How Israel Lost the American Public

by James Rushmore | Oct 22, 2025

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/how-israel-lost-the-american-public/

A new poll published by Quinnipiac University finds that only 21% of Americans hold a positive opinion of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, 49% hold a negative view of the Likud leader. And while 47% of respondents believe that U.S. support for Israel is in the national interest, 41% disagree. This represents a marked shift in public opinion. A Quinnipiac poll conducted in December 2023 found that 69% of Americans believed their nation’s support for Israel was in the national interest.

Of course, the Quinnipiac poll is no outlier. In July, a Gallup poll found that 29% of voters, including 9% of Democrats and 19% of independents, held a favorable view of Netanyahu, while 52% viewed him unfavorably. Gallup also found that only 32% of Americans supported Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip, down from 42% in September 2024. This tracks with the results of an August Quinnipiac poll, which found that 32% of Americans supported the provision of additional military aid to Israel. Meanwhile, 60% of voters, including 75% of Democrats and 66% of independents, opposed sending more aid. 50% of respondents, including a majority of independents, also indicated their belief that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Just last week, a poll conducted by The New York Times and Siena found that 40% of voters, including 66% of those between the ages of 18 and 29, believe that Israel is deliberately killing Palestinian civilians.

The reasons behind Israel’s reputational collapse are self-evident. For two years, Americans’ social media feeds have been flooded with photos and videos of Palestinian civilians, many of them children, being killed or maimed by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Social media has also made the destruction of the Gaza Strip a palpable reality for Americans living 5,000 miles away. According to the Israeli online marketing platform Humanz, 109.6 billion posts bearing pro-Palestinian hashtags were posted to Instagram and TikTok in October 2023. Palestinian journalists and content creators like Motaz Azaiza, Bisan Owda, and Hind Khoudary have gained millions of Instagram followers since Israel began bombing Gaza. As of September 2025, 5.6 million videos bearing the hashtag #Palestine have been posted to TikTok, racking up 59.5 billion views. The more Americans see of the war, the more they grow disillusioned with the mainstream media’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as their government’s complicity in Israel’s atrocities.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, over 67,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, 2023, while over 169,000 have been wounded. In terms of both the ratio of combatants to noncombatants killed and the rate of death relative to population, the Gaza War ranks as the deadliest armed conflict of the century. On September 16, a United Nations commission of inquiry published a report concluding that Israel is guilty of committing genocide. The commission found that Israel was guilty of four acts—killing members of a group, causing serious physical or mental harm to its members, deliberately inflicting conditions of life intended to bring about the group’s physical destruction, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group—which satisfy the criteria for genocide. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem has also described the war as a genocide, accusing Israel of “taking coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”

Last October, Harvard economist Linda J. Bilmes and policy analysts Stephen Semler and William D. Hartung calculated that the U.S. government had spent at least $22.76 billion on military operations in the region since October 7. Under President Donald Trump, Washington’s spending has exploded even further. In February, the Trump administration approved an $8.4 billion arms sale to Israel, the largest since 2015. The following month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed a declaration that would expedite the transfer of an additional $4 billion in military assistance. By March 1, only a little more than a month since returning to the White House, Trump had already signed off on $12 billion in weapons sales to Israel. And just last month, his administration proposed the sale of another $6.4 billion in attack helicopters, troop carriers, and other equipment.

Many of Israel’s most strident defenders have blamed Tel Aviv’s public relations struggles on Qatari and Iranian disinformation campaigns. This faulty analysis ignores what should be obvious. For millions of Americans, bearing witness to the atrocities of the war in real time has reified what was previously intangible, and the scale of the Palestinian death toll has proven unshakable. The knowledge that taxpayer money is being used to cause and prolong such suffering only adds insult to injury. It should come as no surprise that the American public is no longer as uniformly pro-Israel as it was prior to October 2023. What remains mystifying is why Washington remains so intent on ignoring this unmistakable shift.

