Jake Sullivan, Ben Rhodes Tap BDS-Backing Palestinian-American To Revive Democrat Foreign Policy Messaging Team

In the latest signal of the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel swing, a foreign policy group co-founded by President Biden’s former national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, has installed as its new director a Palestinian-American known for anti-Israel activism.National Security Action, founded as a nonprofit in 2018 by Mr. Sullivan and a deputy national security advisor under President Obama, Ben Rhodes, helped to develop the Democratic Party’s foreign policy positions during the 2020 election. It later staffed key positions on Mr. Biden’s national security team. The group went dormant in 2021, but senior Democrats are working to revive it ahead of the 2028 presidential election, Axios reported Sunday. They aim to influence the party’s foreign policy positions and assemble a bench of national security analysts who could staff a future Democratic administration.Leading the effort is Maher Bitar, a former government official who served under both the Obama and Biden administrations and most recently chief counsel to Senator Adam Schiff when he led the House Intelligence Committee. Born in America to parents of Palestinian descent, Mr. Bitar has been an outspoken anti-Israel advocate and an endorser of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.Before his White House tenure, Mr. Bitar interned at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency — a body accused of aiding Hamas and employing staff who participated in the October 7, 2023, massacre — and, as an undergraduate at Georgetown University, sat on the executive board of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. The group was behind some of the most virulent anti-Israel protests to sweep American campuses after Hamas’s October 7 attack.While with Students for Justice in Palestine, Mr. Bitar helped organize Georgetown’s 2006 Palestinian Solidarity Movement conference, an event critics blasted as “anti-Israel propaganda.” He also appeared in Georgetown’s 2006 yearbook, photographed during a student dance performance in front of a banner reading “Divest from Israeli Apartheid.”The Biden administration’s decision to tap Mr. Bitar as the senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council drew objections from members of Congress who warned that he might limit America’s intelligence-sharing with Israel. At the time, Representative Michael McCaul of Texas called the appointment a “slap in the face to our important ally” and said it “sends a terrible message to the rest of the world.”Mr. Bitar’s new role atop National Security Action is being read as a harbinger of where Democrats are heading on Israel — a shift previewed last month when 40 of 47 Senate Democrats voted to block arms sales to the Jewish State. A recent Pew survey found that 80 percent of Democrats now view Israel unfavorably, up from 53 percent in 2022.“The center of gravity has shifted on the relationship with Israel, and there will be a debate about the nature of that relationship going forward,” Mr. Sullivan told Axios, adding that National Security Action would try to ensure the debate was “as healthy as possible.”Mr. Rhodes, who was so critical of Israel during his time at the White House that he earned the nickname “Hamas,” acknowledged he has moved further left than Mr. Sullivan on foreign policy and shares the views held by the controversial Maine Democratic senatorial candidate, Graham Platner. Still, he said he and Mr. Sullivan would both remain involved in the group’s revival. “I’ve obviously moved in a more progressive direction on Israel and other things,” he told Axios. “I want to help facilitate the inclusion of more progressive voices.”While the organization recorded no income in 2021, its year-end 2023 tax forms show it earning $900,000 while its 2024 tax return reported more than $3.7 million in earnings, with a large chunk coming from a grant by progressive donor Alex Soros’s Open Society Action Fund. Its executive director, Caroline Tess, earned more than $306,000 during the tax year. Mr. Soros warmly congratulated Mr. Bitar on X, drawing a rebuke from a conservative influencer and Trump ally, Laura Loomer, who called it, “Very telling that Alex Soros is trying to promote Maher Bitar ahead of 2028.”“Keep an eye on this,” added the American Ambassador to Israel during the first Trump administration, David Friedman, on X. “This is where the Dems are heading.”

Jake Sullivan, Ben Rhodes Tap BDS-Backing Palestinian-American To Revive Democrat Foreign Policy Messaging Team

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