President Donald Trump chose to be the leader United States Ambassador to the United Nations has become the latest candidate to express the belief that Israel has “biblical” control over the occupied West Bank.
Elise Stefanik's comment on Tuesday came during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she also promised to advance Trump's “America First” mission.
“If confirmed, I am ready to follow President Trump's mandate to the American people to provide America First, global peacekeeping leadership,” he said at the inauguration.
If confirmed as ambassador, Stefanik explained that he would monitor US funding of the UN and its many agencies. He also wants to counter China's influence in the international community and strengthen Washington's support for Israel.
But it was his stance on the West Bank that marked the biggest difference between the Trump administration and his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
Stefanik was firm when asked if he shared the views of Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that Israel has “biblical rights to the entire West Bank”.
“Yes,” he answered in an exchange with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen.
When pressed to support Palestinian self-determination, Stefanik ignored the question.
“I believe that the Palestinian people deserve to do much better than the failures they faced with the terrorist leaders,” he said. “Of course, they deserve human rights.”
A big change
Over the past four years, the Biden administration has provided steady support for Israel at the UN. It has repeatedly opposed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire to stop Israel's war in Gaza.
However, the administration was ready to fight its “ironclad” partner in the matter of Israel's settlement in the occupied West Bank. Such settlement is considered illegal under international law.
Stefanik's comments were the latest indication that the incoming Trump administration will take a very different approach.
Trump's first term began in earnest, as his administration scrapped a decade-old US policy that recognized that expansion into the West Bank was illegal.
After taking office on Monday, Mr. Trump to be terminated Biden-era sanctions on right-wing Israeli groups and individuals accused of atrocities against Palestinians.
Trump's appointment as US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, also supported Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that the Bible is right. In a 2017 interview with CNN, for example, Huckabee they argued that the territory of Palestine does not exist at all.
“There is no such thing as the West Bank. It is Judea and Samaria,” he said, using the biblical name.
And in 2008, when he was campaigning for president, Huckabee he insisted that Palestinian identity was a myth.
“I have to be careful when I say this, because people will be very upset. There is no real Palestinian person,” Huckabee, who has never faced a conviction, said at the time.
'Standing with Israel'
Stefanik has been one of Trump's most vocal advocates in the US House of Representatives.
In December 2023, however, he rose to another level of recognition viruses to ask of three university leaders from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, pressuring them for what they say is “anti-Semitism” on campus. Two of the three resigned.
Critics say his accusations helped inspire other university leaders to end anti-Palestinian protests on campus, fearing retaliation.
In his opening speech on Tuesday, Stefanik called himself “a leader in the fight against anti-Semitism in higher education”, referring to his 2023 contract with the university's president.
“My administration led the most watched testimony in the history of Congress,” he said. “The case against the university president was heard around the world and was viewed billions of times.”
In response to questions from lawmakers from both countries, Stefanik pledged to continue — and increase — the US's legacy of supporting Israel at the UN. The US is one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and therefore exercises veto power.
He reiterated US claims that Israel is being unfairly targeted by the UN, criticizing what he called “anti-Semitic rot” within the organization.
The US currently pays one-fifth of the UN budget, which angers Trump.
On Tuesday, Stefanik promised “a full review of the UN's sub-organizations” to ensure that “every dollar (goes) to support our American interests”.
He said he would oppose any US funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Legislation passed by the US Congress last year freezes funding through March 2025 to the agency, which humanitarian groups say provides irreparable aid to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
To his credit, Stefanik also defended Israel, regardless criticism of UN experts that his methods in Gaza “are compatible with genocide”.
“They are a symbol of human rights in the region,” Stefanik said of Israel.
Stefanik's hearing came just hours after former President-elect Senator Marco Rubio, Trump's nominee for secretary of state, became the first member of the incoming administration to be sworn in.