U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain this week, marking the highest-level public visit by a U.S. official to the Middle East since the war with Iran began on February 28.

In the UAE, Waltz held separate meetings with Emirate President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Emirates News Agency reported that Waltz and the president “discussed UAE-U.S. strategic ties and ways to further strengthen cooperation across various fields in support of both countries’ mutual interests.”

On Wednesday, Waltz met with Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Abu Dhabi. A readout from the UAE Foreign Ministry said that Waltz and the foreign minister “discussed cooperation between the UAE and the United States, particularly within the framework of multilateral action and international organisations” and “reviewed regional developments and the repercussions of the unprovoked Iranian attacks that targeted the UAE and a number of sisterly countries.”

Waltz shared the UAE Foreign Ministry’s X post about the visit, adding that the two officials had a “Great meeting.” Emirati Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba also attended the meeting.

The UAE has been targeted by Iran more than any other country in the region — including Israel — since the start of hostilities in February.

Waltz traveled on to Bahrain from the UAE, where on Wednesday he visited the country’s main oil refinery. Twice this week, Iran has fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. military base in Bahrain, in addition to bases in Jordan and Kuwait. Shrapnel from the interceptions of the missiles fired toward Bahrain caused property damage in parts of the small Gulf state.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in late March that he had quietly traveled to the region days prior to meet with troops amid the Trump administration’s Operation Epic Fury, but did not provide details on where he traveled.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said on X that the next U.S. memorandum of understanding with Israel will end U.S. aid to Israel in favor of prioritizing trade.

“Israel receives $3.8 billion but spends far more than that buying US military goods. US also receives intel, tech innovations so that ROI is many times more,” Huckabee said on his personal account on X, responding to former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, who had argued in an interview that U.S. aid to Israel does not confer benefits to America. “New MOU w/ Israel ends aid & will be based on trade.”

Analysts have widely predicted that the next MOU, after the current one ends in 2028, will prioritize partnership programs jointly funded by both sides — which constitute a portion of current U.S. assistance to Israel — rather than direct financial aid, but the comments by Huckabee appear to be the first confirmation from a U.S. official that such plans are in the works.

Huckabee’s comments did not make clear whether the next agreement would phase out aid gradually or immediately.

The comments also come following repeated declarations by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wants to end U.S. financial assistance to Israel in the next decade, and on a backdrop of growing skepticism of U.S. aid to Israel on both sides of the aisle.

Prominent pro-Israel Republicans have endorsed Netanyahu’s effort to wind down U.S. aid.

But some critics of current U.S. aid are not likely to be satisfied by a shift to a cooperative model, or any system in which the U.S. continues to supply funding that benefits Israel’s defense.

We reported earlier this month on the series of vacancies in key ambassador-level posts throughout the Middle East — in countries including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq and Kuwait. A senior State Department post overseeing Middle East issues also remains vacant, after the previous nominee was blocked by lawmakers.

At this point, time is running short for President Donald Trump to fill any of those vacant posts before the confirmation process potentially becomes more difficult in the Senate after the midterm elections. 

Processing the nominations will take time: The chamber is set to be out of session for significant portions of the next few months. And there will be various other critical bills — including government funding, the annual defense bill and a potential third reconciliation package, to process on the Senate floor. Even ahead of floor proceedings, the vetting process in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can, itself, take months before nominees appear for a confirmation hearing.

If Trump seeks to fill these posts, it will likely be in the administration’s interest to do so before the end of the current Congress, as GOP control of the Senate for the final two years of Trump’s term is not assured, and even if Republicans retain the majority, it could be with an even smaller margin.

It’s not just Democrats who have proven to be an obstacle to some of the administration’s picks. Amer Ghalib, Trump’s original nominee to be ambassador to Kuwait, was blocked by Republicans over his history of antisemitism, among other issues. And Joel Rayburn, tapped for a top Middle East job in the State Department, was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who also slowed down proceedings for U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz.

That said, it’s not clear whether the administration will prioritize filling these vacancies. Earlier this month, experts told Jewish Insider that the White House has seemed content to vest responsibility for broad Middle East portfolios within a tight circle of personal allies of the president, including White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack — whose role has particularly concerned some Republicans. Many experts have argued that leaving the positions open is unwise and risks harming U.S. influence and diplomacy in the region.

