Uncategorized
Hating Israel Isn’t New; How the CIA and State Department Undermined the Jewish State
“Teddy Roosevelt’s great-great-great grandson is an anti-Israel protester at Princeton,” blared a New York Post headline on May 4, 2024.
The Post reported that Quentin Colon Roosevelt, an 18-year-old freshman, and descendant of the 25th President, is an anti-Israel activist at the Ivy League university. But far from being hip and new, Quentin’s brand of anti-Zionism is old hat — he is merely continuing a long family tradition of anti-Israel activism.
There is an abundance of literature on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s views on Jews and Zionism, the belief in Jewish self-determination. Both FDR and his wife Eleanor had made antisemitic remarks. In a private conversation in 1938, then-President Roosevelt suggested that by dominating the economy in Poland, Jews were themselves fueling antisemitism. And in a 1941 Cabinet meeting, FDR remarked that there were too many Jewish Federal employees in Oregon. In his final days, FDR promised Saudi leader Abdul Aziz Ibn al Saud that he would oppose the creation of Jewish state in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland.
FDR is the president who led the United States to victory against Adolf Hitler. He also employed Jews in high-ranking positions in his government. But he is also the president whose administration failed to save more Jews fleeing Nazism, and who refused to bomb the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz and other death camps where millions of Jews met a ghastly end. Accordingly, it makes sense that his beliefs regarding Jews have been the subject of books and belated study.
Less examined, however, is the Oyster Bay branch of the Roosevelt clan, and their beliefs regarding Zionism. In part, this is easily explained by the unique place that FDR holds in American history. He is the only president to serve four terms, and presided over both the Great Depression, World War II, and arguably the beginning of the Cold War. His branch of the family, the Hyde Park Roosevelts, were Democrats and remained active in public life for decades after his 1945 death.
At first glance, the Oyster Bay Roosevelts were more of a turn of the 19th century affair. They were Republicans, and their scion was Teddy Roosevelt, a war hero turned governor of New York state who, thanks to an assassin’s bullet, found himself as the nation’s leader in 1901.
The famously ebullient Roosevelt helped redefine the country’s idea of a president, and served as an inspiration for his cousin Franklin. But Teddy largely presided over an era of peace and tranquility, not war and upheaval.
Teddy was a philosemite. He was the first occupant of the Oval Office to appoint a Jewish American to the Cabinet. He championed the rights of Jews, both at home and abroad, and was harshly critical of the numerous pogroms that unfolded in czarist Russia.
As Seth Rogovoy has noted, Roosevelt’s “special relationship with Jews was forged during his time serving as police commissioner in New York City, a post he assumed in 1904.” When an antisemitic German preacher named Hermann Ahlwardt gave speeches in the city, Roosevelt assigned a contingent of Jewish police officers to guard the man.
Roosevelt was also a Zionist. In 1918, shortly after the Balfour Declaration, he wrote: “It seems to me that it is entirely proper to start a Zionist state around Jerusalem.” He told Lioubomir Michailovitch, the Serbian Minister to the United States, that “there can be no peace worth having … unless the Jews [are] given control of Palestine.” Six months later Roosevelt died in his sleep.
Not all his descendants would share his belief in Jewish self-determination, however.
Two of Teddy Roosevelt’s grandchildren, Kermit and Archie, served their country in the CIA during the early years of the Cold War. Both were keenly interested in Middle East affairs, and were fluent in Arabic. Both were well read and highly educated, authoring books and filing dispatches for newspapers like the Saturday Evening Post, among others.
They were also prominent anti-Zionists.
Kermit Roosevelt, known as “Kim,” played a key role in anti-Zionist efforts in the United States and abroad. He was not, by the standards of his time, an antisemite. But he was ardently opposed to the creation of Israel.
As Hugh Wilford observed in his 2013 book America’s Great Game: The CIA’s Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East: “the anti-Zionism of the overt Cold War foreign policy establishment is well known” but “less widely appreciated is the opposition to Jewish statehood of the individuals responsible for setting up the United States’ covert apparatus in the Middle East.”
This began with the OSS, the CIA’s precursor. And it included men like Stephen Penrose, a former American University of Beirut instructor, and Kim Roosevelt’s boss during his wartime service in the OSS.
“Documents among Penrose’s personal papers reveal him engaged in a variety of anti-Zionist activities at the same time that he was commencing his official duties with the OSS,” Wilford notes.
