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This is a guest essay by Vanessa Berg, who writes about Judaism and Israel.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Apparently, when an American political party loses an American election, there is still a way to blame Israel.
Just ask U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
On Tuesday, Republicans suffered a devastating defeat in the U.S. midterm elections, losing control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Democrats made historic gains, including in states and districts that Donald Trump carried comfortably just two years earlier.
Naturally, the following day, Vance found a way to bring Israel into the conversation.
In a lengthy post on X, the vice president declared: “The reason we lost is the war.”
How convenient.
By elevating America’s relationship with the Jewish state into one of the defining explanations for the election results, he reinforced an increasingly fashionable narrative: America’s problems are somehow tied to its relationship with Israel, and distancing itself from the Jewish state is part of the solution.
This is hardly the first time Jews have been made convenient explanations for problems that are considerably more complicated than their accusers care to acknowledge.
Throughout history, we have been blamed for economic crises, military defeats, political instability, social unrest, and just about every other misfortune imaginable. Different centuries, different countries, different circumstances, but a remarkably familiar habit of reducing complex failures to a Jewish problem. And we do not even have to look very far back to find another example.
Remember the 2024 U.S. presidential election?
When Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, countless commentators, activists, and Democratic Party figures pointed to the Biden Administration’s support for Israel following the Hamas attacks of October 7th as one of the reasons Democrats lost the White House. The main argument was that Biden’s so-called “support” for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza had cost Democrats the support of young voters and so-called “progressives.”
Even if the war in Gaza (unquestionably provoked by Hamas, of course) did influence some voters, there is an enormous difference between acknowledging that a foreign policy issue affected certain voters and suggesting that it explains a nationwide electoral defeat.
Americans were frustrated with inflation, immigration, the cost of living, and the direction of their country. Biden’s age had become a major political liability, forcing Democrats into an extraordinarily late change of presidential candidate. Harris struggled to campaign effectively. Trump made gains with multiple demographic groups. The Democrats had a whole collection of problems, all of which had absolutely nothing to do with Israel.
Yet somehow, Israel became one of the explanations for why Democrats lost. And now, just two years later, Republicans suffer a major electoral defeat, and the vice president of the United States is pointing to America’s relationship with Israel as a core reason.
In 2024, Democrats supposedly lost because their administration was too supportive of Israel. In 2026, Republicans supposedly lost because their administration was too supportive of Israel. Two different political parties, two different elections, two different sets of circumstances, but somehow the same Jewish state keeps finding its way into the explanation.
Apparently, Israel is responsible for American electoral defeats regardless of which party suffers them.
The willingness to elevate Israel into an explanation for nearly every political disappointment should raise some uncomfortable questions.
Why are American politicians so quick to look thousands of miles away when searching for explanations for their own failures? Why is the American relationship with Israel so frequently treated as a political liability, rather than one of countless foreign policy relationships that American governments must manage? And why does the Jewish state keep becoming a convenient subject of debate whenever an American political party needs to explain why voters rejected it?
Maybe the problem isn’t Israel. Maybe the problem is that American politicians find it considerably easier to blame Israel than to take responsibility for their own decisions.
Now, to be fair, Americans have every right to question their country’s foreign policy. But there is something particularly troubling about the speed with which Israel becomes part of the explanation for an American political failure, especially when the people offering that explanation have their own responsibilities to account for. And JD Vance has plenty.
For starters, let’s examine the actual election.
According to the Associated Press’s voter research, Americans were deeply frustrated with inflation, the cost of living, the direction of the country, and Trump’s performance as president. Many were concerned about corruption and the administration’s priorities. They were dissatisfied with their government, their economic circumstances, and the Republican Party’s leadership. In other words, Americans were upset about American problems.
The war with Iran certainly contributed to that frustration, particularly through rising energy prices and economic uncertainty. But to reduce a historic electoral defeat to the war, and then include Israel among the principal explanations, is a remarkable oversimplification.
Did Republicans lose because Americans suddenly decided their relationship with Israel needed to change? Or did they lose because millions of voters were dissatisfied with the people running their country? There is a rather significant difference. And that brings us to the war with Iran itself, because Vance seems remarkably eager to discuss its political consequences without fully accounting for his own involvement.
Before the United States and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran on February 28th, Vance reportedly opposed the operation privately. He had long positioned himself as a skeptic of American military intervention abroad, and his disagreements with Trump over Iran were made public just days into the war. To his credit, both he and Trump made campaign promises to refrain from starting any new wars.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that. A vice president should be willing to challenge a president privately, particularly when the stakes involve American lives and a potential regional war.
