Deborah Lipstadt, former special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, raised concerns Tuesday about a “double standard” when it came to the State Department’s treatment of Israel under the Biden administration. 

Lipstadt shared the anecdote during an interview with historian Niall Ferguson at the Hoover Institution. During her tenure at the State Department, she said, there was “consideration of sanctions on arms going to an unnamed country, which we can all figure out what.”

Lipstadt said her office “asked the question” of the State Department’s Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers, “‘Is this [consideration of sanctions] a double standard? And what other countries have gotten these weapons from us?’”

There were six other countries receiving the weapons, Lipstadt said, asking, “How many of them are living up to the standards that are being imposed” on the one country being singled out?

The Biden administration in April paused sending some bombs and artillery shells to Israel, amid concerns that the IDF would launch a large-scale ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which the White House argued could lead to the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Despite Israel entering Rafah in May, by June, the U.S. agreed to resume sending 500-pound bombs but continued to withhold heavier, 2,000-pound ones. 

A State Department report to Congress in February 2024 named the seven countries that were required to uphold certain standards before receiving U.S. defense equipment as Colombia, Iraq, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria, Somalia and Ukraine. 

“We stayed focused. It wasn’t an attempt to be experts on everything, but we want to know if this was a double standard,” Lipstadt said.