Advocates are calling for the ousting of a top Biden administration official who has acted as the “shadow president” on Middle East policy, directing much of the administration’s decisions in the region as the U.S. has enabled Israel to plunge it into chaos and destruction.
On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that Middle East adviser Brett McGurk “must go” after Politico reported that he’s been encouraging Israeli officials to escalate their fighting against Hezbollah and Lebanon.
“President Biden’s Middle East foreign policy has been a disaster, partly because he has surrounded himself with notoriously orientalist and consistently wrong advisers like Bush administration veteran Brett McGurk,” said Ahmed Mitchell, national deputy director for CAIR.
“McGurk has acted as a shadow president on foreign policy for nearly four years, enabling President Biden’s worst instincts while pursuing a delusional vision of a Middle East permanently remade in McGurk’s orientalist image,” Mitchell went on. “McGurk needs to go.”
McGurk is relatively unknown to the public, but he has been instrumental to Biden’s policies on Israel and, broadly, the Middle East.
He has served in every presidential administration since George W. Bush, first as a director for Iraq and Afghanistan policy under Bush, and now as the White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. HuffPost described him as “one of the most powerful people in U.S. national security,” who crafts options for the administration’s approach to the region in order to advance his grand vision of a Middle East molded to his interests, regardless of the wishes of the people and sovereign governments there.
McGurk has been heavily involved in the U.S.’s policy toward Israel, and earlier this year had been pushing a plan to allow wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia to reconstruct Gaza after the genocide. Progressives in Congress had tried to get a campaign to oust McGurk off the ground earlier this year, seeing him as a primary source of the U.S.’s fueling of unrest and tensions in the Middle East.
Advocates for Palestinian rights have called for the removal of several Biden administration officials as they’ve seemingly purposefully violated domestic and international law in order to enable Israel’s genocide.
Last week, calls for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resign or be impeached reached a fever pitch after the publishing of a bombshell ProPublica report. The report revealed that he lied to Congress about internal administration findings that Israel had committed human rights violations and should thus face a partial or full arms embargo.
Among those who called for his resignation were CAIR and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), who said: “[Blinken] lied. People went hungry, and some died. He needs to resign now.”
This week, Veterans for Peace also called for consequences for Blinken’s role in Israel’s genocide. In a letter, the group called for the Department of Justice to assemble a grand jury to investigate and potentially indict Blinken and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew for violations of U.S. law regarding military assistance and for lying to Congress, citing the ProPublica report.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.