Eric Metaxas, the radio host who once fancied himself a Bonhoeffer for talk radio, thundered that Carlson had supped with the devil. Dinesh D'Souza, whose documentaries make for sensitivity training for senior citizen field trips, warned that this interview was a bridge too far, a moral Rubicon that could only lead to the ovens. Then came the microwaved neocons: people like Seth Dillon of Babylon Bee, suddenly trading punchlines for pitchforks; Brandon Tatum, the ex-cop turned Netanyahu PR man who had to find a new schtick after the BLM gimmick got old; Will Chamberlain, the lawyer who mistakes  smugness for intelligence. All of them, old guard and new, falling over themselves to denounce Tucker, to signal their purity, to beg the regime for a pat on the head.

There is something Gnostic in their frenzy, something that smells of the old heresy: the idea that words, are more dangerous than bombs, that a conversation is a greater sin than the slaughter of innocents. That knowledge is more sacred than flesh. Interviewing someone you disagree with – that is the unforgivable transgression. Not the tens of thousands of children buried under rubble in Gaza. Not the videos circulating of Israeli settlers clubbing elderly Palestinian women as they pick olives, or raiding farms to slaughter lambs while laughing.