US growing worried Israeli prime minister could jeopardize Gaza ceasefire deal: Report

US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel aims to pile pressure on Netanyahu to abide by ceasefire deal, US media says

Betul Yilmaz 21.10.2025

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/us-growing-worried-israeli-prime-minister-could-jeopardize-gaza-ceasefire-deal-report/3722555

ISTANBUL

The administration of President Donald Trump is growing worried that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could jeopardize the Gaza ceasefire deal with Hamas, US media reported on Tuesday.

The New York Times, citing anonymous White House officials, said Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel aims to put pressure on Netanyahu to abide by the ceasefire in Gaza and “add an extra symbolic layer to illustrate the administration’s commitment to keeping the deal intact.”

US Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, already landed in Israel on Monday for talks with Netanyahu and other officials on the implementation of the deal.

A senior US official told the US daily that both Witkoff and Kushner believe that the ceasefire deal is “in danger of falling apart.”

The two envoys’ strategy in Israel is “to try to keep Netanyahu from resuming an all-out assault against Hamas,” the sources said.

The NY Times said that the talks of Witkoff and Kushner in Israel focused on “some of the trickier areas that were left undefined in their initial deal,” such as the formation of a stabilization force and the disarmament of Hamas.

Israel launched a series of deadly airstrikes across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 44 Palestinians after alleging that Hamas had attacked its troops in the southern city of Rafah. The Palestinian group denied any involvement and reaffirmed its commitment to the ceasefire.

Trump has already affirmed that the Gaza ceasefire remains effective despite the Israeli strikes.

The ceasefire deal took effect on Oct. 10 in the Gaza Strip, based on a phased plan presented by Trump. Phase one included the release of Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

The plan also envisages the rebuilding of Gaza and the establishment of a new governing mechanism without Hamas.

Since October 2023, the Israeli genocidal war has killed over 68,200 people and injured more than 170,200, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

How ‘Little Marco’ Became Trump’s Top Hawk in Latin America

Trump has long flirted with toppling Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, and he has effectively positioned Marco Rubio to do it.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos

Oct 20, 2025

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-little-marco-became-trumps-biggest-asset-in-latin-america/

On the day the Gaza peace deal was signed, President Donald Trump told his audience at the Israeli Knesset that Marco Rubio will go down as the greatest secretary of state in “the history of the United States.” He compared him to Henry Kissinger and bestowed upon him much of the credit for the brokered plan that resulted in the ceasefire and celebrated hostage release.

This, a week, after the Miami Herald described how Rubio had amassed so much power inside the White House—just like Kissinger under President Richard Nixon, wearing both the hats of chief diplomat and head of the National Security Council—that he wasn’t just surviving the tumultuous Trump orbit, he was “thriving.”

This is clearly bad news for Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, who is reportedly preparing his country for an invasion. Reports that regime change is the endgame in an aggressive U.S. military counter narcotics operation in the Caribbean get more detailed every day, including plans for CIA covert operations in the country and “Little Bird” Army helicopters ostensibly carrying U.S. special forces 90 miles off the coast of the country. The administration has done little to deny it.

More importantly, these reports indicate that Rubio, a former Florida senator who came to Washington in 2011 and immediately cleaved to the neoconservative foreign policies driving the heady, regime-change crazy Global War on Terror, is at the helm of this operation’s policy and planning. This is no surprise, since toppling Maduro and the Castros in Cuba have been constants in his otherwise shifting foreign policy persona. 

But unlike his days as a reliable vote for old-guard hawks who used democracy and freedom to justify overturning governments they did not like, he is now seen as an enlightened adherent of the New Right, which espouses a more nationalist approach that in part seeks to revitalize the Monroe Doctrine for the 21st century. 

His views on regime change, however, haven’t changed. 

“The United States remains firm in its unwavering support to Venezuela’s restoration of democratic order and justice. Maduro is not the President of Venezuela and his regime is not the legitimate government,” Rubio said in a State Department statement on July 26. “The United States will continue working with our partners to hold accountable the corrupt, criminal and illegitimate Maduro regime. Those who steal elections and use force to grasp power undermine America’s national security interests.”

