Does Larry King Support Israel?

Zach Mandel Feb 26, 2025 4 min read

Short answer: As of July 2026 (King died in January 2021), the public record supports that Larry King was pro-Israel and openly proud of his Jewish identity, though not a deep student of Israeli-Palestinian policy. He told the Jerusalem Post in 2017, "I love being Jewish, am proud of my Jewishness, and I love Israel," hosted multiple Chabad "To Life" telethons in Los Angeles, helped organize a 1995 satellite broadcast for Soviet Jewry and a business delegation to Israel, and visited Israel in 2015. There is no record found of him boycotting Israel or supporting BDS.

What Larry King has actually said and done

1995: King agreed to host "Help Our People Know," an international satellite broadcast raising awareness of Soviet Jewry, recruiting Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sumner Redstone as co-chairmen. Around the same period he also led a delegation of American Jewish businessmen to Israel, meeting Israeli officials, according to a first-person memoir by Rabbi Irwin Katsof, who organized the broadcast with King, published by Aish.com. This account corroborates the broadcast and the Israel delegation, though some added specifics could not be independently confirmed by a second source.
2002 (reported retrospectively in 2010): In a Larry King Live interview with Bill Maher about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, King asked shallow questions and was later criticized by a Jewish Press columnist for "pedestrian questions," according to COLlive/Jewish Press. This points to a general engagement with the topic that was not policy-fluent, rather than any hostility toward Israel.
August 29, 2010: King hosted Chabad-Lubavitch of the West Coast's 30th annual "To Life" telethon, a three-hour live broadcast from Hollywood raising millions for Chabad's social-service network, per Chabad.org. He went on to host or co-host the telethon again in 2011, 2012, and 2013.
August 25, 2015: King visited Israel for the first time in 20 years, and the next day discussed U.S. politics with the Jerusalem Post, calling Jerusalem his favorite city and remarking on the Hebrew street signs, according to The Jerusalem Post.
2017: King told Jerusalem Post correspondent David Brinn, "I love being Jewish, am proud of my Jewishness, and I love Israel," while also noting he had covered Israel fairly during his CNN years, as reprinted in the Jerusalem Post's 2021 obituary.
January 23, 2021: King died at 87 in Los Angeles of sepsis after recovering from COVID-19. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency remembered him as a proud Jew who fundraised for Jewish charities and auctioned personal items for the American Jewish Historical Society, though his personal faith had drifted to agnosticism and eventually atheism.

Jewish identity that never wavered, even as personal faith did

Larry King (born Lawrence Zeiger, 1933-2021) was raised by Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents in Brooklyn and completed a bar mitzvah in Hebrew, but his personal faith drifted after his father's death: he called himself a "Jewish agnostic" in 2005 and said he was fully atheist by 2015. That religious drift never translated into distance from Israel or Jewish communal life. He was a reliable, repeat fundraiser for Chabad, hosting or co-hosting its Los Angeles "To Life" telethon at least four times between 2010 and 2013, told the Jerusalem Post directly in 2017 that he loved Israel and his Jewishness, and by his own account helped organize a 1995 satellite broadcast and business mission connected to Soviet Jewry and Israel. On his 2015 trip, Israeli officials met with him and he spoke warmly about Jerusalem.

The one credible knock on him, sourced to a 2010 Jewish Press retrospective, is that as a TV interviewer he treated the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the way he treated most topics on Larry King Live: broad, friendly, and light on follow-up, rather than as a subject he had mastered substantively. That is a criticism of interviewing style and depth, not of sympathy. Nothing in the record found, spanning JTA, the Jerusalem Post, Chabad.org, and COLlive/Jewish Press, shows him criticizing Israel's legitimacy, boycotting Israeli products or institutions, or aligning with BDS.

The bottom line

Larry King supported Israel and was openly proud of being Jewish throughout his life, backing that up with decades of Chabad fundraising, a stated 1995 role in Soviet Jewry advocacy and a Jewish-businessmen mission to Israel, a 2015 visit, and an on-record 2017 declaration of love for Israel to the Jerusalem Post. He was not a substantive commentator on Israeli-Palestinian policy and was criticized for shallow questioning on that specific topic, but there is no evidence he ever opposed Israel, boycotted it, or backed BDS.

Support Israel directly

Larry King's decades of Chabad fundraising and his openly stated love for Israel reflect the kind of quiet, consistent support many American Jews express in their own way. If his story resonates, our Support Israel collection lets you wear that same pride, with pieces like the IDF necklace offering a daily, visible way to stand with Israel.

Last updated July 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.