Jewish Groups Spar Over Trump National Security Adviser McMaster’s Israel Record
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — Jewish organizations sparred over the views of H.R. McMaster, the national security advisor, with the Zionist Organization of America attacking him as anti-Israel and the American Jewish Committee defending him.
ZOA, one of the few Jewish organizations to consistently defend President Trump, issued a report on Thursday sharply critical of McMaster.
In the report, ZOA claims that McMaster is undermining Trump’s Middle East agenda and the relationship between the United States and Israel by firing officials supportive of the Jewish state and critical of the Iran nuclear deal, including Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the hawkish former senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council.
The report calls on 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.”
Dan Shapiro, who served as ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, and the American Jewish Committee criticized the ZOA report.
“ZOA claims, on the flimsiest of pretexts that McMaster has ‘animus toward Israel’ and ‘opposes Trump’s pro-Israel policies’,” Shapiro tweeted. “Nonsense. Every Israeli official who met McMaster has found him to be deeply sympathetic, friendly, consistent with longstanding U.S. support for Israel.”
The centrist American Jewish Committee shared one of Shapiro’s tweets, adding: “Agreed. We were honored to host Gen. McMaster at AJC Global Forum and chatted with him before. His admiration for Israel was crystal-clear.”
On Friday, Trump called his national security adviser “very pro-Israel,” an apparent bid to end a barrage of attacks from the right that have depicted McMaster as hostile to Israel.
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