State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told JI that “the department has confidence in our ability to communicate with our counterparts around the world and advance the national interest.” 

A State Department official claimed that the Trump administration is on track to have more nominees confirmed in the first two years of Trump’s second term than the Biden administration, and praised the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for working to promptly confirm its nominees. The official also noted that the State Department had reestablished a committee to review potential career foreign service officers who could be elevated to ambassadorial posts.

Elliott Abrams, who served as U.S. envoy to Iran during the first Trump administration, however, warned that it might be “too late” to clear the nominations. He added that “it does not seem that the administration is very concerned” with the issue.

“Normally any administration would try to fill as many ambassadorial posts as possible before the August recess. But it is a little late, because in order to do that you have to have people cleared, formally nominated, go through hearings, be voted out of committee and then come to the floor for a vote,” Abrams said. “I doubt the administration will rush to get ambassadors in place now, because it just does not seem to be a very high priority for the president.” 

Alexander Gray, who served as chief of staff on the National Security Council in Trump’s first administration, suggested that the White House should prioritize advancing qualified nominees for ambassadorships and criticized Democrats for what he described as a “long history of stymying President Trump’s nominations, regardless of whether they are in the majority or the minority.”

“The administration should continue to prioritize sending qualified ambassadors aligned with the president’s agenda to strategically significant countries, and pressuring Senators to confirm them expeditiously,” Gray said. “Historically, presidents received considerable deference in the confirmation of ambassadors. President Trump and Senate Republicans should demand similar treatment today.”

Other Trump allies argued that filling the ambassadorships is less critical, doubling down on the belief that the administration’s current approach of running Middle East policy through Trump’s inner circle is effective.

“In this region, trusted relationships, direct lines of communication and confidence from the president matter more than whether an ambassador is in place,” Jason Greenblatt, who served as White House Middle East envoy in the first Trump administration, said. “The leadership and senior diplomats in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar have strong and trusted relationships with President Trump and with the group doing much of the day-to-day work, including Steve Witkoff, Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio, Vice President Vance, and Jared Kushner. That group has President Trump’s deep trust and direct access to him. That remains true regardless of how Senate politics develops.”

Former U.S. diplomatic officials and Middle East experts called on the Trump administration to fill dozens of ambassador-level Middle East posts, warning that not doing so could carry damaging consequences for U.S. influence and diplomacy in the region, while other former Trump officials argued the administration can manage regional diplomacy in its current format. 

The Wall Street Journal first reported that more than 100 U.S. ambassador posts remain vacant under the Trump administration, including several key posts in the Middle East. The U.S. currently has no formal ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq or Kuwait. 

The vacancies stem from a mix of factors: a slower pace of nominations from President Donald Trump, a Senate confirmation process increasingly prone to delays and holds, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s December decision to abruptly recall nearly 30 career ambassadors.

The Trump administration has played down the vacancies, arguing that its foreign policy operation is running smoothly despite the empty posts. But several former U.S. officials and Middle East experts told Jewish Insider that leaving the post unfilled could be a serious diplomatic error.

Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy during the first Trump administration and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the vacancies a “huge mistake.”

“It’s a foolish and damaging failure by the Trump administration, and there’s no excuse for it,” Abrams said. “There are top career diplomats, such as the ones the administration has sent to Jordan, Bahrain and Oman, who could be sent, and surely there are potential political appointees who’d love to be in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi.”

Abrams noted that ambassadors often have access to members of royal families that lower-ranking U.S. diplomats do not, a dynamic that he said is especially important in monarchies.

“There’s simply no excuse for this, and no other country leaves such important posts vacant,” he added.

Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former State Department negotiator, expressed similar concern over the vacancies, saying “it would be better if they were filled with people.” He stressed, however, that the openings are more than a “narrow issue,” but rather a “reflection of a broader trend” in how the administration “makes decisions.” 

“It’s a lack of priority in diplomacy, and in diplomats,” Miller said. “It reflects a situation where the analytical assessments of how these countries would behave in response to a crisis like the war, what I call the ‘ground truth,’ is not getting to the president because there’s no one out there doing it.”

