也许你见过这则广告：一男一女正在往购物车里放东西。女人告诉男人，必须把一盒鸡蛋放回去。“我们得把这 7 美元留出来，用来杀害巴勒斯坦人。”女人解释说，杂货价格上涨是因为美国给以色列提供了太多援助。“在加沙投弹要花我们很多钱，”女人解释道。“他们难道不也享受全民医保吗？”男人问道。“我们大概也在为那买单，”女人回答，男人随即把香蕉也放回了货架。
Maybe you’ve seen the ad: A man and a woman are loading a shopping cart. The woman tells the man he must return a carton of eggs. “We have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.”The woman explains that grocery prices are rising because the United States gives so much aid to Israel. “It’s costing us a lot of money to drop bombs on Gaza,” the woman explains. “Don’t they get universal health care too?” the man asks. “We’re paying for that, too, probably,” the woman responds, at which point the man puts back the bananas.
这则广告由一个独立政治行动委员会制作，旨在支持密歇根州民主党人阿卜杜勒·埃尔-赛义德的参议院竞选。在民主党初选期间，埃尔-赛义德经常谴责美国支持以色列者是一个隐秘、阴险的特殊利益集团。自从赢得提名后，他已与自己早先的措辞划清界限。如今，一个超级政治行动委员会在大选前仅一周，替他重提了那些言论。
The ad was produced by an independent political-action committee to support the Senate campaign of the Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. During the Democratic primary, El-Sayed regularly denounced American supporters of Israel as a shadowy, sinister special interest. Since winning the nomination, he has distanced himself from his earlier language. Now a super PAC is reviving it for him only a week before the general election.
传奇记者亨特·S·汤普森在半个世纪前就解释过这则广告的套路。在他的著作《竞选之路上的恐惧与厌恶 1972》中，他描述了“政治中最古老、最有效的伎俩之一”，这可能在林登·约翰逊早期在得克萨斯州的一次竞选中发挥了作用：竞争胶着，约翰逊开始担心。最后他告诉竞选经理，针对对手终身喜欢与自家母猪交媾的习惯，发起一场大规模谣言攻势。
The legendary journalist Hunter S. Thompson explained the ad half a century before it was produced. In his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72, he described “one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics,” which may have played a role in one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas: The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.
“见鬼，我们不能随便骂他是个猪奸者，”竞选经理抗议道，“没人会相信这种事。”
“Christ, we can’t get away calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”
“我知道，”约翰逊回答，“但让那混蛋去否认吧。”在支持埃尔-赛义德的这则广告中，被虚假指控针对的那混蛋，并非埃尔-赛义德假想的对手、共和党人迈克·罗杰斯——至少不完全是。广告结尾称：“迈克·罗杰斯支持”——伴着讽刺的冷笑——“他们/她们。”我们都知道他们是谁，而他们才是这则广告真正的攻击目标。
“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”In the case of the ad supporting El-Sayed, the sonofabitch targeted by the false accusation is not El-Sayed’s theoretical opponent, the Republican Mike Rogers—not really. The ad concludes, “Mike Rogers is for”—ironic chuckle—“they/them.”We all know who they are, and they are the real target of the ad.
指责以色列应为美国的经济问题负责，并非埃尔-赛义德支持者独有的怪癖。在竞选纽约市长期间，马姆达尼于2025年对《政治报》表示，该市住房的破败状况归咎于同一个“恶棍”：“政府拒绝为公共住房提供资金，而我们却继续寻找数十亿美元投放炸弹，在一年多的时间里杀死数万名巴勒斯坦人。”
The accusation that Israel is to blame for America’s economic problems is not some unique quirk of El-Sayed supporters. During his campaign to become New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani told Politico in 2025 that the dilapidated state of the city’s housing was the fault of the same villain: “The government refuses to fund public housing, all while we continue to find billions of dollars to drop bombs that kill tens of thousands of Palestinians over more than a year now.”
2025年，玛乔丽·泰勒·格林划出了类似的联系。她指责称，美国援助通常占以色列国防预算的五分之一，“尽管以色列、拥有核武器的以色列，为其公民提供全民医保和补贴大学教育。而在这里的美国，我们背负着37万亿美元的债务。”
In 2025, Majorie Taylor Greene drew a similar link. American aid, she charged, typically accounts for up to a fifth of Israel’s defense budget, “even though Israel, nuclear-armed Israel, has universal healthcare for their citizens and subsidized college for their citizens. Here in America, we’re $37 trillion in debt.”
8月，埃尔-赛义德暗示，美国对以色列的武器援助以某种方式阻碍了国内的医疗保健。“这次竞选是一场公投，关乎我们是想要这里的医疗保健，还是别处的炸弹。”以色列的支持者必须否认这一虚假指控吗？好吧，开始反驳。美国对以色列的军事援助定为2019年至2028年每年38亿美元——约占联邦总预算的百分之一的二十分之一。
On in August, El-Sayed insinuated that U.S. aid for weapons in Israel was somehow an impediment to health care at home. “This campaign was a referendum on whether or not we want health care here or bombs somewhere else.”Do supporters of Israel have to deny the false accusation? Okay, here goes. U.S. military aid to Israel is set at $3.8 billion a year from 2019 to 2028—about one-twentieth of 1 percent of the total federal budget.
