A recently fired US State Department press officer maintains that United States Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his senior adviser are usurping the Trump administration’s policy on Israel in ways that contradict the president’s “America First” vision.

Shahed Ghoreishi was dismissed from his position as press officer for Israeli-Palestinian affairs earlier this month after what he says were three consecutive incidents involving the drafting of State Department memos and statements where he took a different approach to that of the leadership of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, along with several advisers to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The differences of opinion did not appear major at the time and Ghoreishi maintained in an interview with The Times of Israel that he had only proposed using language that was consistent with remarks made by US President Donald Trump. But on August 17, he was summarily fired, in what Ghoreishi argued would have a chilling effect on others in the administration who might consider, even internally, presenting positions that differ from those of the embassy’s leadership.

The Times of Israel reached out to both the State Department and the US Embassy in Jerusalem, offering them a chance to respond to a series of claims made by Ghoreishi, but they declined to do so. Last week, State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigot said in a statement, “We do not comment on leaked emails or allegations. Federal employees should never put their personal political ideologies ahead of the duly elected president’s agenda.”

Ghoreishi joined the State Department last year in the final months of the Biden administration, serving as press officer for Lebanon and Jordan. Following Trump’s entry into the Oval Office, he was given the Israeli-Palestinian affairs portfolio, a sensitive position that he said was testament to his strong reputation within the department among both career diplomats and political appointees.

Ghoreishi was not given a reason for his dismissal, but it came less than a week after three days in a row of disputes with others in the State Department.

The first was on August 10, when Ghoreishi drafted a statement that mourned “the loss of journalists and express[ed] condolences to their families” after an Israeli strike killed Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif and five other journalists while they were in a tent in Gaza City.

While Ghoreishi argued that the line was a standard expression of empathy, the line was nixed by State Department leadership, who said the US needed to determine whether those targeted were involved in terror activity before issuing a statement. Israel has said that Sharif was a Hamas fighter and that others targeted were terror operatives too, but it has yet to provide evidence of the latter claim.

The next day, Ghoreishi drafted a line responding to reports that Israel was in talks with South Sudan about the latter taking in Gazan refugees. The statement he prepared said, “We do not support forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.”

While Trump unveiled a plan in February that envisioned the US taking over Gaza and permanently relocating its residents elsewhere, he has since gingerly distanced himself from the idea, asserting — as has US special envoy Steve Witkoff — that Washington does not support the forced expulsion of Palestinians.

Nonetheless, Ghoreishi said the line he proposed on August 11 was scrapped by State Department leadership.

The next day, Ghoreishi removed a reference to Judea and Samaria that Huckabee’s senior adviser David Milstein had inserted into Ghoreishi’s internal press guidance.

The former State Department press officer said only Huckabee — as opposed to other senior administration officials — has been referring to the West Bank by its biblical name and that the term erases Palestinian ties to the territory while alienating US partners in the region, which is what led him to cut the term.

While Ghoreishi’s final edit was upheld, he lost his position at the State Department several days later.

Ghoreishi said he believed Milstein had flagged all three incidents.

“Their accumulation… and [Milstein’s] desire to take the front seat in language coming out of the State Department led to my firing,” he said.

Milstein, who did not respond to a request for comment, is not new to the Trump world. He served as special assistant to Trump’s first ambassador to Israel David Friedman and before that as legislative aide to Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. He is also the step-son of Fox News host Mark Levin, a close ally of both Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I don’t believe he or anyone at the embassy in Jerusalem’s senior leadership desired the standard guardrails that I was upholding,” Ghoreishi argued, lamenting that Milstein “toed the Israeli line on every event.”

“I have an issue with deferring to Israel every single time something happens in Gaza or the West Bank in general because you want to put US interests first. On occasion, there might be something that’s in line with [Israel], but we should be relying on our own resources, our own interests, and actually put America first,” he added. “I don’t believe that David Milstein is interested in that.”

On the same day of the Monday interview, the State Department issued a statement to querying reporters stating that they should refer to Israel for comment regarding a strike on Khan Younis’s Nasser hospital earlier that day that reportedly killed 20 people, including rescue workers and five journalists.

Ghoreishi rejected the notion that he is a politically motivated activist, arguing that he would have been fired much earlier in the administration had this been the case.

He asserted that Huckabee and Milstein are the “real political activists” who are backed by “compliant neocons” advising Rubio. Ghoreishi declined to elaborate on the latter group other than saying that they previously worked for the Heritage Foundation, a lightning rod conservative policy institute. At least two of Rubio’s top advisers — Michael Needham and Dan Holler — previously worked for the organization.

For his part, Ghoreishi was previously employed at a number of progressive DC-based foreign policy groups and ones that oppose US intervention in foreign policy, such as Win Without War, as well as the National Iranian American Council, which lobbied in favor of the Iran nuclear deal from which Trump withdrew in 2018.

While Huckabee may be the only US official publicly using the term Judea and Samaria, he is not an outlier within the administration in terms of his full-throttled support for Israel’s war against Hamas. Trump himself has said he backs Israel “finishing the job” against Hamas, apparently rejecting the phased ceasefire and hostage release deal that the terror group accepted on August 18.

Ghoreishi contended that Trump has also talked — both on the campaign and since entering office — about the need to end wars, including in Gaza.

“I was personally inspired by President Trump’s speech in May from Saudi Arabia when he said that the era of ‘nation-builders and neocons’ is over and that he was trying to establish a vision for peace moving forward,” he said, adding that Trump has also pushed back on Netanyahu’s assertions that there is no starvation in Gaza.

“Ambassador Huckabee won’t speak like that. He’ll undermine and reject the idea that people are starving in Gaza. So who’s the real activist here?” Ghoreishi charged.

“When you have these activists in place around [Trump] — both the embassy in Jerusalem at the senior level with some of these Heritage Foundation guys around Secretary Rubio — it’s difficult to follow through,” Ghoreishi argued.

“You can argue that [my firing] might have been inevitable, but I believe my actions and those lines I drafted are in line with US interests, with what the subject matter experts at the State Department on multiple levels agreed with and were in line with the administration’s America First policy,” he added.

“Everyone understands when President Trump wins an election, his team gets prerogative when crafting policy,” Ghoreishi acknowledged, while asserting that his job was to maintain “guardrails” that are being “steamrolled” by Huckabee and Milstein.

A current US official told The Times of Israel that Milstein has on multiple occasions sought to push through his own edits to press statements by bypassing the usual approval process at the State Department.

Asked whether Milstein was acting on Huckabee’s orders, Ghoreishi said he has heard conflicting reports from colleagues and isn’t sure.

For his part, Huckabee has insisted that his role is not to set policy, but rather to implement Trump’s agenda.

Regardless, Ghoreishi said his firing was “designed to send a message.”

“Moving forward, it’s much less likely that my former colleagues are going to be able to ensure guardrails inform our language and our policy when it comes to Israel,” he asserted.