Miller said he believes the administration does not rely heavily on the advice of career diplomats or ambassadors, with key foreign policy decisions instead shaped by Trump’s inner circle.

“I think this reflects the fact that this administration does not rely on the advice and counsel of probably most of its ambassadors,” he said. “So does this surprise me? No, because part of the issue is that the White House and the president’s political team, including Jared Kushner and [White House Special Envoy] Steve Witkoff, seem to have more say and more influence than a Department of State led by Marco Rubio.”

Still, Miller acknowledged that filling the vacant ambassador posts likely would not have altered Trump’s broader foreign policy or prevented the Iran war.

Dan Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama and later as the Biden administration’s special liaison to Israel on Iran, similarly warned that relying on senior officials in Washington rather than ambassadors on the ground could limit U.S. influence and understanding of regional dynamics.

“Senior Trump administration figures may believe they can manage these relationships just fine over the phone from Washington because of their close ties with Arab officials. But there are gaps and bandwidth limits that they cannot always overcome,” Shapiro said. 

“Senate-confirmed ambassadors are the only senior U.S. officials who spend all day, every day in dialogue with foreign leaders. So they simply have greater access to key players in their host governments, knowledge of how they reach decisions, and ability to ensure they hear the views of the United States than do more junior diplomats,” he added. 

Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former British diplomat, explained that the vacancies are partly the result of a “downsizing” problem at the State Department, noting that the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in particular has suffered “budget cuts and lost over 80 staff since President Trump returned to office.”

“Many of those departing were senior, experienced diplomats who would have been candidates for Chief of Mission posts that were not offered to political appointees,” Fitton-Brown said.

Others who served in Trump’s first administration were less concerned, arguing instead that the White House can still conduct effective regional diplomacy through senior officials and direct relationships with Middle Eastern leaders.

Jason Greenblatt, a former White House Middle East envoy during the first Trump administration, told JI that while ambassadors “play an important role,” he does “not believe the administration is at any disadvantage … because of these vacancies.”

“The leadership and senior diplomats in those countries have strong and trusted relationships with President Trump and with the group doing much of the day-to-day work, including Steve Witkoff, Secretary Rubio, Vice President Vance and Jared Kushner,” Greenblatt said. “Just as important, that group has President Trump’s deep trust and direct access to him. In this region, those trusted relationships, direct lines of communication and confidence from the president are more valuable than having an ambassador in place.”

Alexander Gray, who served as chief of staff to the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, similarly downplayed concerns over the vacancies, and said filling such positions is “one of the most difficult parts of American foreign policy.”

“This stems from multiple causes, including the arcane Senate confirmation process and the frequent holds placed by senators on ambassadorial nominees over unrelated issues,” Gray said. “The approval process for all presidential nominees, including ambassadors, needs a major overhaul by congressional leadership. President Trump has been diligent in nominating high-quality, non-career diplomats for critical posts.”

The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

LOS ANGELES — While the world’s attention has been fixed on Iran, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz and a team of American bureaucrats have spent the last few months quietly working to turn President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace into a fully functioning entity. 

The fledgling international organization — billed by some as an alternative to the U.N., although Waltz insists there is room for both — has the astronomically large task of governing and rebuilding Gaza. Waltz is bullish on the possibility that the morass of Gaza can be worked out peacefully, with enough buy-in from countries who are willing to finance the creation of a new governing and police structure in Gaza.

“​​The contributions keep coming in for both the international stabilization force and the new police force. That training is standing up in both Egypt and Jordan. It’s going to take time, but all of those pieces are moving forward,” Waltz told Jewish Insider during an interview on Monday at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. 

One lingering challenge to Waltz’s premise of a peaceful Gaza is Hamas’ grip on power, which remains a huge variable in a plan that is largely contingent upon the U.S. and Israel’s defeat of Hamas. The terror group still controls large swathes of Gaza, even if not all of it. It will be loath to hand over that power willingly. Waltz swore that Hamas “will never again rule Gaza,” whether as a result of “diplomatic action or military action.”

“I wouldn’t expect a terrorist organization like them to just roll over and hand over everybody, but once we’ve cut off any other path for them, then I think they have no other choice,” said Waltz. 

Hamas, he argued, will not put down its arms unless compelled to do so. If Hamas feels squeezed enough — if the U.S. has enough leverage — then the group will have no choice but to give in, according to Waltz.

