Senior US Embassy official in Jerusalem suppressed diplomatic cables to shield Netanyahu govt: report
US Embassy aide David Milstein repeatedly blocked assessments for senior policymakers, an investigation found. PHOTO: ANADOLU
A top adviser to the US ambassador to Israel had systematically suppressed, delayed and rewritten internal diplomatic cables to shield the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from scrutiny by Washington, The New York Times reported on Thursday.
David Milstein, an influential gatekeeper at the US Embassy in Jerusalem since April 2025 and principal aide to US Ambassador Mike Huckabee, repeatedly stymied assessments intended for senior policymakers, according to an investigation based on interviews with more than a dozen US officials and reviews of internal State Department records.
In late March, Israel approved record-breaking occupation expansions across the occupied West Bank. Embassy personnel drafted an alert warning that the move risked violating US President Donald Trump's explicit red line against annexation. Milstein quashed the memorandum, framing the land acquisitions as a domestic matter before sending a revised text claiming the move addressed unspecified humanitarian needs of occupiers.
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Milstein similarly altered reporting on surging violence in the occupied West Bank. When Israeli military commanders warned that attacks by occupiers could trigger a widespread Palestinian uprising, he blocked the dispatches suggesting that Israel failed to take action. Instead, an embassy cable authored under his name praised Netanyahu's initiatives and claimed authorities were actively combatting the unrest.
The aide also suppressed a detailed embassy inquiry into the killings of nine Palestinian Americans by Israeli forces and occupiers, effectively thwarting accountability requests from members of the US Congress. Despite findings showing investigations stalled without criminal charges, the mission forwarded an alternative letter claiming active cooperation with Israeli authorities.
Milstein also edited dispatches regarding aid distribution by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to describe the operations as successful, removing diplomatic warnings that the process was "chaotic, deadly," and risked "mass casualty events".
Staff members noted that the interventions caused reporting from the embassy's Palestinian affairs section to drop from several weekly cables to a few per month and prompted some officials to bypass official embassy channels to obtain unfiltered ground intelligence.
"The elements of the story The New York Times is trying to assemble are so lacking in fact that it ranks up with other Times farcical endeavours," said Huckabee. The US State Department said its personnel remain focused on advancing the administration's foreign policy priorities.