tomorrow Action,” and others. These vehicles are funded by the same donor networks but allow AIPAC’s preferred candidates to claim they are receiving support from women’s empowerment groups or generic Democratic infrastructure rather than from a foreign-policy lobby. The Intercept identified at least four Illinois Democratic House primaries in March 2026 where this pattern was operating. The candidates being attacked were progressive Democrats critical of Israeli state policy. The voters being targeted had no idea the attacks were AIPAC-funded.

Layer four is the back-channel donor network. AIPAC has thousands of major individual donors who attend the organization’s annual policy conference, contribute through its training programs, and coordinate giving outside any formal PAC structure. In Illinois, AIPAC board president Michael Tuchin personally hosted a private fundraiser for House candidate Laura Fine even after Fine publicly stated she was not seeking AIPAC’s endorsement. In the same state’s 7th District, AIPAC donors held coordinated fundraisers for real estate executive Jason Friedman without any public AIPAC endorsement. In the Illinois Senate primary, The Intercept identified at least 27 individual AIPAC donors who quietly gave to Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton’s campaign while AIPAC the organization said nothing publicly.

The endorsement is gone. The money is not. That is the entire point.

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“We don’t want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress.”

Not Bilzerian specifically. Armenians. The whole people. An entire ethnic group, 1.5 million of whom are American citizens, told by a sitting US congressman that they are unfit for representative government in their own country.

This is not a slip of the tongue. This is who Randy Fine is, and it fits a pattern so consistent that it has become his entire political identity.

A Career Built on Bigotry

Fine has called Rep. Ilhan Omar a “Muslim terrorist.” He has compared New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to former Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. He has said the only problem with dropping nuclear weapons on Gaza would be that “the fallout would drift into Israel,” meaning the lives of two million Palestinians under siege were not even part of his moral calculation. The only consideration was whether the bomb might inconvenience the country he serves first. He has written publicly that “may the streets of Gaza overflow with blood.” He has suggested dogs are preferable to Muslims.

This is the man who now wants to draw a line through American civic life and announce that Armenian Christians fall on the wrong side of it.

The Armenian National Committee of America, the leading Armenian advocacy group in the country, condemned Fine’s remarks within hours. ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian called the rant “no surprise” because Fine “is backing a bill to arm and abet Azerbaijan, a genocidal dictatorship fresh off its ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Armenian Christians.” ANCA Advocacy Director Gev Iskajyan called the comments “blatant bigotry” and “disqualifying.”

They are right. But the deeper story is what makes Fine’s behavior not just bigoted but functionally genocidal.

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The layoffs were the second major round in 13 months. In March 2025, the company cut roughly a quarter of its workforce. Combined with the May 2026 cuts, the cumulative reduction now exceeds 60% of staff in just over a year. The Daily Wire has gone from a mid-sized digital newsroom of more than 200 employees to what one industry tracker described as “a skeleton operation.”

This is the single largest collapse of a major right-wing American media outlet since the rise of digital conservative media in the mid-2010s. And the timing is not random.

What the Numbers Show

The financial signals had been visible for over a year. Bentkey, the children’s entertainment division The Daily Wire launched in 2023 as a conservative alternative to Disney, was shut down entirely in 2025. Its full staff was cut. Co-founder Jeremy Boreing stepped down as co-CEO in early 2025 in a leadership shuffle that several outlets, including IBTimes, characterized as a financial response to mounting operating costs. By late 2025, the company had reportedly retained bankruptcy counsel, according to industry reporting.

The revenue picture, on paper, looked stable. The Daily Wire was reportedly generating around $100 million annually from subscriptions, advertising, and ancillary entertainment products. The problem was not topline revenue. It was that operating costs, including a sprawling Nashville production footprint, multiple film projects, and dozens of on-air talent contracts, had grown faster than revenue. And the audience that justified those costs was leaving.

Most strikingly, Britannia Daily reported that Ben Shapiro’s own YouTube audience had fallen by approximately 85% from its peak. Daily Wire Backstage, the company’s flagship roundtable show, has reportedly been struggling to adapt to a smaller team and shrinking viewership. The company’s pivot since the layoffs has been to abandon Nashville production in favor of “ambitious entertainment projects” planned for a 2026 release, alongside an expanded Washington DC bureau. Whether new entertainment content can offset the audience hemorrhage is the open question that will determine whether further cuts come.

Why The Audience Left

This is the part of the story that most mainstream coverage is glossing over.

The Daily Wire spent years branding itself as the alternative to “legacy media,” promising its conservative audience independent journalism free from corporate gatekeeping. That brand worked as long as the company’s editorial line tracked with where its conservative audience actually was. Starting in late 2023 and accelerating through the Iran war in summer 2025, those two things split apart.

