Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich used the National Conservatism Conference in Jerusalem on Tuesday to call for a deeper U.S.-Israeli alliance, while arguing that Israel should take greater responsibility for its own security. The conference, known as NatCon, has drawn Israeli officials and conservative figures from the United States as the movement’s sixth gathering takes place in Jerusalem during the third anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.

Smotrich said Israel “can and must bear a growing responsibility for its own security,” while adding, “I can and must show why the alliance with Israel is in America’s interests too.” His remarks appeared to point to proposed U.S.-Israeli integration at the Pentagon, which would create new contractual arrangements within the military bureaucracy alongside 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,” Smotrich said. He added that in “rare cases,” the countries might have to “fight shoulder to shoulder” against a “common enemy, as we saw this year in Iran.”

Smotrich also rejected Palestinian national identity. “Palestinian nationalism is a fiction, invented at the beginning of the last century” to prevent Jews from returning to their homeland, he said. “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.”

On Gaza, Smotrich said residents should be with their own kind and encouraged to “voluntarily migrate” to Muslim states. He has previously said the Gaza Strip will be completely destroyed before Hamas is eliminated.

The Jerusalem event marks a shift for a conference series launched in Washington in 2019 to advance the “New Right” in the United States. The project has become more international, and critics say NatCon 6 is now promoting Israeli ethno-religious nationalism with American support. The conference programme and speakers focus largely on Israel’s status as a Jewish state, security after Oct. 7, Judeo-Christian conservative unity in the West, and maintaining Israel’s alliance with the United States.

The gathering comes amid declining American support for Israel, according to polls cited by Responsible Statecraft, in the wake of the war in Gaza. The source reports that more than 74,000 Palestinians have been killed, mostly civilians, and that 61 million tons of rubble have covered Gaza’s once-congested cities. Israel’s Likud government and its hardline leaders have faced accusations of genocide and public advocacy for slaughter, starvation and exile of Palestinians from Gaza. They have also been accused of pursuing ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and a “mow” or “burn the lawn” strategy in Lebanon.

Critics say the conference responds to the erosion of U.S. support and seeks to portray American and Israeli conservative nationalism as sharing values that should withstand the war and changes in American public opinion. Curt Mills, executive director of The American Conservative, told Responsible Statecraft on Tuesday that the speakers list included “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.”

“I think wrapping it into October 7 removes any subtext for what they are trying to do,” Mills said, describing the effort as continued pressure on Washington to “underwriting” Israeli policies in the Middle East. Mills debated pro-Israel partisan Max Abrahms at NatCon 5 in Washington last year, a discussion that drew attention from younger attendees, many of whom favoured Mills’s challenge to whether U.S. support for Israel’s wars was “America First.”

NatCon has held international events before, including two in London, one in Brussels and one in Italy. Those smaller conferences typically focused on preserving the nation state against supranational institutions such as the European Union, migration and perceived threats to Western civilization. The series has also held five U.S. conferences.

The first American event brought together traditional hawks, neoconservatives and restrainers, alongside “New Right” voices such as Oren Cass and keynote speaker Tucker Carlson. Attendees also included elected officials such as Sen. Joshua Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, and MAGA figures Selena Zito, Michael Anton and J.D. Vance.

Yoram Hazony, a dual U.S.-Israel citizen, brought the group together. He is president of Jerusalem’s Herzl Institute and wrote The Virtue of Nationalism. Hazony founded NatCon through the Edmund Burke Foundation, where pro-Iran war influencer Will Chamberlain is listed as vice-president for external affairs. The foundation describes itself as “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.”

Mills and other critics say NatCon began as a platform for post-fusionist conservatism during the Trump era, also called the “New Right.” Its early meetings focused less on foreign policy and more on nationalist-populist economic policy, immigration and cultural issues. Marco Rubio, Tulsi Gabbard, Russell Vought and Elbridge Colby, all future Trump administration officials, spoke at earlier events.

The agenda later took on a more international focus, adding issues tied to nationalist movements in Israel, India and Europe. In 2024, and especially last year, more neoconservatives began using “America First” language on foreign policy, often discussing threats from Islamofascists and Iran. The approach rejected “nation-building” in favour of breaking things and leaving, according to the account.

Months after the United States bombed Iran in June 2025, Hazony hosted the Abrahms-Mills debate at NatCon 5. The interest among younger attendees, particularly in Mills’s arguments, raised questions about whether support for Israel’s wars aligned with an “America First” position. At the Jerusalem conference, Mills said, there are no comparable debates, and the few Americans invited appear committed to reaffirming the alliance despite divisions on the U.S. right.

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, spoke Tuesday. He has continued to apologize for a 2025 video supporting Tucker Carlson against accusations of anti-Semitism. After that controversy, Hazony joined the Heritage Foundation’s board. In a recent New Yorker profile about “The Battle for the Trump Right,” Hazony said people at Heritage had 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.”

Roberts quoted the Bible in his remarks, calling Jerusalem “the city of unity, that links this world to the kingdom of heaven.” He described it as the first of five formative cities, followed by Athens, Rome, London and Philadelphia, that unite “the great civilization of freedom and human flourishing that we call the West.” He added, “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, also spoke 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,” he said.

The conference is expected to conclude Thursday night with a VIP address by Victoria Coates of the Heritage Foundation, author of The Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel - And America - Can Win. Her speech is titled “Anti Semitism and Socialism Are the End of Democracy.”

Mills said NatCon’s role as a vehicle for America First conservatism now appears to be “window dressing for the Israel ultranationalist hardline project.” He added: “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 respond to a request for comment for the story.

Based on reporting by Responsible Statecraft.