By the Staff of AFP
In an interview with CNN on March 9, U.S. special envoy for hostages Adam Boehler defended the Trump administration’s policies in the Middle East, telling the host in no uncertain terms, “We’re the United States of America. We’re not an agent of Israel.”
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Boehler’s back-and-forth followed on the heels of a fiery press conference in the White House on March 2. At that meeting, Vice President JD Vance blasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to his face, telling him that peace is critical to end the needless bloodshed.
The change in tone from the Trump White House stands in stark contrast to previous administrations—especially the Joe Biden administration—where smaller powers like Ukraine and Israel got away with disrespecting the United States while, at the same time, treating this country like it’s their personal piggy bank.
In the interview with CNN, Boehler laid out the Trump administration’s unprecedented policy of completely bypassing Israel, choosing instead to negotiate directly with Hamas officials to secure the release of Americans who are still being held hostage by Palestinian fighters.
In response to charges coming from Israeli and U.S. officials that Trump staffers were working with terrorists, Boehler didn’t back down. Instead, he shocked the world by stating what more objective observers already know.
When asked how he would defend the negotiations, Boehler fired back, “I would see them and say, look, [Hamas representatives] don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys.”
It is sad that this newspaper has to point out that Boehler’s statements would not be controversial in many parts of the world or even at different times in U.S. history. In September 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower invited Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the United States for an official state visit to spend two weeks in the United States—at a time when the Soviet Union had nuclear missiles pointed directly at this country.
By comparison, Hamas is a tiny guerrilla fighting force that is solely focused on liberating the small area of Gaza on the border with Israel. The way that some U.S. and Israeli officials responded, however, you’d think that Hamas had attacked U.S. cities.
Seth Mandel, a senior editor at the stridently pro-Israel Commentary magazine, raged that: “Adam Boehler’s Hamas diplomacy was basically Barney the Dinosaur negotiating with modern-day Nazis.” Barney, for those who do not know, was a fictional purple character in a children’s daytime TV show.
President Donald Trump, who has already pressured the Israelis to end the war in Gaza, told reporters that Boehler has his full support—despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office issuing a scathing statement assailing the direct talks.
In response to the Israeli furor over Boehler’s statement, Haaretz, a daily newspaper in Israel, rightly noted, “If a representative of the Biden administration had said the same thing, the Israeli leadership would have lost its mind.”
The change in tone in Washington is welcome, harkening back to the days when President Bill Clinton in 1996 reportedly raged at Netanyahu, saying, “Who [expletive deleted] does he think he is? Who’s the [expletive deleted] superpower here?
At a time when Americans are dealing with high costs and a tough economic future, we could use more boldness on the part of our elected officials just as Trump and his staff are demonstrating.
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