Like many of his fellow Arabists, Penrose was the son of American missionaries who, failing to convert the native population to Christianity, sought to foster Arab nationalism instead. Penrose described himself as a “chief cook” who was “brewing” opposition to Zionism. He became one of Kim Roosevelt’s mentors.
In a January 1948 Middle East Journal article entitled, “Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics,” Kim called the 1947 UN vote in favor of a Jewish state an “instructive and disturbing story.”
Roosevelt believed that the US media was unduly supportive of the creation of Israel, and claimed that almost all Americans “with diplomatic, educational, missionary, or business experience in the Middle East” opposed Zionism.
Kim’s pamphlet was reprinted by the Institute for Arab American Affairs, a New York-based group whose board he sat on. He also began working with the Arab League’s Washington, D.C., office and “turned elsewhere for allies in the anti-Zionist struggle, starting with the Protestant missionaries, educators, and aid workers.”
This nascent group soon received financial support from the American oil industry, which maintained close links to Kim’s OSS/CIA colleague, William Eddy.
As Wilford noted, the Arabian consortium ARAMCO “launched a public relations campaign intended to bring American opinion around to the Arab point of view.”
In addition to missionaries and big oil, Kim gained another important ally in the form of Elmer Berger, a rabbi from Flint, Michigan. Berger served as executive director of the American Council for Judaism, an anti-Zionist group that, among other things, opposed the creation of a Jewish army during World War II at the height of the Holocaust. Berger and Roosevelt became drinking buddies and close collaborators on their joint effort against the Jewish State.
Kim eventually became “organizing secretary” for a group called The Committee for Justice and Peace. The committee’s original chair, Virginia Gildersleeve, was both a longtime friend of the Roosevelts of Oyster Bay and the dean of New York City’s Barnard College, which today is part of Columbia.
Gildersleeve was “also a high-profile anti-Zionist” who “became involved with the Arab cause through her association with the Arabist philanthropist Charles Crane and the historian of Arab nationalism George Antonius.”
Crane, a wealthy and notorious antisemite, had lobbied against the creation of a Jewish state since the beginning of the 20th century, even advising then-President Woodrow Wilson against supporting the Balfour Declaration.
By 1950, the Committee had managed to recruit famed journalist Dorothy Thompson to their cause. Thompson was reportedly the basis for actress Katharine Hepburn’s character in the 1942 movie Woman of the Year. A convert to anti-Zionism, Thompson’s extensive network of reporters and celebrities proved crucial to Kim and Berger’s efforts to rally opposition to the Jewish State. In a 1951 letter to Barnard College’s Gildersleeve, Thompson wrote: “I am seriously concerned about the position of the Jews in the United States.” People, she claimed, “are beginning to ask themselves the question: who is really running America?”
Another ally emerged that year: the Central Intelligence Agency.
The CIA began funding the Committee, as well as its successor, the American Friends of the Middle East (AFME). Beginning in June 1950, Kim’s correspondence with Berger began making veiled references to the ACJ head taking on “official work” in Washington. This, Wilford believes, is a reference to working with the CIA. Indeed, the well-connected Kim and Archie Roosevelt had known top CIA officials like Allan Dulles since childhood.
With support from figures like Eddy, AFME also began encouraging Muslim-Christian alliances — ostensibly to counter Soviet influence, but also to attack the Jewish state. This led to some awkward alliances, including with Amin al-Husseini, the founding father of Palestinian nationalism and an infamous Nazi collaborator.
Husseini had ordered the murders of rival Palestinians, incited violence against Jews since the 1920s, and had led forces, equipped with Nazi-supplied arms, to destroy Israel at its rebirth in 1948. Now, along with the Secretary General of the Arab League, and Saudi King Ibn Saud, he was meeting with Eddy to discuss a “moral alliance” between Christians and Muslims to defeat communism. Kim himself knew Husseini, having interviewed him for the Saturday Evening Post after World War II.
AFME lobbied for the appointment of anti-Zionist diplomats and in favor of Eisenhower administration efforts to withhold aid from Israel. And both Berger and Thompson pushed for favorable coverage of the new Egyptian dictator, Gamal Nassar, who would wage war on the Jewish state for nearly two decades. Initially, they were successful, with TIME magazine writing that Nasser had the “lithe grace of a big, handsome, all-American quarterback.” Of course, there was nothing “all-American” about Nasser, who would become a Soviet stooge.
AFME officials like Garland Evans Hopkins would draw rebukes after claiming that Jews were bringing violence against themselves — a staple of antisemitism. Hopkins claimed that Zionists “could produce a wave of antisemitism in this country” if they continued acting against “America’s best interests in the Middle East.”
