{"id":131724,"date":"2026-05-26T13:30:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/131724\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:30:42","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:30:42","slug":"no-israel-doesnt-run-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/131724\/","title":{"rendered":"No, Israel doesn\u2019t run America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shortly after being deposed<\/a> by Republican primary voters last Tuesday, Rep. Thomas Massie<\/a> (R-KY) took a parting shot at his Jewish bugbear: \u201cI would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein<\/a> in Tel Aviv.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

This wasn\u2019t the first anti-Israel conspiracy<\/a> Massie spewed. A few days before the election, he framed it as a \u201creferendum\u201d on \u201cwhether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others echoed similar arguments. \u201cIsrael won in Kentucky<\/a>,\u201d wrote left-wing talking head Cenk Uygur, who also asserted that \u201cIsrael controls our government.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

FAILED MAGA HIJACKING: MASSIE SHOULD LOOK IN MIRROR INSTEAD OF BLAMING ISRAEL FOR POOR POLLING<\/a><\/p>\n

Beneath these remarks is one of the oldest antisemitic canards in the book: that scheming Jews run the world. It\u2019s an ugly, contemptible charge. It\u2019s also baseless. Massie did not lose because of Jews or Israel. He lost because he picked misbegotten fights with President Donald Trump, the most powerful man in Republican politics.<\/p>\n

Israel had little to do with Massie\u2019s defeat. As with all foreign countries, it is prohibited from spending money in U.S. elections. Massie\u2019s district has very few Jewish residents. What it does have is legions of supporters of Trump, who won 67% of the vote there in the 2024 election. Overwhelmingly non-Jewish Republican primary voters decided that Massie, whom Trump demanded \u201cbe thrown out of office,\u201d was unfit to represent them in Congress.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s all too convenient for Massie and his allies to ascribe his defeat to Israel. It\u2019s become fashionable on the far left and woke right to demonize the world\u2019s one Jewish state. Why debate serious issues when you can blame Jews, the most enticing of scapegoats? Why act like a sensible adult when you can throw a bone to a not insignificant number of Americans who hunger for antisemitic content?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Evidence does not matter to them. If it did, they\u2019d understand that it doesn\u2019t sustain allegations of Israeli control of America. According to an April poll<\/a> from Pew Research Center, 80% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of Israel<\/a>. Generation Z is shaping up to be the most anti-Israel generation in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

Israel often doesn\u2019t get its way in Washington. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump have reportedly recently disagreed<\/a> about the resumption of military operations against Iran. And the Israeli government spends less on lobbying the U.S. government than other countries. From 2016 to 2025, behemoths such as the Bahamas, the Marshall Islands, and Liberia ranked ahead<\/a> of Israel in foreign lobbying of the United States. These aren\u2019t the marks of a country that is manipulating the U.S.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

MEJIA MIDTERM WAKEUP CALL: RUN WITH TRUMP OR GET RUN OVER<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Israel is a strong ally of ours. It has one of the world\u2019s best militaries<\/a> and high-tech sectors and is generally aligned with Washington on geopolitics. It\u2019s also an imperfect country run by fallible human beings. It\u2019s nothing like the malevolent, omnipotent boogeyman its detractors make it out to be.<\/p>\n

That Massie and his ilk obsess over the only Jewish state says a lot about them and their state of mind.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Daniel J. Samet is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after being deposed by Republican primary voters last Tuesday, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took a parting shot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[14188,2492,41,10278,38,37,1384,10223,42204,3816],"class_list":["post-131724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-2026-elections","tag-antisemitism","tag-benjamin-netanyahu","tag-conspiracy-theories","tag-donald-trump","tag-israel","tag-kentucky","tag-lobbying","tag-primaries","tag-thomas-massie"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116641125043998979","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}