For many realists in the MAGA coalition, Rubio was never an easy fit. While Trump in 2016 was a strident critic of regime-change wars, democracy promotion, and global policing, Rubio ran his own presidential campaign opposing him on all of these fronts. His ascension to the inner circle today and seeming predominance over the diplomacy and national security realms, sidelining figures like Ric Grenell (who was recalled from talks with Maduro earlier this month) and even Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, is a red flag, they say.

“Rubio was a hawk and still is a hawk. It’s just that the kinds of justifications that he’ll use to get the policy outcomes he wants have evolved in light of the necessities of what’s happened to the Republican Party with Trump's takeover,” Damon Linker, longtime political columnist and now a senior lecturer in the political science department at the University of Pennsylvania, told TAC.

“I think Rubio is sort of he has assimilated himself to what he understands to be the reality of what it means to support Trump and be a foreign policy guy in this world, and there’s a weird way in which his hatred of Maduro in Venezuela can like mesh with Trump’s strong, sort of neo-Monroe Doctrine outlook,” he added. “[This] allows someone like Rubio to treat Maduro as like an unrepentant communist who’s a kind of a holdover from the Cold War, and he’s a bad actor, and he’s sending drugs here, and so many of the refugees who came in under Biden came from Venezuela. That’s going to keep happening if we don’t stop the outflow of people from this failed state down there, and that’s how you talk to Trump if you want to topple the government.”

Vice President J.D. Vance is considered the spearpoint of the realist-restraint movement, having been one of the most vocal critics of the GWOT neoconservatives, regime change, and for putting military before diplomatic solutions during his time in the Senate. Some wonder if his voice on these matters has been sidelined too. And yet, the Miami Herald piece talked about Rubio, Vance, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles as forming a “triumvirate of power, along with a personal bond” alongside the president.

One senior career official who had worked in multiple Republican administrations in both the State Departments and NSC, said Rubio, with his own long experience in government and politics, now inhabits a space ripe for imposing a singular, even personal, agenda. In the radical shrinking and reshuffling at both agencies, much of the traditional processes have been tossed, along with institutional memory and experience. After decades of failed, sclerotic thinking isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it leaves little room for healthy debate and red teaming on the use of force in this situation, critics say.

“It allows for any one person to have outsized power and influence. You have a very manipulatable situation and I think that’s potentially allowed Rubio to pick up on this fever dream” of regime change in Venezuela, the source said.

But is it only his fever dream? Other conservatives who spoke with TAC insist that while Rubio has been at the forefront of a movement to depose Maduro for sometime, he is still merely pursuing what Trump wants. Recall, Trump actively encouraged Maduro’s ouster during his first administration, recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as the legitimate president and even at one point encouraging Venezuelan military leaders to turn on Maduro. 

A failed “Bay of Piglets” invasion in 2020 headed by retired U.S. special forces operators and connected to Venezuelan exiles raised the specter of more covert, kinetic Washington operations, yet the connections to the administration were too tenuous to confirm. At the time, reports said Rubio was “running” Trump’s Latin America policy, though he leaned heavily on another hawkish ideologue, Mike Pompeo, then serving as secretary of state.

Grenell was sidelined in early October, sources tell TAC, because he was trying to “freelance” a diplomatic policy that the president did not want. Rubio, on the other hand, has worked hard to earn Trump’s trust and in the early days of this administration was able to help pull off a deal with Panama and has been integral on both the Ukraine and Israel portfolios.

“Rubio is very smart. I think Trump came to realize that this is a guy who has enormous skills … and that he can trust him,” said the former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich in an interview with TAC. “What is driving Trump is not Rubio, but the degree to which Venezuela is a direct threat to the United States, and that’s why I think they just sank the fourth boat today, if I read the newspaper correctly, and they’re clearly moving towards regime change in one way or another.”

The conservative journalist and podcaster Emily Jashinsky said much of the skepticism over Rubio has been over his roots in conventional Republican party politics and neoconservatism, which have since been discredited in the new populist-nationalism, or the MAGA “New Right.” But he doesn’t think that his foreign policy contradicts what Trump has set out to do in this second term, which is to focus more on the Western Hemisphere and “protecting the homeland.”