AFME itself would eventually lose influence, particularly after its boosting of figures like Nasser was revealed as foolhardy. Berger would go on to advise Senator J. William Fulbright (D-AR) in his efforts to get pro-Israel Americans to register as foreign agents.
In 1967, as Arab forces gathered to annihilate Israel, Berger blamed the Jewish State, accusing it of “aggression” and its supporters of “hysteria.” Top ACJ officials resigned in protest. That same year, Ramparts magazine exposed CIA support, financial and otherwise, of AFME.
Kim and Archie Roosevelt, however, would continue their careers as high-ranking CIA officers before eventually starting a consulting business and making use of their extensive Middle East contacts.
For some college protesters, attacking Israel — and American support for Israel — might seem new and trendy. Yet, both the CIA and big oil were precisely doing that, decades ago, forming alliances with anti-American dictators, antisemitic war criminals, the press, Protestant groups, academics, university administrators, and fringe Jewish groups claiming to represent “what’s best” for American Jewry.
As William Faulkner once wrote: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis
The post Hating Israel Isn’t New; How the CIA and State Department Undermined the Jewish State first appeared on Algemeiner.comhttps://www.algemeiner.com/.
Uncategorized
US Involvement in Gaza Is Not a Threat — It’s a Strategic Opportunity
Then-IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi meets with then-US Central Command (CENTCOM) chief Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie at CENTCOM headquarters on June 22, 2021. Photo: CENTCOM Public Affairs / Tom Gagnier
In recent weeks, voices in Israel have argued that the country has “lost control” over the situation in Gaza and ceded it to the United States.
While there is a grain of truth to the claim — insofar as the US has indeed become a central actor in Gaza’s operational, humanitarian, and political arenas — this view misses the broader strategic transformation that has taken place. What appears to be growing American dominance in Gaza is in fact the latest expression of a deeper structural shift that began in 2022, a shift whose significance most Israelis are only now beginning to understand.
To grasp the change, one must start with how the US military is structured.
The United States operates six global geographic Combatant Commands, each responsible for an enormous region: Europe, Africa, South America, the Indo-Pacific, North America, and the Middle East. Each is headed by a four-star general who reports directly to the Secretary of Defense and the President. These commands are not mere administrative divisions, but strategic frameworks through which the US organizes alliances, coordinates multinational training, conducts combined operations, and integrates intelligence on a global scale.
Geographically, Israel naturally belongs under the Central Command, CENTCOM, which oversees the Middle East. Yet for decades, Israel was placed under the European Command, EUCOM. The reason was political rather than military: Arab states that opposed normalization with Israel refused to be grouped with it under the same command. Allocating Israel to EUCOM allowed Washington to maintain deep military cooperation with Israel without jeopardizing its relations with key Arab allies.
The Abraham Accords fundamentally altered this arrangement.
Once the UAE, Bahrain, and later Morocco agreed to open security and diplomatic cooperation with Israel, the longstanding Arab veto effectively collapsed. The US announced Israel’s move to CENTCOM in 2021, and by 2022, it was fully implemented. Israel thus became an official component of the regional security architecture that the United States had been building for years — an emerging multinational framework designed to counter Iran through shared intelligence, integrated air defense, maritime cooperation, and coordinated operational planning.
This new reality was quickly reflected in joint exercises that had been impossible up to that point. Israel took part in IMX-22, a massive naval drill led by the US Fifth Fleet, in which Arab and Israeli naval forces operated openly under the same command structure for the first time. A year later came Juniper Oak 2023, the largest US-Israeli military exercise ever conducted, involving strategic bombers, fighter jets, naval forces, special operations units, and advanced intelligence platforms. Operationally, it marked the institutionalization of deep, routine, high-tempo military cooperation.
Still, it was not until Hamas’ October 7 attack that the full meaning of Israel’s integration into CENTCOM became clear. The brutality of the massacre underscored to Washington that the Israeli-Palestinian arena is inseparable from the broader regional struggle against Iran. The US responded with a rapid, large-scale deployment: aircraft carriers, missile defense ships, electronic warfare aircraft, and enhanced intelligence assets. In effect, the US provided Israel with a strategic umbrella that reduced the likelihood of a northern escalation and signaled unmistakable deterrence toward Iran and Hezbollah.
