Maher Bitar, the White House Coordinator for Intelligence and Defense Policy at the U.S. National Security Council (NSC), was a radical pro-Palestinian activist and a leader within Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
The SJP is one of the most prominent groups involved in the pro-Hamas, antisemitic “encampment” protests that have taken over dozens of university campuses. Its parent group is also the target of a lawsuit by survivors and families of victims of the October 7 terror attack that alleges SJP is a propaganda front for Hamas in the U.S.
Bitar’s record is coming under closer scrutiny as President Joe Biden takes unprecedented action to undermine Israel’s war against the Hamas terrorists that attacked it on October 7, including withholding arms from Israel.
Biden’s decision was applauded Wednesday by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has backed the radical protests, and whose daughter was suspended from Barnard College for her role in radical protests at nearby Columbia University.
Daniel Greenfield wrote about Bitar’s background in a 2021 article published by the Jewish News Syndicate:
At the PSM [Palestine Solidarity Movement] conference in Georgetown [in 2006], Bitar had run a session describing how to best demonize Israel. Next year, he facilitated a Palestinian Student Society summit addressed by Joseph Massad, who had called Israel a “Jewish supremacist state” and praised terrorism.
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A few years later, Bitar could be found presenting at a Sabeel conference featuring some of the worst bigots like Rebecca Vilkomerson of JVP, who had invited a terrorist to address the BDS hate group, and Richard Falk, who had endorsed a book which wondered whether “Hitler might have been right after all.”
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Bitar went to work for UNRWA, interned at the misnamed and militantly anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace and studied at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, writing papers on the so-called “Nakba” and on “Palestinian” activism. He appeared to describe Israel’s security barrier as a “segregation wall.”
UNRWA has been implicated in the October 7 attacks, and Massad, who teaches at Columbia, praised the attacks.
Columnist Caroline Glick wrote in Israel Hayom at the time of Bitar’s appointment:
This week the White House announced that Maher Bitar has been appointed to serve as the senior director for Intelligence at the National Security Council. The position is one of the most powerful posts in the US intelligence community. The senior director is the node to which all intelligence from all agencies flows. He decides what to share with the President. And in the name of the President, he determines priorities for intelligence operations and collection.
The senior director of intelligence also determines what information the US intelligence community will share with foreign intelligence services. Likewise, he decides how to relate to information that foreign intelligence agencies share with the Americans.
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Usually, the sensitive position is reserved for a CIA officer who is detailed to the National Security Council. Bitar, however, is not an intelligence professional. He is an anti-Israel political activist.
Glick noted that Bitar’s master’s thesis at Oxford University was about the so-called Palestinian “Nakba,” which is how Palestinians now refer to the displacement of 700,000 people due to a war in which Arab states tried to destroy Israel at its founding.
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), the oldest pro-Israel group in the U.S., also warned at the time of Bitar’s appointment that Bitar’s his rise to a position of prominence at the White House meant that “anti-Israel hate occupies the top of the foreign policy establishment and is set to define the foreign policy of the Biden administration.”
Bitar also played a key role in the first impeachment of President Donald Trump, working for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) on the House Intelligence Committee. Politico described Bitar as Schiff’s “top legal adviser,” and added:
He served as [National Security Council] director for Israeli and Palestinian affairs during the Obama administration and as a deputy to Samantha Power while she was at the NSC. He also worked as a foreign affairs officer at the State Department. Bitar is close with national security adviser Jake Sullivan from their time together at the State Department.
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Bitar served as a senior member of the House impeachment team during Trump’s first impeachment, alongside Dan Goldman who worked as the impeachment manager’s top lawyer. Goldman called Bitar “a brilliant lawyer” and said his experience on the committee would give the new NSC insight into the changes in the intelligence community over the last four years.
The office of the senior director for intelligence receives sensitive information that comes in from the intelligence agencies, especially if it is in hard copy form, and coordinates covert action activities between the White House and the intelligence community. It’s also where the NSC houses the server that stores the most sensitive classified information.
Bitar’s current high-level intelligence position at the National Security Council does not require Senate confirmation.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.