“At the end of the day, Hamas has a choice to make. Those negotiations are going on as we speak. [Nickolay] Mladenov laid out a demilitarization plan, a plan to decommission their weapons,” Waltz said, referring to the Bulgarian diplomat who heads the Board of Peace. “I’m going to remain optimistic, as horrific an organization that Hamas is.”

The deck is now stacked against Hamas, Waltz argued. He pointed to the Gulf states and Arab nations that are members of the Board of Peace — places like Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — to signal that Hamas is deeply isolated.

“They really have no option,” said Waltz. “They’re either going to do this the easy way or the hard way. And let’s all pray they do it the easy way.” 

Still, he acknowledged that the group’s hold on power remains strong.

“I think they’re [Hamas] unfortunately still exerting control over portions, but we’ve also seen pushback from local tribes, local families,” Waltz said of Hamas. He noted that the Board of Peace-affiliated National Committee for the Administration of Gaza has plans to take over government services. But that will be only in the parts of Gaza not controlled by Hamas. 

Israel’s first Christian ambassador, George Deek, has a new job after his return to Israel from his most recent posting as Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan: special envoy to the Christian world.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar named Deek to the role on Thursday, with the ministry saying that the move was “intended to deepen Israel’s ties with Christian communities around the world.”

Deek, who joined the Foreign Ministry in 2008 and has been posted to Norway and Nigeria, received the Foreign Ministry Director General’s Award for Excellence in 2021. He is part of the Arab Orthodox Christian community in Jaffa, and his father, Youssef Deek, was chairman of the community for many years.

Deek came to international prominence as Israel’s chargé d’affaires in Oslo after giving a speech about his family’s background and his decision to represent Israel around the world. In the speech, video of which has gone viral, he spoke about his grandparents’ departure from Jaffa during Israel’s War of Independence and choice to return and build their lives in the fledgling Jewish state.

Sa’ar said that “the State of Israel attaches great importance to its relations with the Christian world and with its Christian friends around the world. I am confident that George, a respected and experienced diplomat, will greatly contribute to the friendship and strengthening of the ties between the State of Israel and the Christian world.”

Deek’s appointment was announced soon after several controversies in Israel relating to Christians. Most recently, an IDF soldier who broke a statue of Jesus in a southern Lebanese Christian town was removed from combat duty and given 30 days in prison.

On Palm Sunday, with the war in Iran still raging, police officers barred Cardinal Pierbatista Pizzaballa from accessing the Church of the Holy Sepulcher because it did not have proper protection from missiles. After Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu intervened, Pizzaballa was given more access to the church.

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter arrived at his post in January as Israel was more than a year into its war with Hamas in Gaza and facing declining American support for the Jewish state. 

The Trump administration has been much friendlier to the government in Jerusalem than its predecessor, supporting the Israeli war effort in Gaza with no limitations on arms shipments. Yet, the broader political atmosphere is more hostile to Israel than it has been in decades. 

The turn away from Israel was reflected in a recent Senate vote in which a majority of Democrats supported blocking some arms sales to Israel, as well as in the growth of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, the rise of influential media figures who peddle antisemitism and public opinion about Israel in decline.

Leiter spoke with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov and the executive director of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, Asher Fredman, on the “Misgav Mideast Horizons” podcast this week about his efforts to engage members of both parties, the future of the U.S.-Israel alliance, what is next in the war in Gaza and more.

Amid these concerning political trends, Leiter said that the U.S. and Israel have started to discuss what will happen after the Obama-era 10-year Memorandum of Understanding between the countries, which currently commits $3.8 billion a year in American defense aid to Israel annually, expires in 2028. 

While Israel’s official position favors continuing aid, some in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party and others on the Israeli right have been advocating for moving from a model of aid to one of collaboration on joint projects.

“Maybe we’ll change the nature [of the MOU], where there will be greater [joint] research and development between our two countries, rather than relying on American weapons,” Leiter said. 

Leiter emphasized that the defense relationship between Israel and the U.S. benefits both countries.

