{"id":98958,"date":"2025-08-21T09:01:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T09:01:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/98958\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T09:01:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T09:01:04","slug":"us-state-department-fires-official-who-questioned-pro-israel-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/98958\/","title":{"rendered":"US State Department fires official who questioned pro-Israel policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The State Department has fired a press officer who was responsible for drafting Trump administration talking points about policy towards Israel and Gaza after complaints from the US Embassy in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Officials said Shahed Ghoreishi, a contractor working for the Bureau of Near East Affairs, was terminated over the weekend following two incidents last week in which his loyalty to Trump administration policies was called into question.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Ghoreishi, who is Iranian American, also was targeted on Wednesday following his dismissal by right-wing personality Laura Loomer, who accused him of not being fully supportive of the administration\u2019s policies in the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">According to Ghoreishi and two current US officials, Ghoreishi drew the ire of a senior official at the US Embassy in Jerusalem and then top aides to Secretary of State Marco Rubio for drafting a response to a media query last week. The question related to discussions between Israel and South Sudan about the possible relocation of Palestinians from Gaza to South Sudan.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The draft response included a line that said the US does not support the forced relocation of Gazans, something that President Donald Trump and his special envoy Steve Witkoff have said repeatedly.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A worker hangs a road sign directing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters\" data-qa=\"BaseImage-handleRenderImage-StyledImage\" class=\"e1gf69pb2 css-6ikqhs e445x7d0\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/7ccd4c87-d0ac-4cf2-8523-c401c8e7125e_7eab980c.jpg\" title=\"A worker hangs a road sign directing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters\"\/>A worker hangs a road sign directing to the US Embassy in Jerusalem. Photo: Reuters<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">However, according to Ghoreishi and the officials, that line was rejected by the US Embassy in Jerusalem, leading to questions about policy back in Washington. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The State Department has fired a press officer who was responsible for drafting Trump administration talking points about&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":98959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,2724,66464,5618,5617,801,803,66462,66461,37746,643,31671,3,7854,66463,2486,4121,17569,34666,28697,644,21,19,22,20,25,41120,24,7855],"class_list":["post-98958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-associated-press","tag-bureau-of-near-east-affairs","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-jerusalem","tag-judea-and-samaria","tag-laura-loomer","tag-marco-rubio","tag-mike-huckabee","tag-news","tag-palestinians","tag-shahed-ghoreishi","tag-south-sudan","tag-state-department","tag-steve-witkoff","tag-the-washington-post","tag-tommy-pigott","tag-trump-administration","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-embassy","tag-usa","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}