(Politico) Nahal Toosi - After State Department officials asked U.S. embassies in the Middle East to more carefully examine American military assistance to governments in the region in the wake of a U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report critical of Egypt, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman rejected the idea, responding in October that he did "not believe we should extend the new [guidelines] to Israel at this time." "Israel is a democracy whose army does not engage in gross violations of human rights," Friedman wrote, adding that Israel "has a robust system of investigation and prosecution in the rare circumstance where misconduct occurs." Friedman wrote that he "disagrees with the assessment that the [State] Department should proactively address Israel based on GAO criticism of procedures in Egypt. We cannot and should not assume that GAO intended to apply the same criticism to Tel Aviv."
2018-06-19 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive