Lobbying an ally or partner to go to war together is as old as time, dating back to Thucydides’ tale of the Peloponnesian War. Two and a half millennia later, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, upheld as the greatest statesman of the century, spent the first half of World War II trying to persuade President Franklin Roosevelt to enter the war. In his memoirs, he wrote that after the Pearl Harbor attack, he “slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.” In this century, the United Kingdom and France persuaded President Barack Obama to go to war in Libya. But when it comes to Jews, Israel “manipulates” America to “fight Israel’s wars” for it.
A majority of Americans disapprove of the Iran War. Many in mainstream media and the commentariat have been trying to exploit this to discredit Israel by blaming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the decision to go to war, claiming that he tricked President Donald Trump into it. This is a double-standard applied to the Jewish state, leeching on anti-Jewish stereotypes.
President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference announcing the U.S. peace plan for Gaza, Monday, September 29, 2025, in the State Dining Room of the White House. (Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian, The White House, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
A reported article by The New York Times, written by six coauthors on Mar. 2, 2026, entitled “How Trump Decided to Go to War,” begins with, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel walked into the Oval Office on the morning of Feb. 11, determined to keep the American president on the path to war.” Five weeks later, Israel and Netanyahu remain a big part of the story. On Apr. 8, 2026, the paper published an even more detailed account by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, “How Trump Took the U.S. to War,” on the subject. Again, Israel and Netanyahu play a major role in the piece. Neither report mentions that Saudi Arabia also actively pushed Trump to attack Iran, an intriguing omission, given that “Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private phone calls to Trump [in February] advocating a U.S. attack.” He even dispatched his brother, confidant, and minister of defense, Khalid bin Salman, to Washington, D.C., to make the case in person. This omission by journalists is revealing.
The New York Times is not alone.
On Mar. 3, in a report entitled, “The Trump-Netanyahu call that changed the Middle East,” Barak Ravid of Axios reported that Netanyahu called Trump with the pitch to attack Iran.
On Apr. 6, 2026, NPR’s Juana Summers stated, “Convincing the U.S. to attack Iran alongside Israel has been a long-held dream for Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
Among media personalities, the language is much harsher. Both on the Twelve-Day War and during the current campaign, journalists have come even closer to touching anti-Jewish stereotypes.
After the U.S. military bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities during Operation Midnight Hammer on Jun. 21, 2025, podcaster Tommy Vietor, who formerly served as a communications officer at the National Security Council during the Obama administration, wrote, “[Trump] is weak and got manipulated into doing Netanyahu’s dirty work.”
George Conway, a media personality currently running for Congress, opined, “A smart and evil man manipulated a stupid and evil man into a war against a fanatical and evil regime.”
Tim Miller, a senior writer for The Bulwark, popular podcaster, and MS NOW contributor, remarked, “Our relationship with Israel is too tight,” adding, “We should be reevaluating it. We should not be getting dog walked into this war,” an unfortunate phrase, given the proliferation of Jew-hating memes on this theme. If we accept the “Three Ds”—double-standards, delegitimizing, and dual-loyalty accusations—as a working definition of anti-Jewish bias, this outsized focus on the Israeli role qualifies as Jew-hatred.
In 2011, the forces of then-Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi were on their way to put down a rebellion in Benghazi, which many feared would lead to a massacre of civilians. U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron, and even more French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, were adamant to prevent it, but they needed U.S. support. President Barack Obama was reluctant to participate. Weeks of lobbying by America’s allies across the pond ensued.
Internally, the administration was divided, but most members were against action. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had previously been cautious about intervention, telling Congress, “Too often, other countries were quick to demand action but then looked to America to shoulder all the burdens and take all the risks.” However, NATO allies persuaded her to change her opinion, who in turn persuaded the president. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote, “Qaddafi’s bloodthirsty rhetoric … the action of the Arab League, and strong British and French pressure … together persuaded the president that the United States would need … in organizing the military campaign to stop Qaddafi.”
Obama only agreed to “play a supporting role” and that it would be “a matter of days and not weeks.” The campaign lasted for over seven months. Only weeks into it, the United Kingdom and France had to withdraw from the operation amidst munition shortages, leaving the United States as the primary participant.
Yet, there have been no reports centering on Cameron and Sarkozy in manipulating Obama into the war. Rather, reports from 2011 hardly ever mention allied lobbying. The critical role of the allies only came to the surface after administration officials published their memoirs after leaving the administration, rather than through investigative journalism, and remains mostly unreported.
Israel lobbied Trump to attack Iran in the exact same way that the British and French did with Obama and the Saudis lobbied Trump on Iran. But two important facts set Israel apart from the rest.
First, while the United Kingdom and France bailed on the war after lobbying the United States to join them, Israel remains committed to the war. The Jewish State also bears a much higher cost than the United Kingdom and France did against Libya, or the United States back then and now. Even Saudi Arabia has paid a very small price, despite having encouraged the campaign without participating in it. Israel is putting its money where its mouth is.
Second, Libya was solely a humanitarian intervention. Qaddafi’s Libya had stopped being a strategic problem for the United States and dismantled its nuclear program in 2003. Fighting Iran is both a humanitarian cause and a strategic interest. Iran has the blood of approximately 700 Americans on its hands, undermined U.S. efforts in Iraq, had active nuclear and conventional military programs, tried to assassinate Trump, is a major sponsor of terrorism, and has a program that abducts and executes U.S. nationals on foreign soil. If these reasons were not enough, the intervention is also partially out of humanitarian concerns, following the largest massacre of civilians in modern history back in January, when the Islamic Republic killed 36,500 protesters. Relatedly, and finally, the president had drawn a red line against the crackdown, putting U.S. credibility at stake, which played a major role in his decision to attack Iran.
There is a simple explanation for the double-standards, but you know it: “Sleeky Europeans tricked Obama” does not work quite as well as “Manipulative Jews are Trump’s puppeteers.”