But once the administration chose its course, Vance was no longer simply an outside commentator expressing philosophical reservations. He was the vice president of the United States, a senior member of the administration responsible for executing its policies and helping achieve its objectives. And when Trump subsequently entrusted him with negotiating an end to the conflict, Vance became directly involved in determining its outcome.
The United States and Iran reached a ceasefire in April and signed a memorandum of understanding in June intended to end the fighting and establish a broader settlement. That arrangement subsequently collapsed. By September, the two countries were again exchanging limited military strikes.
So perhaps the vice president should answer a few questions of his own. If ending the war was so important, why did the diplomatic arrangement fail? If diplomacy was the solution, why did negotiations not produce a durable agreement? And if Vance was responsible for helping negotiate peace, why should he be exempt from responsibility when that peace proved elusive?
Instead, Vance praised conservative television personality Rachel Campos-Duffy, who had urged the administration to pursue a diplomatic resolution rather than further military confrontation. “It turns out her political advice was sound,” he wrote.
Really?
Diplomacy is always preferable when it can achieve the desired outcome. But diplomacy is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Negotiating with a regime does not automatically make that regime more trustworthy, nor does signing an agreement guarantee that the underlying threat has disappeared.
The West has been negotiating with Iran over its nuclear ambitions for more than two decades. The 2015 nuclear agreement imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities, but it did not resolve the broader conflict over Tehran’s missile program, regional aggression, or long-term nuclear ambitions. The United States subsequently withdrew from the agreement in 2018, and the diplomatic framework eventually unraveled.
The Iranian regime is not a normal government with ordinary geopolitical disagreements. It is a revolutionary Islamist regime that has spent decades supporting militant organizations across the Middle East, threatening its neighbors, repressing its own population, and challenging American interests. And this is precisely why Vance’s approach deserves greater scrutiny.
It is entirely possible that a more decisive American military strategy earlier in the conflict could have altered Tehran’s calculations and brought the fighting to an end sooner. It is also possible that further escalation would have created additional risks. Nobody can know with certainty which course would have produced the better outcome.
But the administration’s internal divisions, led by Vance, presented an obvious strategic concern: When an adversary sees senior American officials divided over the desirability of a war, it has reason to question Washington’s willingness to sustain that war. Why make painful concessions today if political pressure might produce a more favorable outcome tomorrow?
I don’t know about you, but it seems foolish to me to send mixed signals to an adversary whose survival and negotiating strategy depend, in large part, on outlasting its opponents.
The irony is that Vance now treats the war’s duration as evidence that those favoring military pressure were wrong, without seriously considering whether the absence of a unified and credible strategy helped produce the very stalemate he condemns.
Perhaps the problem was not simply that America went to war. Perhaps the problem was that America failed to establish a coherent strategy for winning the war, ending it, and ensuring the Iranian regime could not simply survive. And Vance, as vice president and a central figure in the negotiations, cannot pretend he had nothing to do with that.
Then there is his increasingly peculiar rhetoric toward Israel.
In July, during an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Vance accused elements of the Israeli government of attempting to manipulate American public opinion to prolong the war with Iran. He said there were people within Israel’s political system who were trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going indefinitely. That is a serious accusation, and any specific allegations of covert or improper influence deserve scrutiny.
But foreign governments attempt to shape American policy and public opinion all the time. It is hardly a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. According to a 2025 report by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Qatar had spent nearly $250 million on American lobbying and public relations firms registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act since Trump’s first election in 2016. That is an extraordinary investment in American political influence by a tiny country in the Persian Gulf.
Qatar has also cultivated extensive relationships with American political figures, universities, think tanks, and other influential institutions. Yet its activities rarely inspire the same sweeping arguments about whether America’s entire relationship with the country needs to change.
Interestingly, Vance himself acknowledged Qatar’s influence efforts during the Rogan interview. He said he was not particularly bothered by foreign governments attempting to influence Washington, including Qatar, because countries naturally pursue their interests. Fair enough.
But why, then, has Israeli influence become such a recurring theme in his public commentary? Why does Israel receive such particular scrutiny when America’s relationships with numerous other countries involve competing interests, lobbying, diplomatic pressure, and attempts to shape public opinion?
There is a legitimate discussion to be had about foreign influence in American politics. There is also a legitimate discussion to be had about the proper boundaries of the U.S.-Israel relationship. But those discussions should be conducted consistently, not selectively.
In September, Vance declared that Washington could not allow its Middle Eastern foreign policy to become “subservient” to Israel. What an extraordinary choice of words. The United States is the most powerful country in the world. It possesses the world’s most formidable military, an enormous diplomatic apparatus, and the ability to make decisions that affect virtually every country on Earth. It is not subservient to Israel.