The most dramatic developments, however, took place in the context of Iran’s large-scale missile and drone attacks on Israel in 2023 and 2024. These were among the most extensive long-range strikes Iran had ever launched. For the first time, the emerging regional defensive network was activated. US aircraft intercepted dozens of drones over Iraq and the Red Sea; American, British, and French ships shot down cruise missiles; Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE provided air corridors and shared tactical intelligence; Israel synchronized its Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow systems with US command elements. The result was an unprecedented multinational defensive effort that successfully neutralized what could have been devastating strikes. What had long been discussed as a concept became a functioning regional defense mechanism with Israel at its core.
After a temporary ceasefire was established following the Trump plan in Gaza, the US and Israel set up a joint command center in Kiryat Gat. The goal of the joint headquarters is primarily to ensure that the Trump plan is implemented on the ground. This should not be understood as an American takeover of operational decision-making, but as a mechanism to deepen coordination. The joint headquarters facilitates real-time intelligence sharing, access to American reconnaissance capabilities, humanitarian coordination with international actors, and continuous operational deconfliction in a highly complex arena. The physical presence of American officers alongside Israeli commanders has also heightened US understanding of Hamas’ methods — its use of human shields, for example, and diversion of humanitarian aid — and the impossibility of managing the Gaza arena without intense and constant intelligence work.
Israeli critics tend to focus on potential drawbacks: US political leaders may attempt to leverage rapid progress for domestic purposes; they may choose to overlook Hamas’ refusal to disarm, and American expectations may not align with Israel’s interests regarding the end state in Gaza. These risks are not imaginary. However, Israeli defense officials repeatedly emphasize that the current level of cooperation with the US is unprecedented, and no attempt has been made thus far to impose decisions contrary to Israel’s security interests.
For decades, Israel has grappled with the question of whether it should pursue a formal defense treaty with the United States. The idea resurfaced repeatedly at moments of strategic uncertainty after the Lebanon wars, during periods of Iranian nuclear acceleration, and amid discussions about long-term deterrence. A formal treaty promised clear advantages: it would codify America’s commitment to Israel’s security, bolster deterrence against regional adversaries, and guarantee large-scale military assistance in times of crisis. Yet successive Israeli governments hesitated. The central concern was a potential loss of autonomy: a treaty would restrict Israel’s freedom of action, require American approval for sensitive military operations, and bind Israel’s hands precisely in situations where speed and unilateral initiative are essential.
The current arrangement, while not a formal defense pact, effectively delivers many of the benefits associated with one without the drawbacks. It offers deep operational coordination, shared real-time intelligence, integrated regional air defense, and the ability to conduct joint action when necessary. Crucially, it does all this without formally limiting Israel’s sovereignty or imposing rigid treaty obligations. In practice, it creates a “hybrid model” in which Israel enjoys the strategic advantages of quasi-alliance integration while retaining independent decision-making.
The broader strategic reality has changed. For years, Israel feared that the United States was withdrawing from the Middle East. Today the opposite is true: the US is re-engaging, strengthening allies, escalating pressure on Iran, and signaling a renewed commitment to the regional balance of power. This shift naturally raises concerns in Israel about over-dependence, yet in practice, it represents a dramatic enhancement of Israel’s strategic position. For the first time in decades, Israel finds itself embedded within a regional defense architecture that magnifies its strengths and compensates for its vulnerabilities.
Israel has not “lost control.” It would be more accurate to say that Israel has entered a fundamentally new framework, one in which it operates shoulder to shoulder with the United States and, increasingly, with key Arab partners. This emerging de facto regional alliance provides Israel with strategic depth, intelligence and logistical support, operational coordination, and a dramatically improved international posture. In the long term, the advantages of this integration far outweigh its limitations.
Prof. Eitan Shamir serves as the head of the BESA Center and as a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at Bar-Ilan University. His latest book is The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the IDF, Harvard University Press, 2023 (with Edward Luttwak). This article appeared at the BESA Center, and in the Jerusalem Strategic Tribune in December 2025.
Uncategorized
European-Funded NGO on Palestinian TV: The World Has ‘Gotten Over’ Antisemitism
A woman keeps a candle next to flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
The world has “gotten over” Israel’s “claims of antisemitism,” said the head of an EU-funded NGO on official Palestinian Authority (PA) television just a month before the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre of Jews.
