Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a staunch defender of Trump and an expected Republican presidential candidate in the 2024 election, is planning a trip to Israel in the wake of an outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas, Politico reports.
Pompeo’s trip, ostensibly as a private citizen to attend the retirement celebration for the head of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, will occur less than one week of the sitting Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, going there. It’s possible the two could be in Israel at the same time.
An evangelical christian, Pompeo vocally supports Israel’s defense actions against Arabs in the region as a way to protect the Holy Land. Pompeo became the first sitting US Secretary of State to visit Israeli settlements in the West Bank in the days after US experts declared Donald Trump lost the November 2020 election.
“The Israelis are simply trying to defend themselves,” Pompeo told Fox News last Tuesday. “Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to defend Arabs and Jews and Christians and Muslims alike and he’s trying to make sure he doesn’t kill civilians. Israel has every right to do all that it needs to not only defend itself against the current rocket attacks but to make sure that that kind of attack can never happen again. They need to complete that mission. It’s absolutely essential for the security of Israel that they do so.”