“Recently, there was a podcast with [Rep.] Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in which she said, ‘Why are we giving $3.8 billion to Israel when people in the United States don’t have health care?’” he said. “What she neglected to mention is that the vast majority of the $3.8 billion is spent in the United States and actually is providing jobs — and health care — for American workers. It’s all American weapons … purchased with American aid. So it’s a win-win situation.”

Leiter also quoted Gen. George Keegan who once told journalist Wolf Blitzer that the value of Israeli intelligence is worth five CIAs.

“You know how much that would cost [to replace]? The level of cooperation we have at this point between our intelligence communities is very, very, very deep and wide. We provide a tremendous service to the United States’ interests in the Middle East,” he said.

The U.S. and Israel will have to evaluate “a paradigm shift” in the region when working on the next MOU, Leiter said.

“I think we have to start from a broader view of things in terms of the geostrategic realities that are developing in the Middle East. … The ramifications of [the strikes on Iran in] Operation Rising Lion and Midnight Hammer, but really the ramifications of the war against Iranian proxies over the past almost two years now since Oct. 7, [2023], is a changing Middle East,” Leiter said.

“We’ve seen all of the proxies degraded. We’re about to completely destroy Hamas. Hezbollah is dramatically degraded to the point where the Lebanese government is actually moving towards disarming them. We have the fall of the Assad regime in Syria. Nobody could have imagined that would have happened. And the Houthis are being degraded … There’s a new Middle East out there,” he added.

In Leiter’s view, the result of the last two years is that moderate Muslim states face fewer threats from Iran and other radical Islamists, increasing the chances of what he termed “an Abraham Accords 2.0.” 

“That enables the United States to rely more on a collective between Israel and its neighbors, and have less of an American footprint in the Middle East,” he said. 

“Therefore,” the ambassador added, “the nature of any MOU or collaborative effort is going to change.” 

Leiter spoke to JI before a day of meetings on Capitol Hill, in which he planned to meet with Democrats and Republicans. He has made sure to meet with critics of Israel in addition to friendly members of Congress.

“I will always divide my day [between the parties] and make it as much of a bipartisan effort as I possibly can,” he said. “Not only for tactical political reasons — the Democrats can take control of Congress in a year and a half and if we haven’t paid them the proper respect and attention, we’re going to pay a very serious price — but beyond the tactical political plane, I believe that Israel is a bipartisan issue and should remain so.”

Leiter said that some of Israel’s critics are reflexively critical: “It’s a very partisan atmosphere in Washington right now, which makes it very complicated. You can see this in issues that are not related to Israel … If the administration is saying one thing, the Democratic opposition believes it’s got to say something else. There’s strong support for Israel in the [Trump] administration, so that almost drives the Democratic opposition into opposing very close support for Israel.” 

The ambassador emphasized that “in the Trump administration, we’ve seen a level of collaboration between Israel and the United States that we’ve never had [before],” citing the joint strikes on Iran’s nuclear program in June. “There’s never been this kind of cooperation at this level. We’re very close on the one hand. On the other hand, there are dramatic and very intense challenges to this relationship.” 

In addition to “the woke left, which has distanced itself from Israel, because we’re perceived as … the white men that have dominated and written history,” Leiter lamented the “conspiratorial, isolationist” right.

“Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens’ orbit is not America First, it’s Israel and Jews last,” he said. “America First is fine. We don’t have an issue with that. We put Israel first, America puts America first … I think it’s obvious and elemental. With the isolationist and conspiratorial right, Israel is always wrong and the Jews are always behind everything that’s wrong.”

Still, Leiter said he has not found that anti-Israel view in the halls of the White House, State Department or Pentagon.

“There are legitimate strategic positions that the U.S. should put more focus on the far East rather than the Middle East. … I think that actually may be advantageous to Israel and the Middle East as a whole if that’s going to happen in a gradual and careful way as we move into the future,” he added.

About the ongoing war against Hamas, Leiter said, “There’s no public in the world that wants to end the war more than we [Israelis] do. No one has suffered as much as we do. Since the day Israel was founded, we haven’t experienced one day of peace. Not a day. We want to end this war and we can’t do it unless we have defeated this enemy. … The ultimate goal is going to be a complete demilitarization of Gaza,” he said.

Leiter pushed back against accusations that Israel plans to force residents out of Gaza with backing from the Trump administration.

