A major American intelligence officer, Joe Kent, quit his position as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, declaring that the war against Iran is unjust and that it was pushed by Israel. As we read in CNN:
A senior US intelligence official appointed by President Donald Trump abruptly announced he is stepping down from his post on Tuesday, citing misgivings about the administration’s war with Iran.
Joe Kent, who had been serving as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, posted his resignation letter on X, contradicting the administration’s basis for launching the war and imploring Trump to end it.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in the letter. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Now he is being accused of “antisemitism,” as CNN continues:
The resignation is the highest-profile rebuke yet of the war effort from a Trump administration insider and staunch supporter of the MAGA movement, albeit one who instantly drew criticism for alleged antisemitism. It reflects how the conflict is roiling some of Trump’s most high-profile MAGA supporters, like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, even though rank-and-file Republicans largely back the president.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, is also accusing Kent of antisemitism, as we read in the New York Times:
Some Jewish leaders, alarmed by the backlash to the war, are trying to rule any discussion of Israel’s role in instigating it out of bounds. In a speech on Monday, Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, denounced those who “pointed fingers at the Israelis who — they claimed — whispered a few too many times in President Trump’s ear.”
Greenblatt’s heavy-handed attempt to police the discourse is bound to fail, because it’s asking people to overlook provable facts. Just two days after the strikes on Iran began, Secretary of State Marco Rubio all but admitted that Israel had forced America’s hand, though he later walked his comments back. On March 6, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, boasted in The Wall Street Journal about working with Israel to persuade Trump to attack, gathering information from Israeli intelligence and coaching Netanyahu on what to say to Trump.
This war is, without a doubt, only increasing (and will continue to increase) the rage against Israel and will be another nail on Israel’s future coffin. When Israel made Gaza into a death camp, the vast majority of Democrats abandoned Israel, but still retained the majority of Republicans. But now Republicans are witnessing something that enrages them: a foreign country dragging the US to do its war, to do its bidding. Republicans under the age of 50 were already forsaking Israel, but now the anti-Israel rage is going to skyrocket even more, and even more Republicans will abandon the Jewish state. Joe Kent is a presaging sign of this.
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