{"id":119836,"date":"2025-03-15T17:05:14","date_gmt":"2025-03-15T15:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=119836"},"modified":"2025-03-15T14:50:52","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T12:50:52","slug":"15-05-109","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=119836","title":{"rendered":"The US State Department\u2019s hostility toward Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The US State Department\u2019s hostility toward Israel<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Joseph Puder<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Michael Herzog, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said \u201cthere are many within the State Department who are not just unfriendly to Israel but outright hostile.\u201d<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Michael Herzog, outgoing Israeli ambassador to the United States, speaking at his farewell event at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 16, 2025. Photo by Shmulik Almany.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The role of the U.S. State Department in preventing the rescue of European Jews during World War II is well known. Top officials at Foggy Bottom instructed American consulates in Europe to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Jews trying to flee the Nazi death machine from coming to the United States. In the American Jewish community, the perception of the State Department is of a cabal of antisemites.<\/span><\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t mean that everyone in the department was (or is) an antisemite, but clearly, the obstructionism that came from the leadership during the Holocaust years was responsible for the death of many thousands, if not millions, of Jews who could have been rescued.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most recently, the State Department under President Joe Biden and headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued the \u201ctradition,\u201d albeit, not against European Jews but rather toward the State of Israel.\u00a0 According to Michael Herzog, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, hostile elements within the department actively sought to limit Israel\u2019s military operations in the Gaza Strip and block key security decisions taken by the Netanyahu government.\u00a0Herzog told<\/a>\u00a0Israel\u2019s largest daily,\u00a0Israel Hayom,<\/em>\u00a0that \u201cthere are many within the State Department who are not just unfriendly to Israel but outright hostile.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Herzog revealed that officials at State warned their Israeli counterparts last year against a retaliatory strike against Iran following the Islamic Republic\u2019s missile attack against Israel on Oct. 1, 2024, with nearly 200 ballistic missiles.\u00a0Israel was warned that any action taken might escalate into a regional war. Although the Iranian attack caused little damage or casualties in Israel, Herzog told U.S. officials that in the Middle East, once attacked, rather than \u201ccontaining it,\u201d a counterstroke must hit back at the enemy harder and painfully. He said for Israel, retaliation was an existential matter. If Israel failed to respond to Iran, its deterrence would collapse, which would invite more attacks from Iran and its proxies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Herzog said that Blinken also moved to implement targeted sanctions against the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Unit 504. This unit deals with human intelligence and interrogation. Herzog said Blinken had \u201calready made up his mind,\u00a0but we managed to stop him just in time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Among Herzog\u2019s disclosures was the fact that the State Department has a team focused specifically on tracking Israel\u2019s use of U.S. weapons. This constitutes a double standard since America does not apply such a level of scrutiny to any other country.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Biden administration also sought to pressure Israel against entering Rafah by delaying and freezing weapons shipments, including 2,000-pound bombs, which the administration justified on humanitarian grounds. Herzog made clear that although there was no formal arms embargo, \u201cbureaucratic delays and political pressure slowed down deliveries at crucial moments.\u201d These obstructions prolonged the war, inflicting increased casualties on Israelis and Palestinians.<\/span><\/p>\n

Herzog concluded that \u201cin the end, we had to work around U.S. pressure. If we had followed all their advice, our enemies would have sensed weakness. Instead,\u00a0we acted in Israel\u2019s best interest, even when it meant standing up to our closest ally.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While Biden might have had pro-Israel instincts, he was under severe pressure from anti-Israel factions within his administration, especially those at State. The administration did little to curb violent antisemitic riots on U.S. college campuses, funded in large part by Qatar.\u00a0Herzog stressed that the Biden administration \u201callowed bureaucrats with an anti-Israel agenda to influence U.S. policy, by making sure that nearly every Israeli request was delayed, watered down or obstructed.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Several Biden foreign-policy officials resigned over U.S. policy toward Gaza, including Josh Paul, former director of the State Department\u2019s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, who resigned in October 2023; and Tarik Habash, who worked for the U.S. Department of Education and resigned in January 2024.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two have since formed an anti-Israel political action committee called\u00a0A New Policy PAC<\/em>.\u00a0In an Oct. 16, 2024 interview with the\u00a0Huff Post<\/a><\/em>, they articulated their opposition, if not hostility, toward Israel, advocating among other things for boycotting the Jewish state. Said Paul, \u201cI think it\u2019s very clear that the policies that the United States has been pursuing, certainly for the last year and frankly before that, have been\u00a0deeply harmful to the Palestinian people, but also to American interests where we are seeing ourselves, our credibility around the world shattered, the stability of the Middle East cast into doubt, and civil rights at home also increasingly damaged by the debate around this issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Typically, Paul and Habash reflect an inherently anti-Israel, if not antisemitic attitude that is pervasive in U.S. institutions. They don\u2019t blame the Hamas terrorists for repeated attempts to destroy Israel in accordance with the terror group\u2019s charter, which culminated in the murderous Oct. 7 assault on Israel. Instead, they put the onus on Israel for its legitimate response against a murderous group that promised to repeat many more \u201cOct. 7\u201d attacks on Israel.\u00a0Their concerns for human rights don\u2019t apply to the Israeli hostages kidnapped from their beds, raped, starved and tortured.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fortunately for Israel, most American presidents and the majority of American citizens understand what Paul and Habash do not: Israel is a vibrant democracy that shares U.S. values and interests and is the only loyal and reliable partner Washington has in the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The opinions and facts presented in this article are those of the author, and neither JNS nor its partners assume any responsibility for them.<\/div>\n
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Joseph Puder<\/strong> is the founder and director of the Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel (ITAI).<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The US State Department\u2019s hostility toward Israel Joseph Puder Michael Herzog, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, said \u201cthere are many within the State Department who are not just unfriendly to Israel but outright hostile.\u201d Michael Herzog, outgoing Israeli ambassador to the United States, speaking at his farewell event at the Israeli embassy in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119836"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119848,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119836\/revisions\/119848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}