Tucker Carlson says he was “detained” in Israel after an interview with the U.S. ambassador, but his description sounds strikingly similar to my own uncomfortable experience at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, which cannot properly be characterized as a detention.
Tucker Carlson Says He Was “Detained” In Israel, But That Claim Doesn’t Seem To Hold Up
Tucker Carlson claims that Israeli authorities “detained” him and his staff at Ben Gurion International Airport following an interview with U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee. According to Carlson, officials took passports, separated members of his team, and questioned them about the interview before allowing them to depart.
“Men who identified themselves as airport security took our passports, hauled our executive producer into a side room and then demanded to know what we spoke to Ambassador Huckabee about.”
Carlson described the experience as bizarre and unsettling, framing it as detention rather than routine security screening. His account has since circulated widely, feeding into a broader narrative about mistreatment and political retaliation.
But Israeli and U.S. officials have pushed back on the use of the word “detained,” characterizing the encounter as standard airport security procedures applied to travelers deemed sensitive or high risk. Huckabee himself said Carlson’s allegations were “Complete nonsense.”
I know this process well because I have lived it.
Years ago, I went through what I described at the time as a “horrific security experience” at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport. I was pulled aside, questioned extensively, asked about my travel history, my purpose, my contacts, and my beliefs. The questioning was intrusive, repetitive, and uncomfortable. It took a long time and left me shaken. There was also the full-body search…
But I never called it detention.
What I experienced, and what Carlson appears to have experienced, was enhanced airport security screening. In Israel, particularly at Ben Gurion, this is not unusual. The country operates under a constant security threat, and its airport procedures reflect that reality. Travelers are often questioned at length, which stops short of being arrested, charged, or legally detained.
Detention implies a deprivation of liberty beyond routine border control. Being questioned, even aggressively, at an airport does not automatically rise to that level and context added by the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem further undermines that characterization:
“Carlson received the same passport control questions that countless visitors to Israel, including Ambassador Huckabee and other diplomats, receive as part of normal entrance and exit from Israel…The only engagement the Embassy had with Israel about his visit was to coordinate his private plane landing as part of facilitating a seamless visit. It was Tucker who chose to only come into the country for a few hours and depart. And Tucker received the same positive treatment of any visitors to Israel.”
Meanwhile, Israel Airports Authority said:
“Mr. Carlson and his party were politely asked a few routine questions, in accordance with standard procedures applied to many travelers. The conversation took place in a separate room within the VIP lounge solely to protect their privacy and to avoid conducting such a discussion in public.”
The similarity between his experience and mine is striking. The difference is in how it is being framed.
> Read More: My Horrific Security Experience at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport (TLV)
CONCLUSION
Tucker Carlson’s experience at Ben Gurion Airport sounds uncomfortable, intrusive, and frustrating. I do not dispute that. I went through something very similar, and in some respects my experience was arguably worse. But calling it “detention” seems like a stretch, especially if he was just pulled aside inside the lounge and asked a few questions.
What concerns me more is how Carlson has chosen to use this episode. He is increasingly platforming voices that traffic in anti-Semitic rhetoric, and framing routine Israeli security procedures as political persecution only feeds that narrative.
Had Carlson actually left the airport and spent time in Israel, he would have encountered a beautiful country filled with warm, generous, and resilient people. Security screening is not a measure of hostility, it is a reflection of reality, even if some of it is self-inflicted.
Inflating that experience into a story of detention only distorts what actually happened…
Sounds like Carlson who can’t resist self publicity any more than his hero Criminal Trump can only encountered normal security at TLV.
What a pity he didn’t get the enhanced version which many will testify involves a finger and a glove, he surely deserves it.
Lying liars lie… more at 11!
I experienced Israel’s enhanced security myself and yes it was uncomfortable, it too left me a bit shaken, but I understood why it was being done and at no time did I feel that I was being detained.
In fact the security staff were all uniformly polite, far more polite than either the TSA or CBP and when I asked if I would miss my flight due to this enhanced process.
The security employee interviewing me said, this is routine here, I know this sort of experience is not common elsewhere in the world and it is a new experience for you, but you will make your flight, no need to worry.
They went through their process, asking me questions, some of which I had and to this day have no idea why it would matter, preformed a fully body search and after all of that, I still had an hour in the Dan lounge to relax before my flight home.
Carlson doesn’t believe he has to follow the laws and regulations of the country that allowed him to enter.
One can only wonder how Mr Carlson would have described an encounter with ICE personnel; that is if he’d not been shot to death on live feeds first. Mr. Carlson is a charlatan and a traitor and why anyone gives him the time of day escapes those of us who actually believe in the various rights and privileges Mr Carlson and his like-minds wish to see destroyed. This is but another in a long line of anti-Semitic rants Mr Carlson is becoming known for. Ignore him and he’ll go away.
Why start believing Carlson now? Reminder he was on air, feeding the dominion voter fraud at Fox while consciously aware ( documented by texts) it was all nonsense to rile the maga base. So thank you tucker , nobody should believe anything you say again
What’s he so worked up about? They were just asking questions.
Tucker is a clown on 95% of issues. But he is right about two things: 1. Israeli security and immigration absolutely profiles based on perceived race/nationality/religion and political beliefs. 2. Christians living in the occupied territories absolutely live under a two-tiered Jewish-supremacist apartheid system with inferior legal rights, roads and infrastructure, and impaired access to religious sites.
They have been doing this at TLV and for incoming El Al flights for at least 30 years based on stories from friends who have been through it. Probably before that, I just don’t have specific info about then. This is like being angry about metal detectors in federal buildings and taking them personally.
Israel doesn’t mess around when it comes to security. Glass at the airport is bullet proof. Cameras follow everyone. The person in front of you in line could be undercover listening to your conversations. Trash cans are built to withstand an internal explosion. Because, as the world, except for Tucker and his cronies knows, a lot of people want to kill Jews.
Well imagine that, y’all.