U.S. talk-radio giant Clay Travis, whose weekday show with co-host Buck Sexton, (“The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show”) reaches more than eight million monthly listeners on nearly 500 stations across the United States, along with digital platforms, is currently in Israel, broadcasting his show live from the JNS studios in Jerusalem.
Travis is in Israel as a guest of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) as part of their latest campaign, aimed at partnering with “influencers” in the Christian community. These influencers are given the tools to highlight Israel’s legitimate rights and combat antisemitic messaging.
When Travis is not on-air he’s traveling all over the country, to understand the challenges Israel is facing in light of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and subsequent war, in order to share what he learns with his vast audience back home.
Sitting down with JNS on Tuesday just minutes before one of his broadcasts, Travis said he was in Israel to bear witness to what happened on Oct. 7, and to help set the record straight on the differences between good and evil.
“I think we have to stand proudly as Americans and support others who are advancing Western civilization, and I think Israel is certainly one of those allies,” he said.
“There is an unwillingness to acknowledge evil in the world. To me Oct. 7 represents true evil. One reason that I think it’s important to be here is because I wanted to see with my own eyes what took place in southern Israel, and what’s taken place on the northern border,” he told JNS.
“For most of us, we grew up discussing the Holocaust a great deal. And the idea that there is a right and wrong side of history,” he continued. “I think most people would acknowledge the wrong side of history was what Hitler and the Nazis did in World War II—yet [on Oct. 7] we had the deadliest day for Jewish people since World War II.”
If the aftermath of the massacre, “We had many American college kids out supporting Hamas and Palestine, including [at] my alma mater, George Washington University. The idea that a place like GW or UCLA or Columbia would ever be supporting in any way what Hamas did is evidence of the profound sickness that has undertaken much of America,” said Travis.
“This is one area where [X owner and businessman] Elon Musk has completely nailed it when he refers to the spread of the ‘woke mind virus.’ One of the things that it creates is the inability to distinguish between good and evil—and to me Israel is profoundly on the side of good and Hamas and everything they represent is on the side of evil,” he added.
Travis, who is also well-known for his top-ranked sports webcast “Outkick the Show with Clay Travis,” used a sports reference when describing the moral state of global affairs.
“I think good and evil are real. And I love sports, but ultimately who wins the Super Bowl doesn’t really change the trajectory of the world by and large,” he said. “As I’ve gotten older, and I have three boys, I think a lot more about the world we’re leaving behind. When I see the trajectory that some of the world is moving in, it troubles me. If we don’t aggressively exercise freedom of speech and call out what we see that is right and what we see is wrong, I’m worried that western civilization itself is at stake.”
Travis also touched on “identity politics,” what he once called “the root cancer of American political life.” Identity politics is defined as the political or social activity by or on behalf of racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, or other group who tends to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.
Through the identity politics lens, the Israeli-Arab conflict is framed as a struggle between the Israeli “oppressor” and the Arab “oppressed.”
Travis called this a “fundamental failure,” adding, “It is also illustrative of why American college kids don’t have an ability to have rational decisions on issues like this [Israel], because they see Jewish people as ‘white.’ But that’s not true here.”
Despite Israel’s diversity in terms of skin color, “They see Israel as the oppressor, as the colonizer, therefore they lack the ability to recognize that Hamas is the villain. Because they can’t turn off ‘white is bad and brown is good.’ When you allow identity to overwhelm your ability to analyze fact, you’re headed for a disaster. That’s why the ‘woke mind virus’ that’s taken over much of the United States has to be beaten,” he said.
Travis’s schedule in Israel has been jam-packed, taking in trips to view the damage caused by Hezbollah on the northern border, meeting survivors of the Oct. 7 massacre, spending time with bereaved families and visiting wounded soldiers in the hospital. However, he said his most profound experiences took place in the south.
“The site of the Nova [festival] stood out the most, along with seeing the kibbutzim in the south. Walking around and seeing those physical locations was incredibly moving. It’s almost like going back in time,” he told JNS.
“The kindergartens in Nir Oz, they’re frozen in time from what happened on Oct. 7. You see a trampoline that kids jumped on with cobwebs on it. A basketball hoop that hasn’t been touched. I see things sometimes through the prism of sports. There are kids’ soccer balls on the porches of those homes that haven’t been touched. That is incredibly moving to see but also important to see,” he said.
In terms of the Nova site specifically, Travis added, “I’m already thinking ahead into the future, after we’re all gone [deceased]. That location is going to be historic and powerful for hundreds of years if we do a good job of explaining it.”
Hopefully, he continued, it will be a place of contemplation “where people will look back from what I hope is a more peaceful future and recognize the cost that that freedom required … I would hope those people there did not die in vain, and they will not have died in vain if we take the correct lesson, which is that we cannot allow evil and hate to win.”
Travis said he was grateful to the IFCJ for bringing him to Israel, and for all of their work in rebuilding lives following Oct. 7.
“What they do is so important. We’ve been traveling all over Israel seeing the impact that they have. Whether it’s providing protective vehicles for people who might have been killed when these attacks happened, whether it’s helping soldiers to rehabilitate, whether it’s helping young kids to deal with emotional psychological trauma…they do so much incredible work.”
Travis recalled that one of the people he had spoken with at Nir Oz had told him he viewed the kibbutz as “the front edge of western civilization.”
“And the reason why he wanted to go back and rebuild better than before was because he wanted the people from Gaza to look over and see the community they tried to destroy is not just still there, it’s bigger, better and stronger than it has ever been before. That’s a message that the IFCJ illustrates and illuminates every single day. The work they do is profoundly important, I’m happy to be able to collaborate with them,” he added.
Yael Eckstein, president and CEO of IFCJ, told JNS, “Especially at this time, with rampant global antisemitism, it is important not to lose the friends we have invested in over the past few years, particularly Christian evangelicals, who include 80-100 million Americans.”
These Americans’ support “is not a given, but comes through educational engagement and steps taken by the IFCJ toward building this historic relationship between Jews and Christians,” she said.
“If we aren’t engaging in the conversation about antisemitism, the other side is, and we could lose these people. That is why we are looking to equip influential people including Clay Travis with the information they need to engage in Israel and partner with us in the fight against antisemitism as they spread it with their many followers,” she continued.
Travis hopes to return to Israel soon, when things calm down a bit, with his wife and children.
“I told my kids that with my platform, speaking to millions of people every day, it was important to share with my audience in America exactly what I see. America’s ability to impact what happens here is substantial, and the audience needs to know what the truth is here.”