State Dept. Apologizes For Video That Removed Israel From Trump Announcement

Muslim pilgrims pray at the holy city of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia. Image by flickr

By Josefin Dolsten May 8, 2017

(JTA) — The State Department called the posting of a video by the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that removed Israel from President Trump’s announcement about his upcoming trip an “inadvertent mistake.”

Rep. Eliot Engel, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, sent a letter on Monday to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in which he criticized the State Department for “editing out” Israel in the video posted on the Riyadh embassy website and Twitter account. The videos were no longer available on Monday afternoon and a video on the embassy site contained the complete announcement.

“At a time when the United States should be encouraging the governments of the region — and their people — to promote tolerance, respect and mutual recognition, this video implies that the U.S. accepts Saudi Arabia’s public rejectionist position toward Israel,” Engel wrote.

A State Department official told JTA that the embassy had taken the video from the social media account of a private Saudi citizen without realizing that Israel had been edited out.

“Upon learning this, the U.S. Embassy immediately corrected the error, took down the video, and loaded the correct version to its social media accounts,” the official said in a statement. “The Embassy expresses its regret for this inadvertent mistake.”

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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