“We have overwhelmingly enabled Israel’s bad behavior.” Colonel Nathan McCormack
Colonel Nathan McCormack is a U.S. military officer who, until June 2025, held a prominent position as the head of the Levant and Egypt branch within the J5 directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the strategic planning body of the U.S. armed forces. His career suffered a sudden setback when the Jewish News Syndicate, a hawkish and Israel-linked outlet, revealed a series of posts from McCormack’s private social media account in which he repeatedly criticized Israel and U.S. policy in the Middle East.
According to Middle East Eye, McCormack’s posts accused Washington of enabling Israel’s “bad behavior” and claimed: “The Western states go to great lengths to avoid criticism of Israel, much out of Holocaust guilt.” He also wrote that “Israel’s actions over decades have prompted accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide,” and referred to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies as “Judeo-supremacist cronies,” accusing them of wanting “to expel [Palestinians] and cleanse ‘Eretz Israel’ [Israeli territory] of ethnic Palestinians.” In another post, he described Israel as “our worst ‘ally.’ We get literally nothing out of the ‘partnership’ other than the enmity of millions of people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”
Following the exposure of these posts, McCormack was immediately removed from his position and returned to his service branch, meaning he is no longer assigned to the Joint Staff while the matter is under investigation. A Pentagon official confirmed that the Department of Defense is “aware of the situation” and has assigned an investigating officer to review the archived posts, stating that “the content posted on the X account does not reflect the position of the Joint Staff or the Department of Defense.”
The incident has sparked significant debate on social media and among commentators, who point out that while the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees free expression, criticism of Israel often appears to be treated as an exception. Many noted that it is common to criticize even the U.S. president without facing professional repercussions, whereas similar remarks about Israel can lead to severe consequences — a pattern some argue highlights the influence of pro-Israel lobbying networks in Washington.
