Like Tucker Carlson, I Have Also Been Detained In An Israeli Airport

Because they are afraid of my ideas.

February 21, 2026

This week, Tucker Carlson, the fifth most famous man in the world, claimed that the Israeli government had “detained” him at David Ben Gurion Airport. This happened after Carlson swung by Israel to interview U.S. ambassador Mike Huckabee after some sort of public dispute over Israel’s treatment of Christians.

"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 discussed with Ambassador Huckabee," Carlson said in an interview with The Daily Mail.

As it turned out, Carlson was just going through airport security. Officials "politely asked a few routine questions, in accordance with standard procedures applied to many travelers,” said the Israel Airports Authority, the foremost authority on airports in Israel.

And yet this story struck home for me. As the Greatest Living American Writer and the foremost authority on the history of the Middle East–my book 12 Dates In The Desert was an international bestseller for three years in the early 1980s–I’ve found myself on the wrong side of Israeli security many times.

In 1972, when I was having a passionate but secret affair with Golda Meir’s secretary, I found myself locked in a room at a Tel Aviv nightclub, as bouncers grilled me for nearly 35 minutes, repeatedly asking me “whose cocaine is this?” To this day, I can’t answer the question.

Five years later, during what I now call the “Pre-Camp David Accords”, I played backgammon for a long weekend with Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat. Of course, I won. At Ben Gurion Airport, security seized my backgammon set, asking if it contained any secret compartments for gambling money (it did).

Israel is a beautiful country that would be my homeland if I didn’t have a mortgage on my family’s estate in the shadow of New Hampshire’s second tallest mountain. But let’s be clear: I go there often, have interviewed every single Israeli prime minster, have personally defeated Benjamin Netanyahu at tennis several times, and once gifted Moshe Dayan an eyepatch bearing the image of my ex-wife Joyce Carol Oates. And the Israeli Airport Authority has detained me nine times out of 10.

All this goes to say: I believe Tucker Carlson. Why would he lie to us? What could he possibly gain from such a lie? If we can’t believe Tucker Carlson, a man who, after all, has been possessed by an actual demon, then we can’t believe anyone.

Thank you to Steve Berman and The Racket News™️ for this opportunity to speak to you all. If you want more insights, you know where to find me.

Neal Pollack

The Greatest Living American Writer