“The president of the United States didn’t talk about forcing anybody, but talked about giving them the option … Why not allow these people the opportunity to choose? That’s all we’re suggesting.”

The ambassador noted that Israel has facilitated the exit of 40,000 people from Gaza who have visas to receive medical care in other countries, and they left through Israel, not Egypt, which would charge them tens of thousands of dollars to transit through their country.

“Why wouldn’t Egypt just open the border and let people go through?” he asked.

Leiter also spoke out against a Palestinian state, saying that very few Israelis still support the proposition.

“Even the left-of-center realize that the bandwidth for another state west of the Jordan River is untenable and unacceptable. Since Oct. 7, that bandwidth has narrowed further, and it’s about a hair’s breadth now … Everybody’s got to get used to that and stop talking about this two-state solution,” he said.

“There will be far more normalization and peaceful relations with our Palestinian neighbors once we get beyond this red herring of the two-state solution,” the ambassador added.

Leiter said that there are alternatives to a Palestinian state, including “autonomous zones … total autonomy,” while “security and overall foreign relations are going to remain in Israel’s hands.” 

He spoke about possible dramatic economic growth benefiting Palestinians in the West Bank, which could come as a result of planned infrastructure corridors crossing from the Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea.

The ambassador expressed hope about an “Abraham Accords 2.0,” in which Israel normalizes relations with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and several Central Asian Muslim countries.

“Once that happens, the whole issue of saying everything is based on Palestinian centrality goes away,” he said.

With a dozen countries planning to recognize a Palestinian state in the coming weeks, in an effort led by France and Saudi Arabia, Leiter accused Europe of attempting “a cleansing process, because if you can condemn Israel for genocide … that means that what Europe was guilty of 80 years ago is not unique.”

In addition, the ambassador argued that European leaders are concerned about getting the votes of growing Muslim populations in their countries.

“They couldn’t care less about Palestinians. If they really cared, they’d issue some visas. I mean, France could issue 150,000 visas and give people a new opportunity at life, but that’s the last thing they want to do. They don’t want to allow in more Muslims. …It’s a tragedy that we’re paying the price for this,” he added.

Recognizing a Palestinian state is “prolonging the war,” Leiter said. “Basically what the French are doing is declaring Oct. 7 Palestine Independence Day. Brilliant, right? Let’s reward these people for slaughter and massacre.”

“It’s an outrage. It’s immoral. And we have to stay the course. We are ultimately going to be vindicated. I have no doubt about it,” he said.

Leiter’s son, Moshe, a physician and father of six, was killed in battle in Gaza on Nov. 10, 2023.

Leiter said his son was “a very committed Jew and Zionist and he knew what he was fighting for … for the right of the Jewish people to live in their homeland in peace and security.” 

“I carry him on my back every day, and it gives me the power, the energy, the ability to go forward,” he said. “You really have to make a decision when you lose someone that you love so much and you’re so close to and fills your life with meaning and purpose. He’s the reason why it’s so hard to get up in the morning, and he’s also the reason why I do, because you have to make that choice and move forward.”

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee privately briefed lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday morning on the security and political situation in the West Bank and the war in Gaza.

The briefing was organized by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who chairs the subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, in response to efforts by France and other U.S. allies to recognize a Palestinian state. Despite a focus on the West Bank, attendees indicated that the briefing did not provide specific answers on any U.S. policy toward a potential Israeli move to annex all or part of the territory.

Lawler told Jewish Insider the briefing had included a “thorough discussion with the ambassador about Judea and Samaria and the challenges and the opportunities,” using the biblical term for the West Bank preferred by the Israeli government and utilized by the Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Given the insistence on the part of the French and other Europeans to recognize a Palestinian state, I thought it was important for my colleagues to have a greater understanding of what we’re actually talking about with respect to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank, and how it is actually governed post-Oslo,” Lawler continued, referring to the peace accords brokered in the 1990s.

He noted that a majority of the West Bank is categorized as Area C, controlled by Israel, and said many people do not understand that.

Asked whether the group had discussed a potential declaration of Israeli sovereignty in that area, Lawler responded, “No, we had a broad discussion on the entirety of the situation there.”

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) said he does not “think there’s any support in the United States for unilateral action by Israel to annex any territory.” Some congressional Republicans have indicated support for such a policy.