“The biggest misconception about Marco Rubio is that his MAGA flip-flop was cynical and not sincere. It was entirely sincere,” she tells TAC. “It’s hardly surprising that Rubio is still interested in regime change in the Hemisphere, given his longtime involvement in Latin American anticommunism, but it also doesn’t mean he’s still the same Rubio of 2016. It’s easy both politically and morally to frame hemispheric hawkishness under the auspices of America First because proximity does change security calculations and drug trafficking is important to MAGA voters who’ve seen their communities ravaged by fentanyl.”

“Some realists on the right like myself are skeptical of plans that sound like reheated Cold War era follies,” she adds, “but others see a coherent strategy that maintains America First rather than undermining it.”

Rubio of course enjoys a base of support for his agenda inside and outside Washington which is bipartisan in nature, very wealthy, super-connected, and already positioned at the highest levels of administration. Neocon think tanks as well as those representing oil and corporate interests have been making the case for Maduro’s ouster for years. An opposition is already primed to move in and has been courting American business and media in anticipation. By connecting narco-terrorism and the country’s illegal drug crisis directly to Maduro, conservative Americans (and voters) are ripe for support, too.

In essence, Maduro’s problems go way beyond Rubio. Yet the instrumentalization of this preferred policy rests on the ability of the American government, in particular the U.S. military buttressed by the State Department and National Security Council, to execute it. Rubio has his hands on the levers of power, and sources say he is clearing the decks of internal dissent. If this fails, or if Trump decides not to go forward with full scale regime change, it may be Rubio’s political fortunes that ultimately hang in the balance.

Iran, Russia, China Send Letter to UN To Mark Official End of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal

The three countries criticized the E3 nations for triggering the 'snapback' mechanism of the deal

by Dave DeCamp | October 19, 2025 

https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/19/iran-russia-china-send-letter-to-un-to-mark-official-end-of-the-2015-iran-nuclear-deal/

On Saturday, Iran, Russia, and China sent a letter to the UN Security Council declaring that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, has officially expired.

The official termination of the JCPOA comes seven years after the US unilaterally quit the deal during the first Trump administration in 2018.

In the letter, the three countries condemned France, the UK, and Germany, known as the E3, for triggering the snapback mechanism of the JCPOA, which re-imposed UN Security Council sanctions that were lifted back in 2015. Russia and China’s opposition to the move signals they will not follow the sanctions, which include an arms embargo.

“The attempt by the E3 to trigger the so-called ‘snapback’ is by default legally and procedurally flawed,” Iran, Russia, and China said, adding that the E3 “ceased to perform their commitments” under the JCPOA and UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the agreement and created the snapback mechanism.

The ability to snap back the sanctions would have expired with the JCPOA, which is why the E3 countries ensured they were reimposed beforehand, a step they likely took at the behest of the US. The sanctions came just a few months after the 12-day US-Israeli war against Iran, which involved the US bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran, Russia, and China told the Security Council that the end of the JCPOA and the “conclusion of Resolution 2231 marks the end of the Security Council’s consideration of the Iranian nuclear issue and contributes to strengthening the authority of the Council and the credibility of multilateral diplomacy.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry also released a statement that said all of the “provisions (of the deal), including the restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program and the related mechanisms, are considered terminated.” The Foreign Ministry reiterated that Tehran was still open to diplomacy over its nuclear program, though any diplomatic progress with the US is unlikely due to the Trump administration’s demands.

Iran remains a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its leadership has reaffirmed in recent months that Tehran is not seeking nuclear weapons and is still bound by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s fatwa that prohibits the development of nuclear weapons.

Israel, which is always accusing Iran of moving toward nuclear weapons, is not a signatory to the NPT and has a secret nuclear weapons stockpile, making it the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East.

Israel heavily bombs Gaza in major ceasefire violation

Attacks across war-torn strip leave at least 15 killed

By MEE staff

Published date: 19 October 2025

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-air-strikes-hit-rafah-amid-reports-clashes-abu-shabab-gang

Israeli air strikes hit several areas across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 15 Palestinians, in the latest violation of the ceasefire.

