Top U.S. General Visits Israel Amid Iran Tension
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, visited the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv on Friday and met with Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz.
“I’m really pleased to be here,” General Dempsey said at the start of his meeting with Barak. “We have many interests in common in the region in this very dynamic time and the more we can continue to engage each other, the better off we’ll all be”.
The visit came as the U.S. is trying to coordinate steps and clarify Israel’s intentions with regard to a possible attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.
Gen. Dempsey arrived in Israel on Thursday on his first visit to the country. He had dinner with Lt. Gen. Gantz in Tel Aviv.
The IDF said the joint discussion with senior IDF officials would deal with cooperation between the two countries’ armies and the joint security challenges they face.
Gen. Dempsey will also meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Shimon Peres, and will pay a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
