NatCon 2026 in Israel: Coming home?

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference — or NatCon — in Israel on Tuesday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich told his audience that Israel “can and must bear a growing responsibility for its own security,” however, “I can and must show why the alliance with Israel is in America’s interests too.”

He seemed to hint at the Israeli government’s support for proposed U.S.-Israeli integration at the Pentagon, which would forge new contractual arrangements inside the military bureaucracy to accompany a phaseout of more controversial direct aid from Congress. “Israel recognizes the American friendship and support it received over the years but it’s precisely because of that the time has come to deepen the alliance, to move from dependence to partnership between two independent nations.”

In “rare cases,” he added, the two nations may have to “fight shoulder to shoulder” against a “common enemy, as we saw this year in Iran.”

But in contrast to other nation-states defending their sovereignty, Smotrich said “Palestinian nationalism is a fiction, invented at the beginning of the last century” to prevent Jews from returning to their homeland. “Therefore there are not and cannot be any rights in the land of Israel for a people that do not exist, for a people invented for the sole purpose of erasing the real people for whom this land belongs.”

As for the Gazans, they should be with their own kind and encouraged to “voluntarily migrate” to Muslim states because, as Smotrich has said before, the strip will be completely destroyed before Hamas is eliminated anyway.

The National Conservative Conference certainly has come full circle.

The project, launched in 2019 by an American-Israeli nationalist in Washington to herald the “New Right” movement in the United States, has increasingly become global in nature and is now, as critics charge, an unvarnished promotion of Israeli ethno-religious nationalism with American buy-in.

In Jerusalem no less. And at a time when Americans, according to every available poll, are turning against Israel over its catastrophic war on Gaza, which has killed over 74,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and has buried its once congested cities in 61 million tons of rubble.

Israel’s Likud government and its hardline leaders have been accused of genocide and in public comments advocating for the slaughter, starvation, and the exile of the Palestinian people from Gaza. They are accused of executing a similar agenda of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, and pushing for a devastating “mow” or “burn the lawn” strategy in Lebanon.

And like Smotrich, current and former government officials and other ultra-conservative figures are speaking at NatCon 6, which is taking place in Jerusalem during the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel.

The speakers list and schedule, far from the individuals and themes present in the 2019 debut event, are largely focused on the maintenance and sanctity of Israel as a Jewish state, its security after Oct. 7, Judeo-Christian-conservative unity across the West, and maintaining Israel’s alliance with the United States.

Critics say no matter how the project began, NatCon this week appears to be a direct reaction to slippage in American support for Israel and an attempt to underscore that American conservative nationalism is just like Israeli conservative nationalism — that the U.S and Israel share values that cannot be undermined by war or a wavering American public.

Looking at the speakers list, “I just see a tranche of Israelis — granted it is in Israel — and some of the most fanatical members of the U.S. (establishment) in terms of pursuing Israeli interests,” said Curt Mills, Executive Director of the American Conservative, speaking with Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday. Mills engaged in a now famous debate with pro-Israel partisan Max Abrahms at NatCon 5 in Washington last year.

“I think wrapping it into October 7 removes any subtext for what they are trying to do,” which is continuing to pressure Washington into “underwriting” Israeli policies in the Middle East, he added.

To be fair, this is not the first international NatCon. Smaller conferences have been held in London (twice), Brussels, and Italy, typically invoking the preservation of the nation state against supranational institutions (the EU, not necessarily NATO), migration, and the inviolability of western civilization.

In the meantime, there have been five American events. The first spanned the gamut of American conservatism, joining traditional hawks, neoconservatives, and even restrainers; “New Right” voices like Oren Cass and keynote speaker Tucker Carlson; elected officials including Sen. Joshua Hawley (R-Mo.), and MAGA sentinels ranging from Selena Zito to Michael Anton and J.D. Vance. They were brought together by Yoram Hazony, a dual U.S.-Israel citizen, who is the president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and author of the book, The Virtue of Nationalism. He started NatCon via the Edmund Burke Foundation (of which pro-Iran war influencer Will Chamberlain is listed as Vice President for External Affairs).

According to the website, it is “a movement of public figures, journalists, scholars, and students who understand that the past and future of conservatism are inextricably tied to the idea of the nation.”

Critics like Mills say NatCon was ostensibly launched as a platform for a post-fusionist conservatism in the era of Trump or the “New Right.” Its early events dealt little with foreign policy but grappled with emerging positions on nationalist-populist economic policy, immigration, and the culture war. Future Trump administration officials like Marco Rubio, Russell Vought, and Elbridge Colby have all spoken before early NatCon audiences.

But it slowly took on a more internationalist flavor, with issues specific to nationalist movements in Israel, India, and Europe crowding the agenda. And in 2024 and especially last year, more neoconservatives employing “America First” language about foreign policy started to pop up, mostly talking about threats from Islamofascists and Iran. No more “nation-building,” but breaking things and getting out was in order.

Months after the U.S. bombed Iran in June 2025, Hazony hosted the Abrahms-Mills debate at NatCon 5, but was no doubt surprised by the attention from younger attendees, especially in favor of Mills’ views, which questioned whether U.S. support for Israel’s wars was actually “America First.”

In Jerusalem today, there are no such debates. The few Americans invited to NatCon 6 appear locked in to reaffirm the alliance as though the fierce split on the right is not happening. Kevin Roberts, still apologizing for a 2025 video he recorded supporting Tucker Carlson against anti-semitism charges, spoke on Tuesday. He is the president of the Heritage Foundation, which gained a new board member — Yoram Hazony — after the flap.

According to a recent profile in the New Yorker about “The Battle for the Trump Right,” Hazony said people at Heritage have come to “understand what their role is, which is to hold together and build out the Protestant-Catholic-Jewish alliance at the center of the (Republican) Party.”

Quoting the bible on Tuesday, Roberts said "Jerusalem... this is the city of unity, that links this world to the kingdom of heaven… (it) is the first of five formative cities, preceding Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia, that unite the great civilization of freedom and human flourishing that we call the West,” adding, “Jerusalem is the perfect place for conservatives across the west to gather this week so that we can unite.”

Rusty Reno, editor of the Christian conservative magazine First Things, was also on hand for reaffirmation on Tuesday. “If the American or English or French patriot can achieve just one-tenth of what has been achieved, built, celebrated, and defended in this place (Israel), I would submit that the future of Western civilization will be the brighter for it."

The conference is expected to be rounded out Thursday night with a VIP address from Heritage’s Victoria Coates, author of The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel — And America — Can Win. Her speech is entitled, “Anti Semitism and Socialism Are the End of Democracy.”

Mills said it looks like the idea of NatCon as a vehicle for America First conservatism is now “window dressing for the Israel ultranationalist hardline project.”

“If Israel wants to pursue that, that's fine from their perspective, but the reality is that they want the United States to endlessly underwrite it, which is what this is about, which is why they're having Americans at what is an Israeli conference,” he said. “It’s not something I would support.”

Hazony did not return a request for comment for this story.