The Biden administration’s outgoing ambassador to Israel personally signed off on a controversial $1 million grant to a program critics said was meant to delegitimize Israel, according to internal State Department communications obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides approved the funding project in a January 2022 internal “action memo,” according to a trove of internal emails obtained by the America First Legal Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request for information about the grant. The emails detail how Nides personally cleared the State Department to offer $987,654 for groups to investigate alleged human rights abuses in Israel, Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip.
Those applying for the grant were instructed to probe the Israeli government for “documentation of legal or security sector violations and housing, land, and property rights.”