When the conservative grassroots began openly questioning U.S. support for Israel during the Gaza genocide, The Daily Wire doubled down in the opposite direction. Ben Shapiro became one of the most aggressive American media voices defending Israeli military operations, attacking Tucker Carlson, denouncing Candace Owens, and treating skepticism of U.S. military involvement in the Iran conflict as a fringe position. The problem was that the position was not fringe inside his own audience. Polling throughout 2025 and into 2026 consistently showed conservative voters under 40 turning sharply against open-ended U.S. support for Israeli wars, and turning toward voices like Tucker, Candace, and a wave of independent journalists and podcasters who shared their skepticism.

When The Daily Wire fired Candace Owens in 2024 after she questioned Israeli policy and other taboo subjects, the company likely believed it was protecting its institutional positioning. What it actually did was hand its single largest audience-builder to the independent space, where she has since built a podcast that, by most metrics, now exceeds the reach of most Daily Wire properties. Owens’s own response to Friday’s layoffs captured the irony: “As much as I positively despise what their execs put me and my family through there are a lot of good people that work there with families to feed who could use a prayer.”

Tucker Carlson’s trajectory followed the same pattern. After his ouster from Fox News, Carlson built an independent media operation that openly criticized Israel’s role in U.S. foreign policy. His audience grew. Daily Wire’s audience for the same period contracted. The lesson was visible in real time, and the company chose to ignore it.

The Pattern Across Right-Wing Media

The Daily Wire is not an isolated case. The conservative media industry as a whole is facing a structural realignment that the layoffs are accelerating, not causing.

Trump Media lost £544 million on £2.8 million in revenue in its most recent reporting period. Devin Nunes resigned as CEO. Fox News parent Murdoch family operations have faced declining cable viewership and aggressive cost cutting. PragerU, Newsmax, and several smaller conservative outlets have all undergone reductions in 2025 and 2026. The Washington Post laid off more than 300 journalists earlier this year. CBS News is weighing 15% cuts. The BBC is preparing its largest job reductions since 2011.

The difference is that mainstream outlets are losing audience to the broader fragmentation of the news business. Right-wing legacy outlets like The Daily Wire are losing audience to the right-wing independent space directly. Tucker Carlson’s network, Candace Owens, Megyn Kelly, Glenn Greenwald’s Locals, and dozens of independent Substacks and podcasts are taking the audience The Daily Wire used to own. The audience is not dying. It is migrating.

What This Means

The layoffs at The Daily Wire are not just a media business story. They are a leading indicator of a political realignment that is going to define the next decade of American conservative media.

The Daily Wire built its brand on the promise that it was the answer to corporate, ideologically captured legacy media. By 2026, it had become a corporate, ideologically captured outlet itself, defending a foreign policy position the majority of its young audience no longer supports, firing the talent that pushed back, and watching its YouTube numbers fall by 85% from peak. The market is delivering a verdict, and the verdict is that audiences will not subsidize an outlet that asks them to ignore their own instincts on the biggest foreign policy questions of the moment.

The independent space is the beneficiary. Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and a wave of independent voices building directly on YouTube, Substack, and podcast platforms are picking up the audience The Daily Wire is hemorrhaging. There is no sign that pattern will reverse. If anything, it will accelerate as further conservative media outlets attempt the same strategy and arrive at the same destination.

For the roughly 100 people who lost their jobs Friday, that broader pattern is cold comfort. Many of them were not on-air talent. They were producers, hair and makeup professionals, editors, researchers, and support staff who happened to work at a politically branded company that turned out to be financially fragile. They deserved better than to be on the receiving end of an editorial strategy designed to placate executives in the boardroom rather than respond to the audience in the comments.

The audience already responded. The Daily Wire just hadn’t been listening.

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The video above lays out the political and ideological dimensions. What follows are the financial, military, and strategic markers that show how deep the UAE-Saudi rupture actually runs.

The Financial Picture Underneath the Exit

The UAE did not leave OPEC because of a quota dispute. The quota dispute was the cover. The real numbers tell the story.

By the end of 2025, the UAE had become the second-largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities in the Gulf, behind only Saudi Arabia, with holdings exceeding $115 billion according to US Treasury data. Mubadala and ADQ, the country’s two largest sovereign wealth funds, had concentrated more than 60% of their new investments since 2023 in US-based assets, with significant secondary exposure to Israeli technology and defense firms. The UAE’s central bank had also signed a series of currency swap agreements with the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Israel, integrating Abu Dhabi more tightly into the dollar system at the exact moment Saudi Arabia was experimenting with yuan-denominated oil sales to China.

When the WSJ reported in April 2026 that the UAE had quietly approached the US Treasury for a wartime financial lifeline, the story was treated as a footnote. It was not a footnote. It was a signal that the UAE’s bet on Israel and the United States, made in 2020 with the Abraham Accords, had cost them so much in regional credibility and Iranian missile damage that they could no longer self-finance their own war recovery.

Military Realignment, Not Just Economic

The OPEC exit is one of three concurrent moves that, taken together, define the rupture.

In February 2026, the UAE signed a defense and intelligence-sharing agreement with Israel that goes well beyond the original 2020 Abraham Accords security annex. The new agreement allows joint military exercises in the Red Sea, intelligence integration on Iran-related operations, and the stationing of Israeli liaison officers at UAE air defense facilities. Saudi Arabia was not consulted.

In March 2026, the UAE expanded its arms shipments to the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, despite a UN arms embargo and direct objections from Riyadh, which has been backing the Sudanese Armed Forces. The Sudanese conflict has now killed over 150,000 people and displaced more than 12 million, and the UAE’s role has been documented in detail by Human Rights Watch, the UN Panel of Experts, and the New York Times. Saudi Arabia formally protested the UAE’s role in Sudan at the Arab League, an unprecedented public rebuke.

In April 2026, satellite imagery confirmed UAE construction of a military and signals-intelligence facility on Berbera’s coastline in Somaliland, the breakaway region of Somalia that no UN member state recognizes. Israel and the UAE are reportedly the two foreign powers pushing hardest for Somaliland’s recognition. Saudi Arabia, by contrast, signed a defense memorandum with the Federal Government of Somalia in February 2026 explicitly opposing Somaliland recognition.

These are not coincidental policies. They are a coordinated effort to encircle Saudi Arabia along three vectors: the Red Sea (Somaliland, Sudan), the Arabian Peninsula (Yemen), and the financial system (US-Israel axis).

The Iran War Was the Inflection Point

The 12-day Iran war in summer 2025 broke whatever was left of the UAE-Saudi-Iran tripartite balance.

According to defense reporting from Janes and the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the UAE absorbed at least 438 Iranian ballistic missiles and roughly 2,000 drones during the conflict, the highest number of any country other than Israel itself. The reason was simple. The UAE hosts US bases at Al Dhafra and Fujairah that were used to launch operations against Iranian targets. Iran responded by hitting the host. The UAE economy contracted by an estimated 4.7% over the next two quarters, real estate prices in Dubai fell 18%, and several major insurance underwriters suspended Gulf coverage for months.

Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, was largely spared. Riyadh had quietly negotiated a non-belligerence understanding with Tehran in March 2025, brokered through Iraqi and Omani channels, that kept Saudi airspace and infrastructure off Iran’s target list during the conflict. The contrast was visible to every Gulf capital. The UAE bet on Israel and got hit. Saudi Arabia bet on regional balancing and stayed standing.

The OPEC exit, the Israel security agreement, and the Sudan and Somaliland operations are the UAE’s response to that humiliation. Doubling down on the Israel-US axis is the only path forward Abu Dhabi sees, because the alternative would be admitting the original bet failed.

Where the United States Lands

The Trump administration has made its choice clear. In a March 2026 White House meeting, Trump described the UAE as “our most reliable Arab partner” and signed off on an additional $1.4 billion in F-35 components and Reaper drone deliveries to Abu Dhabi, finalizing a deal frozen since the first Trump administration. Saudi Arabia received no parallel arms package.

The State Department’s position on Sudan has also softened considerably under the current administration. Where the Biden administration imposed targeted sanctions on UAE-linked entities funding the RSF, the current administration has lifted three of those designations and declined to impose new ones, even as the death toll in Darfur has climbed past 50,000.

This is what the rupture looks like from Washington. The US is not neutral in the UAE-Saudi split. It is actively backing the side that aligns with Israel, regardless of which side is destabilizing the region.

What Comes Next

Three things to watch over the next 90 days.

First, Saudi diplomacy. MBS has accelerated outreach to Russia, China, and Iran in 2026, including hosting Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi in Riyadh in March. Expect a major Saudi announcement, possibly an expanded BRICS role or a new Gulf framework that excludes the UAE.

Second, OPEC’s internal restructuring. With the UAE out, Iraq is positioning itself as the swing producer alongside Saudi Arabia. Russia’s role inside OPEC+ becomes more central. Watch for production quota fights in May and June.

Third, the Israel question. If the UAE continues deepening its military integration with Israel while Saudi Arabia continues drifting toward a multipolar posture, the Abraham Accords as a regional framework is functionally finished. What replaces it is the open question. The most likely answer is two competing blocs: an Israel-UAE-US axis on one side, and a Saudi-Iran-Iraq accommodation on the other, with smaller states picking sides under pressure.

The UAE’s exit from OPEC is not the story. It is a symptom of a much larger realignment that has been underway since 2020 and is now visible to anyone willing to look at the actual financial and military data. The Gulf is splitting. And for the first time in 50 years, the split is structural, not tactical.

