Siding With Bannon, ZOA Calls For Ousting Of McMaster

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By Nathan Guttman August 10, 2017

Wading into the internal divides inside the Trump White House, the Zionist Organization of America issued a report on Wednesday that was highly critical of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

The report, first leaked exclusively to Breitbart, supports claims raised by right-wing activists aligned with White House chief strategist Steve Bannon that McMaster is biased against Israel and does not support Trump’s nationalist foreign policy.

“The ZOA thus urges President Trump to remove General McMaster from his current position and reassign him to another position where he can do no further harm on these critical national security issues,” the report concludes. “General McMaster should not maintain a position where he can continue to undermine President Trump’s policies on Iran, Israel and the fight against ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ – a term that General McMaster believes should not even be used.”

The ZOA’s case against McMaster focuses on his decision to fire several NSC staffers who held hawkish views on Iran, as well as on several instances in which, adhering to longstanding U.S. policy, McMaster spoke of “Palestinian self-determination” and would not state that the Western Wall was part of Israel. The report is based heavily on a Facebook post by Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, as well as on other from right-wing media articles.

Dan Shapiro, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, responded to the ZOA’s report on Twitter, calling the claims against McMaster “baloney” and said they were merely “a cover for taking sides in the White House personnel wars.”

Contact Nathan Guttman at guttman@forward.com or on Twitter @nathanguttman

Nathan Guttman, staff writer, was the Forward’s Washington bureau chief. He joined the staff in 2006 after serving for five years as Washington correspondent for the Israeli dailies Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post. In Israel, he was the features editor for Ha’aretz and chief editor of Channel 1 TV evening news. He was born in Canada and grew up in Israel. He is a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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