The next time you pull into a gas station, watch the number on the pump as you squeeze the handle. That rapidly spinning dollar amount is not just the price of gasoline. Included in it is an Israeli added tax you did not consent to pay. 

Since early March 2026, the average American household has been spending 50 percent more to fill their tank than just one month earlier. The Trump administration and its Israel-first ideologues blamed market forces for the spike, framing it as short-term pain for long-term gain. What they will not say, what they are never permitted to say in Washington, is that Americans have been living the “pain” of the Israeli oil surcharge tax for more than half a century.

The bill keeps growing, but no longer only financially. The U.S. is also paying with something harder to rebuild than a budget, its moral standing in the world.

The bill keeps growing, but no longer only financially. The U.S. is also paying with something harder to rebuild than a budget, its moral standing in the world.

The history of this “pain” remained a closely suppressed secret and one of the most forbidden subjects in American political discourse. Roughly fifty years ago, September 1973 to be exact, crude oil traded at roughly three dollars a barrel, or less than 40 cents a gallon at the pump. Then came the October War. Israel-first Zionists in the Nixon administration, led by Henry Kissinger, committed the full weight of American resources through what was, at the time, the largest emergency military airlift in American history. Arab oil-producing nations responded by pulling the one lever they controlled: reduction of oil production.

By January 1974, crude had climbed to twelve dollars a barrel — a 400 percent increase in less than four months. American drivers sat in lines stretching around city blocks, waiting for rationed gasoline, paying prices they had never imagined, for........

© Middle East Monitor