ZOA National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
President Joe Biden appointed Daniel B. Shapiro Senior Advisor for Regional Integration in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs on July 2, 2023. Shapiro is a long-time advocate of a Palestinian state (which would undoubtedly be a terror state). Shapiro is currently part of the Biden administration team that is planning to turn the October 7, 2023 massacre into a twisted pretext to place the Palestinian Authority terror regime in control of Gaza, thereby replacing one terror group with another, with a view towards ultimately turning Gaza, Judea-Samaria and eastern Jerusalem into a Palestinian terror state.
Shapiro’s portfolio also includes the “Negev Forum” – the Biden administration’s strategy for turning the Abraham Accords into a lever for promoting a Palestinian state. (This undermines the basis of the Abraham Accords, which were designed to avoid the Palestinian Arab “veto” on peace.)
Shapiro previously served as Biden’s Senior Advisor to the Special Envoy for Iran for six months, ending in March 2022. During his stint on Biden’s Iran team, Shapiro called for returning to the disastrous 2015 Iran deal, which enriched Iran and Iranian proxies Hamas, PIJ, Hezbollah and the Houthis, etc.; had woefully inadequate inspections; and had quick sunset clauses on its limited nuclear restrictions. Shapiro stated that he had no policy differences with the Biden administration’s Iran policies when Shapiro left his Iran posting to take a position at a think tank.
Shapiro served as the Obama Administration’s U.S. Ambassador to Israel from 2011 to 2017. While serving as U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Shapiro lambasted Israel, questioned Israel’s peaceful “intentions” while Palestinian Arab terrorists were murdering innocent Jewish women; condemned “settlement growth” (which was in fact virtually non-existent and has never been the cause of the lack of peace) and falsely claimed that Israel has a double standard with “too many attacks on Palestinians” and unchecked “vigilantism.” (See “U.S. Amb. to Israel Dan Shapiro’s Disgraceful Anti-Israel Speech,” ZOA Action Alert, Jan. 22, 2016.)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rebuked Shapiro’s speech, saying: “The Ambassador’s statements on a day when a pregnant Jewish woman is stabbed are unacceptable and wrong. Israel enforces the law on Israelis and Palestinians. The onus for the stalemate in their diplomatic process is on the PA [Palestinian Authority], which continues to incite and refuses to negotiate.”
Similarly, then-Congressman Peter Roskam (then co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus) asked then-Secretary of State John Kerry to reject Shapiro’s remarks. Cong. Roskam wrote:
“As Ambassador Shapiro was wrongly castigating Israel on the world stage, Palestinian leaders were unabashedly praising Dafna [Meir]’s killers and further inciting Palestinians to continue the “Intifada of Knives.” Perpetuating falsities and placing undue and disproportionate blame on Israel for the stalled peace process is a harmful distraction from ongoing Palestinian terrorist attacks, which, ultimately, make peace harder to achieve. At their most basic level, the ambassador’s comments are inaccurate. Since its founding, Israel has consistently agreed to painful concessions in the name of peace, only to be met with swift rebuke from Palestinian and Arab leadership [listing numerous examples].”
In 2018, Shapiro condemned the Trump administration for “taking Jerusalem off the table” when then-Pres. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in compliance with U.S. law. Shapiro called for instead acknowledging that “East Jerusalem” (a non-existent entity) “must include the capital of a Palestinian state.” Shapiro’s divisive call for placing the capital of a Palestinian terror state in Jerusalem would radically undermine Israel’s sovereignty and security and set the course of peace backwards.
And in 2017, Shapiro testified in the Senate in favor of watering down the Taylor Force Act. Shapiro’s position enables the U.S. to continue funding projects benefiting the Palestinian Authority, even while the PA continues to pay Arab terrorists hundreds of millions of dollars each year to murder Jews. The Biden administration’s resumption of such funding is believed to be one of the factors behind increased Arab terrorism against Jews in all of Israel.