The price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit $4.37 on Wednesday, up more than a dollar from a year ago. In California, drivers are paying $6.04. In San Francisco, $5.93. Diesel—the fuel that moves every truck, tractor, and delivery van in America—is flirting with $8 in the Golden State.
These are not numbers that happened to you. They are numbers that were chosen for you. And the choice was made in Israel.
According to Netanyahu’s government, Americans suffering at the gas pump have no right to complain. If they cannot afford to fill their tanks at more than $4.50 a gallon, they can “bike or walk” instead, according to a viral response to a reporter’s question in Tel Aviv.
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The uncomfortable question that Washington refuses to answer directly: Why is the United States fighting this war at all? The honest answer is that it isn’t, not really. The war is Israel’s. The United States is providing the muscle, the money, and—most painfully for ordinary Americans—absorbing the economic fallout.
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The American people have figured this out, even if their elected representatives are too afraid to admit the truth.
A July 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that 62% of Americans view the Israeli government unfavorably, up from 59% a year earlier. Among Democrats, favorable views of the Israeli government have collapsed from 35% to just 16% since 2022. Among young Republicans aged 18 to 49, unfavorable views have climbed to 57%.
These are not fringe numbers. They are a sea change. And they are happening because Americans are connecting the dots: the war that Israel wanted is the war that is draining their wallets.
There is a version of this story in which high gas prices are a regrettable but necessary sacrifice for a noble cause. That version does not survive contact with the facts.
The United States has no treaty obligation to fight Israel’s wars. It has no strategic interest in a permanent state of conflict with Iran. It has no economic interest in oil at $100 a barrel. What it has is a political system in which the interests of a foreign government have captured the machinery of American foreign policy.
And the American driver pays for that capture every time they pull into a gas station.
The next time you swipe your card and watch the total climb past $60, $70, $80—remember that this number was chosen for you. Not by market forces. Not by supply and demand. But by a war that was never yours to fight, in a country that was never yours to defend.
