Ambassador Mike Huckabee rejected a New York Times report that his top aide suppressed embassy findings on Americans killed in the West Bank, calling the account baseless and built on unnamed sources.
The Daily Caller reported that a New York Times account alleged David Milstein, a senior advisor to U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee, repeatedly suppressed or reshaped staff reports from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. The Times claim centered on efforts to soften accounts of Israeli settler violence in the West Bank and present Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in a better light.
The most serious charge: Milstein stepped in to hold back a detailed embassy report on the deaths of nine U.S. citizens killed by Israeli settlers and security forces, even as members of Congress pressed for answers. Huckabee answered with a full-throated denial.
Embassy staffers completed that report by March. As described in the coverage, it found Israeli investigations had gone nowhere, some cases had been closed, and no one had been charged. After the February killing of 19-year-old Nasrallah Abu Siyam, shot dead in the West Bank while trying to stop settlers from taking his livestock, and described as the ninth American in the string, 30 members of Congress wrote Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding updates.
Rather than forward the fuller report, the Times account said, Milstein pushed for a letter back to Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen. Staffers were described as chilled by the pattern.
Huckabee did not hedge. He gave the Times a statement, then posted it in full on X. The embassy pointed the Daily Caller to that same post when asked for comment.
Huckabee wrote:
"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 endeavors like the embarrassing ‘dog rape’ story, or the totally debunked story about a small boy being shot in the face by IDF in Gaza (when in fact, the little boy was not only alive but had been evacuated out of Gaza with his mother by Embassy Jerusalem to a safe location in another country to keep him from being murdered by Hamas). I personally and categorically refute the elements of your proposed ‘story’ and I’m surprised that you expect to be taken seriously with such nonsense without even one named source. You surely can do better. You should consult your attorneys as to whether publishing such drivel could subject the Times to litigation for defamation."
No named on-record source for the core allegations appears in the account Huckabee attacked. No charges or formal discipline against Milstein are described. The ambassador treated the package as recycled media overreach, not settled fact.
Political fights over Israel coverage often spill into the same arena as other high-profile media clashes, including moments when Sen. Ossoff rejects Hasan Piker's warning about American Jews and the risks of heated rhetoric.
The Times piece did not arrive in a vacuum. Earlier, Politico reported that Milstein sent a Paperless Post wedding invitation dated Sept. 16 that solicited “monetary wedding gift[s]” in “U.S. dollars or shekels.” The invitation later had QR codes removed after recipients were told it had gone to a wider list than intended.
Huckabee defended his aide after that Politico story broke earlier in September. Milstein is the stepson of Fox News host Mark Levin, long described as a strong Netanyahu ally. That family tie has fueled outside suspicion even when the evidence stays thin.
Public figures under sustained media fire know the pattern well, much like the spectacle around Fetterman conceding defeat in his public fight with online antagonists when the pressure stays relentless.
Separate from the internal embassy dispute sits the underlying body count. Nine U.S. citizens are described as killed in the West Bank incidents tied to the report. Abu Siyam’s February death triggered the congressional letter to Rubio. The embassy summary, as relayed, said Israeli probes stalled, some files closed, and zero defendants charged.
That gap between American dead and empty dockets is the part that should concentrate minds in both Jerusalem and Washington. Lawmakers asked for updates. Career staff produced a detailed write-up. What left the building, according to the Times claim, was something narrower.
Huckabee’s posture is that the suppression narrative itself is invented. He pointed to prior Times errors he says the embassy helped correct, including the Gaza boy story he says collapsed once the child was shown alive and moved to safety. In his telling, anonymous sourcing plus a friendly institutional target equals another weak package.
Readers following accountability fights will recognize the same appetite for revelation that surfaced when an anonymous donor quietly paid to cremate the man who tried to kill Donald Trump, another case where records outran the first wave of spin.
President Donald Trump has previously expressed opposition to Israeli annexation of the West Bank. That public marker sits on the record while his ambassador now runs the Jerusalem post and faces a media drive to paint the shop as a filter for bad news about settlers.
Milstein is also alleged, in the same Times framing, to have downplayed settlement expansion and brushed past mass casualties tied to food and aid delivery fights involving Palestinians. Those claims arrive with the same sourcing problem Huckabee flagged: no names attached in the material he answered.
Party discipline dramas at home show how fast narratives harden, as when Pennsylvania Democrats shun Fetterman once approval numbers move. The same rush to judgment travels easily into foreign-policy staffing fights.
The public still lacks the full embassy report text, its exact transmission history, and the names of the other eight Americans beyond Abu Siyam. The congressional letter’s full signatory list and precise date are not laid out. Whether any letter to Van Hollen actually went, and what it said, is not settled in the available account. Milstein himself has no direct quote on the record here.
Those holes matter. American citizens were killed. Investigations reportedly stalled. Congress asked for information. An ambassador now says the claim that his aide buried the paper is defamatory nonsense from a paper with a spotty recent record on related stories.
Factional wars inside the left often chase the next target for purity, visible again as Cori Bush mounts a primary challenge against establishment Democrats. Foreign-policy reporting deserves tighter rules than that primary energy.
Named evidence beats anonymous process stories. Until the report, the cases, and the witnesses are public, the serious work is the dead Americans and the empty charge sheets, not another round of unattributed institutional score-settling.