“[Huckabee] is against the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state, and I urged [him] to be equally vocal against unilateral actions by settlers or even the Israeli government designed to prevent a Palestinian state. If you’re against this unilateral, you’re against that unilateral,” Sherman told JI.

He added that Huckabee’s “dedication to the hostages is palpable. You can feel it. You can see it.”

Asked whether the group had discussed potential Israeli annexation of the West Bank, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) declined to address specific details of the closed-door briefing but said, “there was broad discussion on a lot of different issues, but we didn’t go in-depth into anything specifically.”

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said Wednesday that members of the Israeli government are formulating plans for annexation of the West Bank, potentially including all but six large Palestinian cities in the West Bank, with the goal of claiming “maximum territory and minimum population.” Israel is set to hold high-level discussions on the subject this week.

An envoy for the United Arab Emirates told The Times of Israel this week that “annexation would be a red line” for the UAE and would “foreclose the idea of regional integration and be the death knell of the two-state solution.”

The UAE joined the Abraham Accords in 2020 in part to halt then-pending plans for annexation of the West Bank.

The U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, told reporters at a roundtable on Tuesday — her last before departing her role — that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres had condemned Francesca Albanese, the special rapporteur on the situation on human rights in the Palestinian territories, who the U.S. has repeatedly criticized for antisemitic comments, in a one-on-one conversation with her.

Lipstadt also spoke about her hopes for the Trump administration’s efforts to fight antisemitism, internal issues among some State Department staff relating to her office’s mission, China’s role as a driver of global antisemitism and her most important accomplishments in office.

The outgoing envoy said that, during an event at a synagogue during the Munich Security Conference, she had spoken to Guterres about the U.S. government’s concerns with Albanese. In Lipstadt’s retelling, Guterres responded, twice, “She’s a horrible person.”

U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly pressed Guterres and the U.N. to dismiss Albanese, whose position is unpaid, but those calls have gone unanswered.

Lipstadt declined to comment on some of the controversial names, such as Shmuley Boteach, Alan Dershowitz and Dov Hikind, who’ve been floated to replace her, but said that she hopes President-elect Donald Trump will nominate “someone who will be a barn-builder, not a barn-burner,” and can build on the progress she has made.

“I would hope it would be someone who would command the respect and the attention of the foreign governments with which they’ll be dealing,” she continued. Lipstadt said she “certainly hope[s]” that the incoming administration is up to the task of combating the global surge in antisemitism.

She said that, based on conversations with Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio during her confirmation process, she is confident that the Florida senator “takes this issue very seriously” and “gets it 100%, just as Secretary [Tony] Blinken got it, so that gives me direct hope on this issue.”

Lipstadt said she’d be willing to offer advice to the Trump team or her eventual replacement if they ask, explaining that refusing to do so “would be a dereliction of duty and everything I’ve said.”

Since the Oct. 7 attacks, several mid-level State Department staffers have publicly resigned in protest of the U.S.’ support for Israel. While Lipstadt said that the issue had not impacted the senior policy-making levels of the State Department, some individual mid-level staff had expressed issues with her office’s work because they did not understand that combating antisemitism and support for Israel are separate issues.

“For some of them, I think it spilled over into thinking, ‘Well, if they fight antisemitism, they must support Israel 120%,’ or something like that,” she said. “It wasn’t resistance to the work that we’re doing but I think there were some people, misinformed people, who thought [they knew] what our particular views were without ever asking us.”

Lipstadt said that State Department officials also still had yet to identify who scrawled a swastika inside an elevator in the State Department headquarters several years ago.

She also noted that China has been a significant driver of global antisemitism in recent years, which she described as a form of “utilitarian” antisemitism, employed for political gain, rather than ideological reasons.

“It seems to have been … a way of signaling that ‘We are with the global south. We’re with you and not with them,’” Lipstadt said.

She said that such discussions have made a particularly strong impression on foreign officials with whom she has met, and helped some better understand the nature and importance of combating antisemitism.

U.S. intelligence and security agencies are “very aware” of the Chinese government’s amplification of antisemitism and the “global implications” of that, she added.

