America's own embassy in Israel just got accused of a cover-up
1 hour ago · 10 October 2026Share
U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria on 22 February 2019. File photo. IAEA Imagebank · CC BY 2.0
A US senator just accused America's own embassy in Israel of hiding how nine American citizens died.
Chris Van Hollen is a Democrat from Maryland. About a day ago, he posted a video online making the accusation.
He says quote "The American embassy in Israel is hiding information about the killing of American citizens."
So who are these nine people?
Americans killed in the West Bank. By Israeli settlers, or by Israeli security forces. Since January 2022.
The ninth was Nasrallah Abu Siyam. He was 19. Palestinian-American, from Philadelphia. Killed in February this year.
Back in March, Van Hollen and more than 30 other senators wrote to Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, and to Mike Huckabee, the US Ambassador to Israel. They wanted to know what happened to the investigations.
And here's the thing. Two days ago, the New York Times reported an answer.
It says a senior adviser to Huckabee, David Milstein, suppressed an embassy report on those exact investigations.
Truthout cited 15 officials, in the embassy and in Washington. They say that report found barely any progress. Some cases had already been closed. Nobody had been charged.
Milstein reportedly wanted the embassy to tell Congress something different. That Israel was handling it well.
That's not silence. That's someone picking what Congress gets to hear.
And it's not the first time. Truthout reports Milstein has repeatedly suppressed or rewritten embassy reports on Israel, to make the Netanyahu government look better.
The rest of this story is for members.
View of Palestinian Territories taken during ISS Expedition 74.Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit , Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center · Public domain
One example. This spring, a report on a surge of settler violence got suppressed too. A different cable went out instead, with Milstein named as the first author. Its title? "Government Cracks Down on Escalating West Bank Violence."
Huckabee denies all of it. He told the New York Times he would categorically refute the report. He also called the paper "fake news" in a post defending Milstein. Milstein himself has said nothing on the record.
Van Hollen says the ambassador and his point person have been covering up this information to protect the Netanyahu government.
He wants Jim Risch, the Republican who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to open a hearing.
This is round two in two weeks.
Ten days ago, the Senate blocked a resolution from Van Hollen. It would have forced the State Department to report on the nine killings, and on how Israel treats Palestinian children in military detention. He used a law called the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which lets any member of Congress demand a human rights report on a country getting US security help.
It failed anyway. Al Jazeera says the vote was 47 to 53. Truthout says 47 to 51.
John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, voted with Republicans against it. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, voted with Democrats for it.
Back in May, the State Department had already given Van Hollen an answer. It said the embassy was focused on security cooperation with Israel in the war on Iran, and that America was working with Israel on the investigations.
Van Hollen isn't just blaming this administration either. He says the Biden administration failed to get justice and accountability for these families. And now, he says, the Trump administration is covering up for the Israeli government instead.
So what don't we know? Whether Trump's administration will run its own investigation. Whether that suppressed report ever reaches Congress. And what the State Department's actual position is, beyond one man's personal denial.
Nine Americans are dead. Some families have been waiting almost four years for answers. And right now, the people meant to be finding those answers stand accused of burying them instead.
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