Israel as Alibi
Israel as Alibi
When I published “For Truth’s Sake: Love Vance,” I was not claiming that JD Vance secretly hated Israel. My argument was more structural and therefore more troubling: his support for Israel was instrumental. Israel appealed to the America First movement for as long as it supplied an image of the border state, militarized sovereignty, political force, and a West supposedly cured of hesitation. It was admired not as a complex political society, but as a usable symbol.
That distinction now matters. In his conversation with Joe Rogan, the vice president of the United States claimed that Jeffrey Epstein had connections to the highest levels of both American and Israeli intelligence. He presented no documents, cited no verifiable evidence, and made no distinction between social contact, political access, recruitment, and operational control. Yet he introduced the allegation into the language of executive power, and that is the real political event.
An unsupported hypothesis does not become a fact because it is delivered calmly into an expensive microphone. But once it is voiced by a sitting vice president, it ceases to be merely another internet theory. It acquires the prestige of office, the aura of privileged knowledge, and the force of mass circulation. Millions of listeners will not remember Vance’s qualifications. They will remember that the vice president connected Epstein to Israeli intelligence.
The asymmetry of suspicion
What matters most is the asymmetry with which Vance distributes innocence and suspicion. When Rogan raised the possibility that Israel had used Epstein-related material to blackmail Donald Trump, Vance rejected the suggestion. He said he had seen no credible evidence implicating the president and described the administration’s failure to release the Epstein files chiefly as a communications mistake. He also suggested that the most important evidence may have been destroyed long ago.
Trump therefore receives the presumption of innocence, while Israel receives an atmosphere of guilt. The American administration merely communicated badly. American institutions misplaced or withheld documents. American agencies may have permitted evidence to disappear, and American elites protected Epstein for decades. Yet the hidden agency behind the scandal is displaced onto a foreign power.
This is not merely a careless contradiction. It performs a precise political function. The MAGA movement trained its followers to believe that a corrupt transnational elite was protected by intelligence agencies, financial networks, politicians, and the media. It promised revelation. Once restored to power, however, it produced delays, contradictory statements, partial disclosures, and new reasons for distrust.
The movement must now solve a problem of its own making. How can loyalty to Trump be preserved without abandoning the belief in a hidden elite? The simplest answer is to relocate hidden agency elsewhere. The leader remains innocent, the administration remains well intentioned, and the chaos becomes merely procedural. For the explanatory structure to survive, however, a foreign operator is still required.
Increasingly, that operator is Israel.
From ally to explanation
Israel is becoming the alibi through which American power refuses authorship of its own decisions. In the same conversation, Vance spoke about Israeli attempts to shape American public opinion, obstruct negotiations with Iran, and prolong war without a clear strategic objective. In earlier remarks, he reminded Israelis that much of their military power depends on American weapons, American money, and American political protection.
These statements mark a reclassification. Israel is no longer presented only as a privileged ally. It is increasingly described as a dependent petitioner, an influence operation, and a constraint on American sovereignty. The admired fortress is becoming a suspicious network.
Once that reclassification begins, every Israeli action acquires a second meaning. Diplomacy becomes manipulation. Lobbying becomes infiltration. Political access becomes covert control. Security arguments become demands for endless war. Ehud Barak’s contacts with Epstein, Israeli intelligence, Jewish wealth, sexual blackmail, and American foreign policy begin to occupy the same chamber of political imagination.
This is where legitimate criticism of Israel can be absorbed into something older and more dangerous. Israeli policy can and should be criticized. American military aid can be challenged. Mossad can be investigated. Lobbying, political pressure, and foreign influence should be examined wherever evidence exists.
But the classical antisemitic machine does not begin with the declaration “I hate Jews.” It begins by arranging finance, sexuality, hidden influence, dual loyalty, compromised elites, and invisible coordination into a single explanation of political disorder. Vance has not assembled that machine in full. He has done something more politically effective: he has authorized its components.
The microphone launders the accusation
Vance can still insist that he supports Israel. He can distinguish Netanyahu from an Israeli “deep state.” He can deny that Trump was blackmailed and maintain that many countries seek influence in Washington. Each statement preserves an escape route, allowing him to deny the larger implication while continuing to circulate its elements.
Mass political language, however, does not remain inside the qualifications of its author. “Connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence” will not circulate as a careful hypothesis requiring documentary verification. Within the political ecosystem of Rogan, Tucker Carlson, and the online America First right, the distinctions will disappear. The message that remains will be much simpler: Israel is behind it.
The platform itself is part of the mechanism. Rogan’s studio has become a para-institutional chamber in which senior officials can make grave claims without assuming the burden of an official declaration. The tone is relaxed, speculative, and companionable. Allegations that would require evidence at a press conference can be offered as the shared intuition of reasonable men who are merely asking questions.
The microphone launders accusation and returns it as common sense. It allows executive power to speak with the authority of office while evading the responsibilities of office. Vance can suggest knowledge without disclosing its basis, and listeners can convert suggestion into certainty.
The reversal of conditional friendship
Israel’s leaders made a catastrophic mistake when they confused proximity to Trumpism with a durable alliance. They mistook admiration for covenant, personal access for institutional loyalty, and a shared language of force for political security. They failed to understand that a relationship based on usefulness already contains the possibility of reversal.
A strong Israel was attractive when it validated borders, military violence, civilizational conflict, and sovereignty stripped of moral hesitation. A dependent Israel becomes suspect when it demands resources, constrains American freedom of action, or threatens the internal cohesion of the America First coalition. The same movement that once used Israel as proof that power should not apologize can now use Israel as proof that American power has been manipulated.
The mechanism has not changed. Only the assigned function has shifted. Yesterday, Israel legitimized American force. Today, Israel is being asked to explain why American force has failed. Yesterday, Jews were invoked as an argument for closing borders. Today, Jewish names, Israeli intelligence, billionaire finance, and Epstein’s crimes can be arranged into a story about a hidden center of control.
This is what conditional friendship looks like when its conditions are withdrawn. The warning in “Love Vance” was never that Vance would suddenly begin to hate Israel. It was that Israel was never secure within his political grammar because it was never treated as a partner. It was treated as an instrument.
Now the instrument is being used differently.
The outsourcing of responsibility
The most accurate diagnosis is not that America is simply turning against Israel. It is that one faction of American power is learning to use Israel as an explanation for contradictions it cannot resolve within itself. The Epstein files remain incomplete, so foreign intelligence must be responsible. The administration loses public trust, so the problem becomes communication. A war lacks a coherent objective, so Israeli manipulation must have distorted American judgment.
The superpower makes decisions but assigns authorship to the ally. This is not isolationism. It is the outsourcing of responsibility. It allows American politicians to present their own state as simultaneously omnipotent and deceived, sovereign and manipulated, decisive and innocent.
Israel should be criticized where criticism is deserved, investigated where evidence exists, and resisted where its demands violate American interests or law. It must not, however, be transformed into the metaphysical cause of American corruption, American wars, and American political cowardice. A republic that cannot admit authorship of its own decisions will eventually invent a hidden hand that supposedly made them.
JD Vance has just told Americans where to look for it.
