The US should stop funding Israel and the money should go to Americans first. AOC and Bernie needs the money for healthcare
The math on "fund Israel instead of Medicare for All" doesn't math.
The US sends Israel roughly $3.8 billion a year - $3.3 billion baseline under a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), plus the emergency supplementals Congress passed after October 7. The nonpartisan Urban Institute puts Medicare for All at $32-34 trillion over ten years.
That's at least $3.2 trillion per year in new federal spending.
Most people zone out and their brains go to static when they try to understand numbers on this scale - so let's do it visually:
Ceasing support for Israel aid won't build an American Universal Healthcare system in the same way that giving up avocado toast won't enable Gen Z to buy a house.
The "fund healthcare with Israel aid" crowd consistently ignores the fact that most of the aid for Israel already goes to Americans.
Israel is required to spend the entire Foreign Military Financing (FMF) amount on American weapons, systems, and defense equipment manufactured and sold by US companies - a requirement the Obama administration tightened.
The money goes to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon. It produces jobs in Alabama and Connecticut.
So...why do we keep hearing this nonsensical association between aid to Israel and the US failing to have universal healthcare?
Antisemitism has always worked by inserting Jews between people and whatever they feel they're owed.
The Crusades failed because of military overreach and strategic collapse. Instead of taking responsibility, the Church blamed the Jews, thereby protecting its own authority and giving humiliated crusaders a scapegoat instead of a reckoning.
The Black Death swept Europe because of a bacterial pandemic. Instead of accepting a natural explanation, authorities blamed the Jews for poisoning the wells. This gave terrified populations someone to punish and deflected scrutiny from their own powerlessness.
France's military was humiliated in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 because of poor leadership and strategic failure. Instead of holding their own commanders accountable, the French military establishment blamed a Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus. This protected the careers and reputations of the actual culprits.
Germany lost World War One because of military collapse and strategic exhaustion. Instead of accepting defeat, the military leadership blamed the Jews for stabbing the army in the back, which shielded the officer class from accountability and planted the seed for the next war.
Weimar Germany experienced hyperinflation because of war reparations and catastrophic fiscal policy. Instead of addressing structural economic failure, politicians blamed Jewish financiers, giving a desperate population an enemy to hate and buying the political class some time.
Tsarist Russia had endemic poverty because of serfdom's aftermath and imperial mismanagement. Instead of reforming their own institutions, the Tsar blamed the Jews for exploiting the peasantry, redirecting revolutionary anger away from the throne and toward the shtetl. Nothing lets off steam like a good pogrom.
American culture has been shaped by industrialization, commercialization, and mass media. Instead of grappling with those forces, cultural conservatives blamed the Jews for controlling Hollywood, neatly avoiding any serious examination of the market forces they themselves championed.
The United States lacks universal healthcare because of lobbying, Senate procedure, and forty years of political failure. Instead of addressing any of that, they blame Israel for eating the budget, letting the actual obstacles off the hook entirely.
The specific grievance changes. The structure doesn't.
Jews make a convenient scapegoat precisely because Jews are a small, visible minority with enough presence in public life to be a plausible explanation, but not enough numbers to outvote the lie.
Blaming Jews is what a society does when it has failed its people and needs to deflect the consequences of that failure. It is the political coward's way to avoid the hard, unglamorous work of building coalitions, passing legislation, and holding their own institutions accountable.
It's much easier, they realize, to have an enemy than a problem.
