MESSAGE
| DATE | 2025-08-28 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Snakes in the Grass and the State Department
|
This is one of the more important articles that came out of the Times of
Israel website...
The paydirt here is largely this:
The next day, Ghoreishi removed a reference to Judea and Samaria that
Huckabee’s senior adviser David Milstein had inserted into Ghoreishi’s
internal press guidance.
The former State Department press officer said only Huckabee — as
opposed to other senior administration officials — has been referring to
the West Bank by its biblical name and that the term erases Palestinian
ties to the territory while alienating US partners in the region, which
is what led him to cut the term.
It is alright, though to eliminate Jewish links to the land, regardless
how obvious they are...when one is an Islamofascist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Fired State Dept. press officer claims Huckabee, aide usurping Trump’s
‘America First’ policy
By Ben Sales and ToI Staff
10–13 minutes
A recently fired US State Department press officer maintains that United
States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his senior adviser are
usurping the Trump administration’s policy on Israel in ways that
contradict the president’s “America First” vision.
Shahed Ghoreishi was dismissed from his position as press officer for
Israeli-Palestinian affairs earlier this month after what he says were
three successive incidents involving the drafting of State Department
memos and statements where he took a different approach to that of the
leadership of the US Embassy in Jerusalem and several advisers to US
Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The differences of opinion did not appear major at the time and
Ghoreishi maintained in an interview with The Times of Israel that he
had only proposed using language that was consistent with remarks made
by US President Donald Trump. But on August 17, he was summarily fired,
in what Ghoreishi argued would have a chilling effect on others in the
administration who might consider, even internally, presenting positions
that differ from those of the embassy’s leadership.
The Times of Israel reached out to both the State Department and the US
Embassy in Jerusalem, offering them a chance to respond to a series of
claims made by Ghoreishi, but they declined to do so. Last week, State
Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigot said in a statement, “We do
not comment on leaked emails or allegations. Federal employees should
never put their personal political ideologies ahead of the duly elected
president’s agenda.”
Ghoreishi joined the State Department last year in the final months of
the Biden administration, serving as press officer for Lebanon and
Jordan. Following Trump’s entry into the Oval Office, he was given the
Israeli-Palestinian affairs portfolio, a sensitive position that he said
was testament to his strong reputation within the department among both
career diplomats and political appointees.
Ghoreishi was not given a reason for his dismissal, but it came less
than a week after three days in a row of disputes with others in the
State Department.
The first was on August 10, when Ghoreishi drafted a statement that
mourned “the loss of journalists and express[ed] condolences to their
families” after an Israeli strike killed Al Jazeera reporter Anas
al-Sharif and five other journalists while they were in a tent in Gaza City.
While Ghoreishi argued that the line was a standard expression of
empathy, the line was nixed by State Department leadership, who said the
US needed to determine whether those targeted were involved in terror
activity before issuing a statement. Israel has said that Sharif was a
Hamas fighter and that others targeted were terror operatives too, but
it has yet to provide evidence of the latter claim.
Shahed Ghoreishi is interviewed on Democracy Now on August 22, 2025.
(Screen capture/X)
The next day, Ghoreishi drafted a line responding to reports that Israel
was in talks with South Sudan about the latter taking in Gazan refugees.
The statement he prepared said, “We do not support forced displacement
of Palestinians in Gaza.”
While Trump unveiled a plan in February that envisioned the US taking
over Gaza and permanently relocating its residents elsewhere, he has
since gingerly distanced himself from the idea, asserting — as has US
special envoy Steve Witkoff — that Washington does not support the
forced expulsion of Palestinians.
Nonetheless, Ghoreishi said the line he proposed on August 11 was
scrapped by State Department leadership.
The next day, Ghoreishi removed a reference to Judea and Samaria that
Huckabee’s senior adviser David Milstein had inserted into Ghoreishi’s
internal press guidance.
David Milstein, senior adviser to U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee in
Israel, was a major opponent of Ghoreishi, frequently intervening in
State Department matters to defend Israel, according to The Washington Post.
Critics said he was overly eager to appease Israeli officials and…
https://t.co/R5ngZnCE6I pic.twitter.com/lj0e9qhkrv
— TabZ (-at-TabZLIVE) August 20, 2025
The former State Department press officer said only Huckabee — as
opposed to other senior administration officials — has been referring to
the West Bank by its biblical name and that the term erases Palestinian
ties to the territory while alienating US partners in the region, which
is what led him to cut the term.
While Ghoreishi’s final edit was upheld, he lost his position at the
State Department several days later.
