From Left to Right: The Art of Making Israel the Scapegoat |
A strange and ideologically incoherent coalition across the American far-left and segments of the populist right has converged on a conspiratorial worldview where everything is Israel’s fault — inflation, healthcare, war, and somehow both the radical left and the “America First” right arrived at the same absurd conclusion, like two conspiracy theorists bumping into each other in a dark alley and realizing they’re reading from the same script.
The Rise of “Israel Did It” Economics
Inflation is up. Rent is up. Healthcare is not affordable. Naturally, the explanation — according to a growing chorus — is foreign aid to Israel.
This would be compelling if it were not numerically absurd.
US aid to Israel is a rounding error in a federal budget that spends trillions annually on everything from entitlement programs to interest payments on its own debt. To argue that your grocery bill is high because of Israel requires a level of economic imagination normally reserved for conspiracy documentaries and late-night comment sections.
And yet, the claim persists.
Because it isn’t really about economics. It’s about narrative convenience. Israel has become the political equivalent of a universal adapter — plug in any domestic frustration, and somehow it fits. At this rate, every inconvenience short of bad weather will soon be traced back to Jerusalem with absolute confidence and zero evidence.
In a healthier political ecosystem, ideological extremes would at least disagree on who to blame.
Instead, they’ve synchronized.
On one end, figures like Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, and Mehdi Hasan have long treated Israel less as a country and more as a permanent defendant in a moral courtroom.
On the other, voices like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens now echo a strangely familiar refrain — that America is being used, manipulated, compromised — a sentiment increasingly flirted with in circles around Steve Bannon and even drifting into broader conservative commentary through figures like Megyn Kelly.
Then there is the cultural middle ground — where suspicion travels fastest. In the long-form, anything-goes arena of Joe Rogan, complex geopolitical realities are flattened into “questions” that somehow always point in the same direction. Meanwhile, commentators like Glenn Greenwald and Jimmy Dore........