Blinken attempted to impose sanctions on a crucial Israeli intelligence unit, former Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog revealed in an interview with Israel Hayom this week.
The ambassador told Ariel Kahana that Blinken had decided to impose sanctions on Unit 504 of the Military Intelligence Directorate, which was involved in investigating the October 7 massacre, interrogating captured terrorists, and making thousands of calls and sending millions of messages to warn civilians in Gaza to leave dangerous areas.
"He had already decided [to impose sanctions on the unit]. We managed to prevent him from bringing down the axe at the last minute," Herzog said.
He noted that “there are a lot of anti-Israel people in the State Department who put obstacles in the way" of Israel's response to the October 7 massacre.
"There were difficult moments, and there were cases when the Americans went crazy," he said, describing the tensions between Israel and the US during the war. "More than once they really attacked me and said, 'You're crazy, you've fallen on your head, how could you do something like this that would lead to an escalation? You'll drag us into war because you didn't think it through to the end and then ask us to come and rescue you.' There were tough arguments about things Israel did that, in their eyes, was one step too far."
Herzog criticized the US for withholding 2,000 bombs from Israel over Israel's plans to attack the last remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah last year. The operation in Rafah did not result in the humanitarian disaster the Biden Administration claimed it would. "Who even remembers Rafah today?” Herzog said.
Despite these disputes and problematic actions, the ambassador said that there was more good than bad in the US-Israel relationship during the war because Israel continued to receive smaller munitions and because the US assisted in shooting down the hundreds of missiles and attack drones Iran launched at Israel in two massive attacks in 2024.
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