According to Omar Rahal, director of the SHAMS Human Rights and Democracy Media Center, complaints about antisemitism were all false “claims” by “Netanyahu and his extremist government,” whereas Palestinians are the ones who are the victims of Israel’s attacks:
The Palestinian discourse has gained dominance, and the claims of antisemitism and violent discourse — the world has now gotten over them and there have been direct responses from presidents and state leaders to [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu and the pillars of his extremist government. In other words, go find another topic [to talk about]. They [Israel] are the ones who attacked us.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, Nov. 16, 2025]
Rahal is absolutely correct on one point, however.
Palestinian hate speech, which calls for “Palestine to be free from the river to the sea” and for the globalization of the “Intifada,” has indeed gained dominance.
When that is combined with a world that has “gotten over” claims of antisemitism, attacks on Jews in Israel and around the world inevitably become commonplace. When antisemitism is denied as real, when violence against Jews is erased as a distinct phenomenon, and when Jews are collectively portrayed as aggressors who deserve blame everywhere, then the cost is paid in Jewish lives.
It is also unsurprising that such an outrageous statement would be featured on official PA TV. Considering how PA TV routinely denies the Holocaust, one would be hard-pressed to expect better.
The question here, though, should be: where is the condemnation of the EU and UN for Rahal’s public statements?
Rahal’s SHAMS organization is supported by the EU and proudly advertises its partnership with the UN Economic and Social Council. It incredibly also lists the International Organization for Tolerance as one of its many partners.
Palestinian Media Watch calls on the EU, the UN, and all international donors to examine not the slogans of their funded NGOs, but their actual messages.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
Uncategorized
Israel Says It Will Respond to Hamas ‘Violation’ of Gaza Truce, Terror Group Denies Responsibility
A drone view shows Palestinians walking past the rubble, following Israeli forces’ withdrawal from the area, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, in Gaza City, Oct. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel would retaliate after a military officer was wounded by a blast in Gaza, while the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas denied responsibility, suggesting the explosive device had been left over from the conflict.
In a speech at a graduation ceremony for Air Force pilots, Netanyahu mentioned the incident in Rafah, part of Gaza where Israeli forces still operate, and said Hamas had made clear it had no plan to disarm as foreseen under the October truce deal.
“Israel will respond accordingly,” he said.
The Israeli military earlier said that an explosive device had detonated against a military vehicle in the Rafah area and that one officer had been lightly injured.
Hamas said the incident had taken place in an area where the Israeli military was in full control and that it had warned that explosives remained in the area and elsewhere since the war, reiterating its commitment to the October 10 ceasefire.
Hamas official Mahmoud Merdawi said in an earlier post on X that mediators had been informed about the issue.
ISRAELI DELEGATION MEETING OFFICIALS IN CAIRO
A 20-point plan issued by US President Donald Trump in September calls for an initial truce followed by steps toward a wider peace. So far, only the first phase has taken effect, including a ceasefire, release of hostages and prisoners, and a partial Israeli withdrawal.
An Israeli delegation met officials from mediating countries in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss efforts to return the remains of the last Israeli hostage, police officer Ran Gvili, from Gaza, Netanyahu’s office said later on Wednesday.
The delegation included officials from the Israeli military, the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service, and the Mossad intelligence service.
Trump’s plan ultimately calls for Hamas to disarm and have no governing role in Gaza, and for Israel to pull out. Hamas has said it will hand over arms only once a Palestinian state is established, which Israel says it will never allow.
Violence has subsided but not stopped since the Gaza truce took effect, with the sides regularly accusing each other of violations. The Hamas-controlled Gazan Health Ministry, which according to analysts has falsified casualty figures, says Israel has killed more than 400 people in the territory while Israel says three soldiers have been killed in terrorist attacks.
Hamas “openly declares it has no intention of disarming, in complete contradiction to President Trump’s 20-point plan,” Netanyahu said.
NETANYAHU ALSO WARNS LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH
Netanyahu said Hezbollah in Lebanon, which Israel severely weakened in strikes last year that also ended in a US-brokered truce, also had no intention to disarm “and we are addressing that as well.”
Israel still needs to settle accounts with Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen as well as Iran itself, he added.
“As these old threats change form, new threats arise morning and evening. We do not seek confrontations, but our eyes are open to every possible danger,” Netanyahu said.
Netanyahu is set to meet with Trump next week, mainly to discuss the next phase of the US president’s Gaza plan.
Hamas said in a statement later on Wednesday that a delegation led by its chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya had discussed Gaza with Turkey’s foreign minister in Ankara.
Al-Hayya warned against what he described as the continuation of Israeli violations of the ceasefire, saying they were aimed at hindering the move to the next phase of the ceasefire deal.