US President Biden's choice to name an anti-Israel political activist as senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council may place Israel in a precarious position.
This week the White House announced that Maher Bitar has been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the US intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the President. And in the name of the President, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.
Usually, this sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.
As Daniel Greenfield reported at Frontpage online magazine, in 2006, as a student at Georgetown University, Bitar was a leader of the anti-Semitic, Muslim Brotherhood aligned Students for Justice in Palestine. As an SJP leader, he organized a so-called "boycott, divestment, and sanctions" campaign against Israel and its supporters on his campus. Greenfield reported that Bitar chaired a panel at a BDS conference where participants discussed how to indoctrinate Christians to believe that Israel has no right to exist.
During the Obama presidency, Bitar served on the National Security Council as the Israeli-Palestinian officer. He was Samantha Power's deputy. In 2016, as UN ambassador, Power played a key role in the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which labeled Israeli neighborhoods in unified Jerusalem and Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria as a "flagrant violation of international law."
Bitar's appointment highlights perhaps the central dilemma now facing Israel's national leadership: How should Israel contend with what is shaping up to be the most hostile US administration ever?