‘The real political activists’
Ghoreishi said he believed Milstein had flagged all three incidents.
“Their accumulation… and [Milstein’s] desire to take the front seat in
language coming out of the State Department led to my firing,” he said.
Milstein, who did not respond to a request for comment, is not new to
the Trump world. He served as special assistant to Trump’s first
ambassador to Israel David Friedman and before that as legislative aide
to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. He is also the step-son of Fox News host
Mark Levin, a close ally of both Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
“I don’t believe he or anyone at the embassy in Jerusalem’s senior
leadership desired the standard guardrails that I was upholding,”
Ghoreishi argued, lamenting that Milstein “toed the Israeli line on
every event.”
“I have an issue with deferring to Israel every single time something
happens in Gaza or the West Bank in general because you want to put US
interests first. On occasion, there might be something that’s in line
with [Israel], but we should be relying on our own resources, our own
interests, and actually put America first,” he added. “I don’t believe
that David Milstein is interested in that.”
On the same day of the Monday interview, the State Department issued a
statement to querying reporters stating that they should refer to Israel
for comment regarding a strike on Khan Younis’s Nasser hospital earlier
that day that reportedly killed 20 people, including rescue workers and
five journalists.
Palestinian medics evacuate a member of the territory’s civil defense
agency who was wounded in Israeli strikes on Nasser hospital in Khan
Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on August 25, 2025. (AFP)
Ghoreishi rejected the notion that he is a politically motivated
activist, arguing that he would have been fired much earlier in the
administration had this been the case.
He asserted that Huckabee and Milstein are the “real political
activists” who are backed by “compliant neocons” advising Rubio.
Ghoreishi declined to elaborate on the latter group other than saying
that they previously worked for the Heritage Foundation, a lightning rod
conservative policy institute. At least two of Rubio’s top advisers —
Michael Needham and Dan Holler — previously worked for the organization.
For his part, Ghoreishi was previously employed at a number of
progressive DC-based foreign policy groups and ones that oppose US
intervention in foreign policy, such as Win Without War, as well as the
National Iranian American Council, which lobbied in favor of the Iran
nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew in 2018.
‘Inspired by President Trump’
While Huckabee may be the only US official publicly using the term Judea
and Samaria, he is not an outlier within the administration in terms of
his full-throttled support for Israel’s war against Hamas. Trump himself
has said he backs Israel “finishing the job” against Hamas, apparently
rejecting the phased ceasefire and hostage release deal that the terror
group accepted on August 18.
Ghoreishi contended that Trump has also talked — both on the campaign
and since entering office — about the need to end wars, including in Gaza.
“I was personally inspired by President Trump’s speech in May from Saudi
Arabia when he said that the era of ‘nation-builders and neocons’ is
over and that he was trying to establish a vision for peace moving
forward,” he said, adding that Trump has also pushed back on Netanyahu’s
assertions that there is no starvation in Gaza.
“Ambassador Huckabee won’t speak like that. He’ll undermine and reject
the idea that people are starving in Gaza. So who’s the real activist
here?” Ghoreishi charged.
President Donald Trump speaks at the Saudi-US Investment Forum at the
King Abdulaziz International Conference Center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia,
Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“When you have these activists in place around [Trump] — both the
embassy in Jerusalem at the senior level with some of these Heritage
Foundation guys around Secretary Rubio — it’s difficult to follow
through,” Ghoreishi argued.
“You can argue that [my firing] might have been inevitable, but I
believe my actions and those lines I drafted are in line with US
interests, with what the subject matter experts at the State Department
on multiple levels agreed with and were in line with the
administration’s America First policy,” he added.
“Everyone understands when President Trump wins an election, his team
gets prerogative when crafting policy,” Ghoreishi acknowledged, while
asserting that his job was to maintain “guardrails” that are being
“steamrolled” by Huckabee and Milstein.
A current US official told The Times of Israel that Milstein has on
multiple occasions sought to push through his own edits to press
statements by bypassing the usual approval process at the State Department.
Illustrative: State Department employees applaud as their colleagues
walk through the lobby of the State Department headquarters in the Harry
S Truman Building, Friday, July 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark
Schiefelbein)
Asked whether Milstein was acting on Huckabee’s orders, Ghoreishi said
he has heard conflicting reports from colleagues and isn’t sure.
For his part, Huckabee has insisted that his role is not to set policy,
but rather to implement Trump’s agenda.
Regardless, Ghoreishi said his firing was “designed to send a message.”
“Moving forward, it’s much less likely that my former colleagues are
going to be able to ensure guardrails inform our language and our policy
when it comes to Israel,” he asserted.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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