A top aide to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee suppressed and altered reports written by American diplomats in Jerusalem documenting settler violence in the occupied West Bank, in order to present Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government in a more favorable light, according to an investigation published by The New York Times, based on multiple officials and documents obtained by the newspaper.
The aide, David Milstein, is a senior adviser to Huckabee and the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin, a close ally of Netanyahu. According to the report, Milstein sent a cable to Washington praising Israel for cracking down on settler violence, even though embassy staff had drafted a report concluding that the Israeli government was taking no action against it.
The most serious allegation concerns the killing of nine US citizens by Israeli occupation forces and settlers. After 30 members of Congress wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February seeking updates on the investigations, the embassy completed a detailed report by March finding that Israeli investigations had gone nowhere, that some cases had been closed, and that no one had been charged. Milstein allegedly intervened to suppress that report, and pushed instead for a short letter to be sent to Senator Chris Van Hollen, which officials said hindered lawmakers' efforts to examine the cases. The ninth American killed was Nasrallah Abu Siyam, 19, who was shot dead in the occupied West Bank in February while trying to stop settlers from stealing his livestock.
Milstein also required that communications from the embassy's Palestinian affairs section be routed through him, according to the report. Cables from the section, which had previously been sent several times a week, dropped to a few per month. Officials described the intervention as unprecedented for the embassy and said it deprives the US government of accurate information about Israel through diplomatic channels.
Staff members reportedly felt a chilling effect, and some raised concerns about Milstein's ties to Levin. He was also said to have downplayed Israeli settlement expansion, and to have dismissed mass killing of starved Palestinians during the delivery of aid in Gaza.
It is not clear whether Huckabee knew of or approved Milstein's actions. Huckabee said he personally and categorically refutes the elements of the story, criticized the use of unnamed sources, and suggested that the Times consult its attorneys over the risk of defamation.
The investigation indicates that Washington's picture of settler violence has been shaped by an adviser aligned with Netanyahu's government, at a time when Congress was asking for the facts about Americans killed. The embassy's own finding that no one has been charged in those killings sits alongside a cable praising Israel for acting against the violence, and the embassy's reporting on the occupied West Bank has been reduced to a fraction of its former volume.