Strikes were reported in Rafah and Khan Younis in the south, Jabalia in the north, and parts of central Gaza.

Among the sites hit were a cafe, a mobile phone charging station, and a group of journalists.

The Israeli military said the strikes were in response to an alleged "attack" by Palestinians on its troops in southern Rafah involving a rocket-propelled grenade and sniper fire.

There were no immediate reports of Israeli casualties. 

Middle East Eye could not independently verify the Israeli claim. 

The armed wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, denied any knowledge of or connection to the alleged attack, which Israel said took place in an area under its control.

Hamas said it has had no contact with its fighters in that area since March.

“We have no involvement in any events occurring in those areas and cannot communicate with any of our fighters there, if any of them remain alive,” the group said in a statement, adding that it remains committed to the ceasefire.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier that the army will take "firm action against terror targets in the Gaza Strip" after the alleged attack, which local media said took place beyond the so‑called “Yellow Line” - a demarcation inside Gaza where Israeli forces are stationed. 

Earlier, Israeli media reported an explosion in a military vehicle in Rafah, which was followed by air strikes in the area. The cause of the explosion was not immediately clear. 

Initial unconfirmed reports from both Israeli and Palestinian sources suggested the incident may have involved an attempted attack by Hamas on the Israeli-backed Yasser Abu Shabab gang. 

The militia has been accused of stealing humanitarian aid and attacking Palestinian civilians during Israel's two-year genocidal war on Gaza. 

Israeli ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich urged action after the incident. 

Ben Gvir called on Netanyahu to “renew full‑scale fighting in the Strip at full strength”, while Smotrich posted the single word “War!” on X.

Izzat al-Risheq, member of the Hamas' Political Bureau, said in a brief statement that the group was still committed to the ceasefire.

"Hamas movement reaffirms its commitment to the ceasefire agreement and emphasises that the Zionist occupation is the party continuing to violate the agreement and fabricate baseless pretexts to justify its crimes," Risheq said. 

"Netanyahu’s attempts to evade and disavow his commitments come under pressure from his extremist terrorist coalition, in a bid to escape his responsibilities before the mediators and guarantors." 

Since the ceasefire came into effect on 11 October, Israeli forces have violated it around 50 times, including through artillery shelling, drone strikes, tank fire and quadcopter attacks.

More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in these incidents.

Israel has also violated other terms of the agreement, including restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid and the continued closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

Gaza officials formally accuse Israel of organ theft, demand international probe

Dozens of Palestinian bodies returned by Israeli authorities were 'blindfolded, bound, crushed under tanks, and missing corneas, livers, and limbs,' officials denounced

News Desk

OCT 18, 2025

https://thecradle.co/articles/gaza-officials-formally-accuse-israel-of-organ-theft-demand-international-probe

Gaza’s Government Media Office formally accused Israel on 17 October of stealing organs from Palestinians after Israel returned 120 mutilated bodies following the recent ceasefire, including some who had been tortured to death.

“We formally accuse the Israeli army of stealing organs from the martyrs,” stated Dr. Ismail al-Thawabta, Director General of the Media Office, while demanding an international investigation into Israel's “torture, mutilation, and organ theft.”

The 120 bodies “arrived in extremely poor and distressing condition,” including blindfolded, bound, crushed under tanks, and missing corneas, livers, and limbs, Thawabta stated.

“The Israeli occupation executed many of them in cold blood. A large number were found blindfolded, with their hands and feet bound, and others showed signs of hanging or close-range gunfire,” he added.

“We also found bodies showing clear evidence of severe torture until death.”

Thawabta explained that Israeli authorities refused to provide the names of the victims, making it extremely difficult for authorities in Gaza to identify them.

After the release of the bodies, families of missing Palestinians rushed to hospitals—especially Nasser Hospital—trying to see if their relatives were among them. But many remain unidentified and will have to be buried anonymously.

“The health system in Gaza is almost completely collapsed. We lack the equipment for DNA testing and forensic analysis. Some families could only identify their loved ones from personal belongings or clothing. If we cannot identify the rest, we will be forced, sadly, to document and bury them anonymously, to preserve human dignity,” Thawabta added.