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The nun is a researcher at the École Biblique et Archéologique Française, the Dominican-run French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem. It is one of the oldest and most respected Catholic research institutions in the Holy Land. Father Poquillon described the attack publicly as an “unprovoked assault” and an “act of sectarian violence,” calling on Israeli authorities to “act swiftly and firmly.” The French Consulate General in Jerusalem also condemned the attack and demanded the assailant be “brought to justice.”

A Site Holy to Two Faiths

The Cenacle sits on Mount Zion, immediately adjacent to King David’s Tomb. It is one of the most layered sites in the Old City. Christians revere it as the Upper Room where Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples. Jews revere it as the burial place of King David. Both faiths visit the site daily, and Israeli police statements after the attack emphasized that Jerusalem is “a city sacred to Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike.”

That is precisely what makes the attack significant. This was not a remote settler outpost in the West Bank. It was a site under direct Israeli police jurisdiction, in the heart of the Old City, in broad daylight.

Part of a Documented Pattern

The Rossing Center for Education and Dialogue, which monitors anti-Christian incidents in Israel and the occupied territories, recorded 155 incidents in 2025 alone. That figure includes 61 physical assaults, 52 attacks on church property, 28 cases of harassment, and 14 incidents of defaced signage. The center reported an additional 44 incidents between January and March 2026. Researchers describe these documented cases as the “tip of the iceberg,” noting that most incidents go unreported.

The attack also comes amid a broader campaign of pressure on Christian institutions in Jerusalem. Earlier this year, Israel’s Education Ministry barred teachers holding Palestinian-issued teaching permits from working in Israel. That decision puts more than 200 Christian teachers at risk of losing their jobs and threatens the closure of several Christian schools across the city.

In the West Bank, settlers have renewed attacks on Taybeh, one of the few remaining majority-Christian Palestinian towns. Over the past year, Catholic, Orthodox, and Armenian church leaders in Jerusalem have repeatedly issued joint statements warning that the Christian presence in the Holy Land, already reduced to less than 2% of the population, is “in danger.”

What the Coverage Misses

What is striking about the international coverage of this incident is what it leaves out.

Most outlets covering the assault have framed it as an isolated act by a single deranged individual. The framing treats the nun as a Catholic religious figure attacked by a “Jerusalem man,” with the religious and political context of Israeli settler violence largely absent from the headlines. Middle East Eye is one of the few outlets to place the attack in its actual context: a “pattern” of attacks on Christians by Israelis, occurring under a sociopolitical climate that is “increasingly intolerant of diversity and more assertive in exclusivist national-religious claims.”

That pattern is the story. A Dominican nun, in habit, beaten and thrown to the ground in front of a Christian holy site by an Israeli settler, in a country whose Western allies frame their support as a defense of religious liberty and a protection for Christians in the Middle East, should be a much bigger headline than it is.

It isn’t. And that’s the part worth examining.

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James Jesus Angleton ran counterintelligence at the CIA for twenty years. He personally controlled the Agency’s relationship with Israeli intelligence, handling the Israel account from his own office, in his own safe, bypassing the normal chain of command. He was also the CIA officer who personally tracked Lee Harvey Oswald’s Soviet contacts before the Kennedy assassination, the man whose office held the Oswald file, and the official who later served as the CIA’s primary liaison to the Warren Commission. After his death, Israel built two memorials to him in Jerusalem.

Teddy Kollek was David Ben-Gurion’s chief of staff in the 1950s, the operational head of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, and the founding architect of Israel’s intelligence relationship with the United States. He later spent twenty-eight years as mayor of Jerusalem.

The friendship between these two men has been described in published accounts for decades. What has not been published, as far as I can determine, is the primary documentation of it.

I went looking in the Israel State Archives. In a slim folder labeled Angleton, James, file ג-2838/146, are five letters Kollek sent to Angleton’s home in Arlington, Virginia between December 1955 and April 1958. Christmas gifts. Olive wood sent three weeks after Suez, while the United States was diplomatically punishing Israel. A reference to an aqualung Angleton “obtained” for Kollek that ended up with the Israeli combat commander who drove to Sharm el-Sheikh during the 1956 Sinai Campaign. Fishing tackle Angleton left behind at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, which, Kollek noted, “Reuven’s driver would know where” to find. Reuven Shiloah was the founder of the Mossad.

These letters do not appear in Jefferson Morley’s The Ghost (2017), the most thoroughly researched Angleton biography in print, or in any other major English-language work on Angleton I have been able to check. The American documentary record on Angleton’s Israel relationship is mostly silence- his personal papers were destroyed or removed, and the CIA’s internal twelve-volume history of his tenure remains classified in full. What survives in the Israeli archive is this folder.

Here is what is in it:

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