How a little-known embassy aide hijacked US Israel policy

In late spring of this year, American diplomats in Jerusalem drafted an urgent cable. The war in Gaza, coupled with Israel’s decision in March to block all forms of aid from entering the strip, had left the region on the brink of disaster. A famine was looming, and the U.S. wasn’t doing anything about it.

But that cable never got back to Washington. In fact, it’s not clear whether it even reached the desk of Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. In its place, David Milstein — a senior adviser to Huckabee — sent a cable that sounded like “an advertisement for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” according to two State Department officials with knowledge of the incident.

“It sounded like a propaganda statement,” one official told Responsible Statecraft. As mainstream aid groups condemned GHF for endangering Palestinian aid seekers, Milstein’s report praised the organization for meeting a “humanitarian need.” Roughly two months after Milstein sent his cable, the world’s leading hunger monitor declared a famine in Gaza for the first time.