American presidents have disagreed with Israeli prime ministers for decades. Washington has pressured Israel, restricted certain policies, pursued diplomatic initiatives opposed by Israeli governments, and repeatedly made decisions based on its own assessment of American interests. The idea that the United States needs JD Vance to liberate it from Israeli control is not serious foreign policy analysis. It is political theater.
And it ignores something rather important: American and Israeli interests frequently overlap. Preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon is not merely an Israeli objective. It is an American objective, a Western objective, and an objective shared by numerous countries throughout the Middle East that have their own reasons to fear Iranian power.
Israel is not the reason Iran threatens American interests. Israel is one of the countries most directly threatened by a regime whose ambitions extend considerably beyond the Jewish state.
Of course, America should put its own interests first. Every government should. But when two countries share important interests, cooperation is not subservience. It is common sense. And saying “America First” does not magically make every policy that benefits Israel contrary to American interests.
Which raises another question: Why is Vance so determined to distinguish his approach toward Israel from Trump’s?
Just last month, Trump publicly endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of Israel’s national election. Vance notably declined to follow his lead, insisting that he did not want to involve himself in Israeli politics. That would be a perfectly reasonable position, except that Vance had previously traveled to Hungary to support Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s reelection campaign. Apparently, involving himself in another country’s elections is objectionable only under certain circumstances.
There is a more obvious explanation for Vance’s increasingly independent posture: the 2028 presidential election. Vance is widely considered a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. He has spent years cultivating his standing within the America First movement, including among voters deeply skeptical of foreign military commitments and increasingly critical of Israel. His political incentives are not difficult to understand.
Distancing himself from the Iran war allows him to appeal to voters who opposed it. Questioning America’s relationship with Israel allows him to distinguish himself from Trump’s traditionally strong support for the Jewish state. And presenting himself as the voice of restraint allows him to claim credit for opposing decisions whose consequences he now condemns.
The timing of his comments, the selectivity of his criticism, and his eagerness to separate himself from the Trump Administration’s issues all raise legitimate questions about what is driving his public posture. Is JD Vance explaining what happened in the 2026 elections, or positioning himself for the 2028 election? Because those are two very different exercises.
And that is the most revealing part of this entire episode.
Vance wants Americans to examine the consequences of the Iran war, but not necessarily his responsibility for the administration’s efforts to end it. He wants Americans to question their relationship with Israel, but not necessarily their relationships with other countries that influence Washington. He wants Americans to put their own interests first, but seems remarkably comfortable presenting himself as the politician best suited to define those interests. All while occupying one of the two most powerful offices in the American government.
American voters are entitled to demand accountability from their leaders. They are entitled to question the costs of war, the consequences of foreign policy, and whether their government has delivered on its promises. But accountability must begin with the people actually governing America.
JD Vance is not an independent political analyst observing the Trump Administration from a safe distance. He is not an opposition politician whose warnings went unheeded while someone else governed. He is the vice president of the United States, a central participant in the very administration whose failures he now describes. He helped shape its policies. He participated in its diplomacy. He carries responsibility for its decisions and their consequences.
And if American voters are unhappy with the direction of their country, the vice president should perhaps spend less time explaining how America’s relationship with Israel contributed to the problem and more time examining his own administration’s performance.
If the world didn’t have Jews to blame for their problems, they would have to invent us. Otherwise, people would have to face the consequences of their own incompetence and stupidity. And that’s never going to happen.
As a non Jew who supports Israel because it is the one country in the Middle East in which there is respect for freedom and individual rights, I say thank you for this article. In my view, my country, America, is in very serious trouble because both ends of the political spectrum are deteriorating intellectually and morally at a startling rate. The left, the Democrats, are now fully nihilist. That is they reject with prejudice any facts which clash with their ideology and all human values, honesty, competence, integrity, excellence, beauty, justice, etc. as such. As a direct result, they hate the good for being good and seek to destroy freedom and individual rights. Their recent alliance with followers of Islam is to me the second worst development in American political history exceeded in depravity only by slavery and is prima facie evidence of the now fully communist Democratic party's intent to establish a police state in America. The Republicans are supposed to be the opposition but instead are generally weak and cowardly as they drift without thinking toward being completely helpless/hopeless. Your article documents one manifestation of this trend, that some Republicans blame Israel for their loss. If they thought about it at all, they would realize that when they had complete control of the federal government they did nothing to reduce the source of inflation which troubles people, deficit ridden outrageously wasteful totally corrupt (that is inviting monumental theft) non defense federal spending. In my view, Israel will now, for at least some time, have to go more on its own. (I hope that the cooperation between the two countries' armed forces continues.) But that's been true in the past and Israel met the challenges. Meanwhile, perhaps some people in America will wake up and do some serious thinking about reestablishing our affection for freedom and individual rights which are crucial for human life.