2024年，国会批准了一项950亿美元的援助计划，用于援助乌克兰、以色列和其他盟友——其中近三分之二流向乌克兰，约150亿美元流向以色列，约90亿美元用于人道主义救济，包括援助哈马斯发动的战争中流离失所的加沙平民。（其余部分流向台湾和印太地区的其他盟友。）美国对以色列的援助几乎完全以信贷形式提供，以色列只能用这些信贷购买美国制造的装备。
In 2024, Congress approved a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and other allies—of which, nearly two-thirds went to Ukraine, about $15 billion went to Israel, and about $9 billion was directed to humanitarian relief, including assistance for Gazan civilians displaced by the war that Hamas started. (The rest went to Taiwan and other allies in the Indo-Pacific region.) Almost all U.S. assistance to Israel takes the form of credits that Israel can use only to buy American-made equipment.
这种援助至少给美国人带来两项直接且即时的利益。首先，它为美国赢得了获取以色列军事技术的渠道。通过部分资助以色列“铁穹”导弹防御系统的研发，美国……美国也获得了经过实战检验的系统的使用权，这些系统同样保护着美国人的生命。其次，这种援助降低了美国系统的单位成本。美国每年购买多达48架F-35战斗机。
This assistance provides at least two direct and immediate benefits to Americans. First, it buys the United States access to Israeli military technology. By partly underwriting the development of Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system, the U.S. has gained the use of battle-tested systems that also protect American lives. Second, this assistance lowers the per-unit cost of U.S. systems. The United States buys up to 48 F-35 fighters a year.
以色列已购买75架，并正考虑再购买约25架。外国订单使美国军火制造商能够改善其规模经济。在其他北约盟友因不再完全信任美国作为盟友或供应商而取消订购美国装备之际，以色列的订单提高了美国国防生产的效率。
Israel has bought 75 and is considering an estimated 25 more. Foreign orders allow U.S. arms manufacturers to improve their economies of scale. At a time when other NATO allies are canceling their orders of American equipment because they no longer fully trust the U.S. as an ally or supplier, Israeli orders enhance the efficiency of American defense production.
与此同时，美国对以色列的所有援助总额，仅为以色列批评者希望用于国内开支的一小部分。尽管埃尔-赛义德的广告暗示了这一点：美国人每年在食品杂货上的支出达1.1万亿美元。取消对以色列的援助，仅相当于这笔支出约30小时的金额。针对马姆达尼指责以色列应为纽约市糟糕的住房状况负责：该市住房局估计，其逾期维护积压高达近800亿美元，按目前的援助水平，约等于20年对以色列援助的总额。
Meanwhile, all U.S. aid to Israel amounts to a fraction of what Israel’s critics wish to spend domestically. Despite the implications of that El-Sayed ad: Americans spend $1.1 trillion a year on groceries. Canceling aid to Israel would deliver the equivalent of about 30 hours of that spending. Per Mamdani’s complaint that Israel is to blame for bad housing in New York City: The city’s housing authority estimates its backlog of deferred maintenance at almost $80 billion, or about 20 years’ worth of U.S. assistance to Israel at present levels.
将联邦医疗保险扩大至覆盖所有美国公民，在头十年可能需要超过32万亿美元的额外联邦开支。仅覆盖该计划的一个月，就需要70年对以色列援助的总额。
Expanding Medicare to cover all American citizens would cost perhaps more than $32 trillion in additional federal spending over the first decade. Covering even one month of this plan would take 70 years’ worth of aid to Israel.
这则超级政治行动委员会的广告把密歇根州香蕉价格上涨归咎于犹太国家，让人联想到比归咎于约翰逊的那招更古老、更令人不安的政治伎俩。1899年，维也纳市长卡尔·卢埃格尔——19世纪最臭名昭著的反犹太主义者之一——发表演讲，将哈布斯堡帝国的经济困境归咎于犹太人。他辩称：“在我们奥地利的祖国，局势是这样的：犹太人掌握的影响力程度超过了他们的数量和重要性。在这方面，犹太人实行的一种恐怖主义简直不可能更糟。对我们奥地利人来说，这是一场从犹太教霸权下解放基督教徒的斗争。”
By blaming the Jewish state for the price of bananas in Michigan, the super-PAC ad calls to mind political tricks older and more disturbing than the one attributed to Johnson. In 1899, Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna and one of the most notorious anti-Semites of the 19th century, gave a speech blaming the Habsburg empire’s economic troubles on its Jews. “Here in our Austrian fatherland the situation is such that the Jews have seized a degree of influence which exceeds their number and importance,” he argued. “And in this respect the Jews operate a terrorism of a kind that could hardly be worse. For us, in Austria, it is a matter of liberating Christian people from the hegemony of Jewry.”
正如美国不断上涨的生活成本一样，卢埃格尔关心的问题确实存在。他的选民基础——手工业者和工匠——正承受着来自工厂竞争的巨大压力。卢埃格尔对选民的困境几乎无能为力。但他可以为他们指明一个政治上有用的攻击目标。如今，随着对卢埃格尔措辞的稍作更新，一个外部政治行动委员会在2026年最受关注的参议院竞选之一的收官论点中，指责一个熟悉的“他们/她们”。
As with the rising cost of living in the U.S., the problem Lueger was concerned with was real. His voter base of artisans and craftspeople was coming under immense pressure from factory competition. There was not much Lueger could do about his voters’ distress. But he could point them toward a politically useful target. Now, with a modest update of Lueger’s language, an outside PAC’s closing argument in one of the most watched Senate races of 2026 blames a familiar “they/them.”