You know what happens when someone says “Trump” in a room full of people?
Half the room gets emotional and reactive.
Whatever comes next gets filtered through years of accumulated feelings about Trump - good or bad - and the actual substance of the conversation disappears.
The word “Israel” does the same thing.
The moment rumors of the strikes on Iran began and Israel got implicated, the conversation collapsed.
Rather than having a sophisticated conversation about the history of U.S.-Iranian relations since 1953, nuclear enrichment, the theological nature of the Islamic Republic, the nuclear deal that Obama made and Trump repealed - the entire discussion became about one question: is this Israel’s war?
Concerns about Israel’s involvement are well-founded.
But Israel has become a cognitive trigger that prevents people from seeing the rest of the picture across myriad topics - 9/11, Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the Epstein files, and now Iran.
This article goes deeper into what I think is actually going on - not just with Iran, but with how we think about Israel more broadly.
Let’s Start With Honesty
There are legitimate reasons people are suspicious of Israel’s influence on American foreign policy.
AIPAC is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington. Israel receives more U.S. foreign aid than almost any other country.
When Congress considered an antisemitism bill that would have effectively criminalized certain criticisms of Israel, that was an overreach - and people were right to push back on it.
Israel is a small country that exerts influence well beyond its size, and asking whether that’s proportionate is a fair question.
I commented on this honestly when Kanye’s rant about Jews brought it into the spotlight - the influence is real, and pretending it isn't helps no one.
But think of it as a scale. If Israel has level 10 power but exerts level 20 influence, that's a legitimate conversation about proportionality.
Some of the voices dominating this debate aren't having that conversation.
They're claiming Israel has level 100 control - that the only reason we're at war is because Israel wanted it.
This is appealing because it gives us a simple, universalizable explanation for everything we don’t like.
And it also causes us to miss things.
The Rubio Clip: A Case Study
Here’s a perfect example.
A clip of Secretary of State Marco Rubio circulated widely after the strikes. In it, he acknowledged that Israel’s actions influenced the timing of the U.S. operation. Anti-war voices seized on it immediately: “See? Rubio admitted it. Israel controls American foreign policy.”
But as people tend to do when they’re trying to create a narrative, they didn’t include context in the rest of his explanation, which came literally seconds later.
In the full context, Rubio laid out a detailed case for why the strikes were independently justified - the conventional missile buildup (over 100 per month), the nuclear enrichment timeline, the approaching point where military action would become too costly to attempt. His explicit conclusion: this had to happen regardless
So here’s the situation Rubio was actually describing:
The U.S. knew Israel intended to strike Iran preemptively.
They also knew that if Israel struck first, Iran would retaliate - not just against Israel, but against American bases across the region.
American servicemembers would die.
That leaves two options.
You can let Israel attack first, wait for Americans to get killed in the retaliation, and then respond.
Or you can act preemptively alongside your ally, knowing you were going to do this anyway, and protect American lives in the process.
If you’re the president, which do you choose?
Most people don’t understand why this war is happening, and that’s a failure of the Trump administration, and the media.
Humans don’t like uncertainty.
So “Israel controls America” narrative is a satisfying, simple narrative that gives people a sense of certainty.
The reality is messier: two allied countries sharing an enemy, coordinating timing because that’s what allies do, with each acting in their own national interest.
You can call that problematic. But calling it puppet mastery requires ignoring the full picture - which is exactly what the partial clip was designed to help you do.
This is what I mean when I say Israel breaks people’s brains. The initial clip feeds people’s confirmation bias, so they don’t think to question “is there more context", even though that’s exactly what they’d look for if someone they agreed with was being attacked by someone they dislike.
Two things can be true at once.
Israel’s influence on American foreign policy deserves scrutiny and some of the loudest voices “scrutinizing” it are doing something else entirely - using Israel as a universal explanation that lets them skip the work of understanding complex situations, but makes people feel validated - like they have insider knowledge on the secrets of the world - unlike everyone else, who is a sheep, of course.
That strategy is so effective because it leverages tribalism, emotionality, confirmation bias, and social media dysfunction - the perfect storm of confusion.
Now let’s talk about how to see through it in Part 2, for subscribers.