Reflecting on the rise of antisemitism since Oct. 7, Lipstadt said she believes that the organized Jewish community overlooked and underestimated the extent to which anti-Israel and pro-Hamas groups had built up support on college campuses. She said she’s “glad the organizations are re-assessing” and are adapting to the new landscape.

She also emphasized that antisemitism is now impacting individual Jews’ “personal lives in a way that we haven’t seen since the ‘50s and early ‘60s.”

The spike, she said, has brought antisemitism issues “into sharper focus than I ever imagined,” and the global landscape has “changed tremendously,” with antisemites becoming more emboldened and brazen.

She noted that it’s been “frustrating at times” to be restricted, because of her international remit, in her ability to address domestic antisemitism on college campuses, where she spent most of her career before the State Department.

Lipstadt did say she was struck by how “heated and extreme” rhetoric on college campuses became, including overt support for terrorism and denial of Hamas’s atrocities, “in a way that I had never seen before in relation to other kinds of tragedies.” She said that “struck me as something really significant.”

Lipstadt said that one of her early goals in office was making progress on fighting antisemitism in Gulf states, and convincing them to separate the issue from geopolitical issues with Israel. Her first foreign trip in her role was to Saudi Arabia to pursue this goal.

She said those efforts were stalled as a result of the Oct. 7 attack, but said she hopes that the next administration is able to advance them.

“I think that could have a very big impact in terms of the power of those countries, the importance of those countries, but also in terms of antisemitism within the Muslim world, the Arab world,” Lipstadt said.

Lipstadt said she believes she has helped raise the prominence of antisemitism as a foreign policy concern issue both within the State Department and with partner governments abroad, even in countries without substantial Jewish populations.

One key signal of this, she said, is that the State Department distributed the global guidelines for combating antisemitism, which the U.S. and other partners developed, as a démarche to a range of U.S. partners, formally asking other nations to sign express their support for the guidelines and making them a formal part of the State Department’s global human rights agenda.

Lipstadt said another major success was overhauling the structure of the office, which had just two full time and one part-time permanent staff members when the Trump administration left office and effectively shut down in the transition period between presidential administrations.

Now, the office will have approximately 20 full-time non-political staff who will continue on into the Trump administration and will be able to keep the office’s work moving ahead even before a new special envoy is nominated or a deputy special envoy is appointed.

Those staff, she said, will continue to work on recruiting additional countries to sign the global guidelines, participate in international conferences and continue to advise other State Department personnel and policymakers on antisemitism.

Lipstadt, who was a frequent social media user in her pre-government life — a fact that caused issues with some Republicans during her confirmation process — said she’s still deciding how best to speak out in her post-government life.

She said that she’s also found, in government life, that not speaking out, or acting quietly, can be more effective in the long-run than public condemnations.

“I’ll have to decide,” she said. “Also, if you speak too much on everything, at some point you’ll just be dismissed as a partisan hack.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer suggested on Wednesday that Israeli political and defense leaders are now united in opposing the terms of the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.

In a conversation with Ambassador Dennis Ross at the United Against Nuclear Iran annual summit in New York, Dermer stressed that while some former high-level government and security officials expressed support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), “today you cannot find security and intelligence officials in Israel — I’m not aware of any of them — that would go back to the exact same deal.” 

“The United States has got enormous leverage, and I think the idea of going back into the same deal with Iran, it gives them a clear path to nuclear weapons,” he explained.

Asked if Israel’s position on Iran would change if a national unity government is formed following last week’s redo election, Dermer said that “any new government” would continue to support Israel’s longstanding opposition to the JCPOA and be in favor of economic pressure on Iran “to ensure that: A, that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, and B, that everything is done to roll back Iran’s aggression.” 

Dermer also noted that Blue and White leader Benny Gantz said earlier this year at the Munich security conference that there was no difference between him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the topic of Iran. 

During the election, Netanyahu slammed his chief rival for “supporting the Iran nuclear deal” in 2015. 

Dermer said that Israel “could live with” a new nuclear deal negotiated by the U.S. — but only if it addressed the sunset clause. “The one problem that you have to address is you have to prevent Iran from ever being a military nuclear power,” he stated. “And if you have a sunset clause, that’s a date certain for when you want to would be a military nuclear power, and that has enormous consequences for our region.”