According to the Media Office’s data, 9,500 Palestinians remain missing, most of them trapped under the rubble of destroyed buildings.

“Entire families—father, mother, children—remain buried for nearly two years,” the Media Office director stated.

The bodies are difficult to locate due to the sheer amount of destruction Israeli bombing has caused, and because Israel has destroyed almost all of Gaza’s heavy machinery, bulldozers, and excavators, preventing rescue operations.

“Even now, despite the ceasefire, all crossings remain closed, and Israel blocks the entry of rescue machinery. This is a humanitarian catastrophe unprecedented in modern history—over 3,000 families completely wiped out, another 6,000 families killed with only one survivor,” Thawabta added.

Authorities in Gaza have reported previous instances of organ theft during the genocide.

In August 2024, Israeli forces returned to Khan Yunis the decomposed bodies of 89 Palestinians in a shipping container.

Authorities were unable to identify the bodies and were forced to bury them in separate body bags in a single large grave near Nasser Hospital. 

Israeli forces were also seen taking dozens of bodies from graves and the streets surrounding Al-Shifa Medical Complex and the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip.

Doctors found evidence of organ theft, including missing cochleas and corneas, as well as other vital organs like livers, kidneys, and hearts.

Israel has a long history of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

In 1990, Dr. Hatem Abu Ghazaleh, former chief health official for the West Bank, stated that during the first intifada, "organs, especially eyes and kidneys, were removed from the bodies during the first year or year and a half.”

In 2013, Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom published an article documenting the theft of organs from deceased Palestinians brought to the Israeli National Institute of Forensic Medicine (Abu Kabir) between the First Intifada and the 2012 war in Gaza. 

Abu Kabir director and chief pathologist Dr. Yehuda Hiss admitted in a July 2000 interview with US academic Nancy Scheper-Hughes that the institute was secretly taking skin, bones, cardiac valves, corneas, and other human materials from bodies during autopsies.

He described removing not only corneas but whole eyeballs from the bodies of the dead, which would be returned to their families with their eyelids glued shut.

In 1996, Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburgh, an influential leader within the fundamentalist Jewish group, Chabad-Lubavitch, claimed that Judaism permits organ theft from non-Jews on the basis that Jewish lives are more important than non-Jewish lives.

“If a Jew needs a liver,” he asked, “can you take the liver of an innocent non-Jew passing by to save him? The Torah would probably permit that. Jewish life has infinite value. There is something infinitely more holy and unique about Jewish life than non-Jewish life.”

Head of US Southern Command to Step Down Amid Strikes on Boats and Push Toward Venezuela Regime Change

According to The New York Times, Adm. Alvin Hosley has raised concerns about bombing boats and the policy toward Venezuela

by Dave DeCamp | October 16, 2025 

https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/16/head-of-us-southern-command-to-step-down-amid-strikes-on-boats-and-push-toward-venezuela-regime-change/

The head of US Southern Command, the military commander overseeing US escalations in the Caribbean and the push toward an attempt at regime change in Venezuela, is stepping down, the Pentagon announced on Thursday.

According to a statement from SOUTHCOM Commander Adm. Alvin Holsey, who served in the position for less than a year, he will be retiring on December 12, 2025, ending a 37-year military career.

No reason was given for his resignation, but according to The New York Times, he had raised concerns about the US military mission in the Caribbean, which has involved a significant buildup of forces and the bombing of five boats that the Trump administration has claimed, without providing evidence, were carrying drugs.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth issued a statement on Holsey’s retirement and praised the admiral, but the Times report said that officials at the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill said the praise “masked real policy tensions concerning Venezuela that the admiral and his civilian boss were seeking to paper over.”

Reuters also reported that a source said there had been tension between Holsey and Hegseth and questions about whether he would be fired in the days leading up to the announcement.

The Trump administration has come under significant criticism for its bombing campaign against alleged drug-running boats since the operations amount to extrajudicial executions. The Pentagon has also provided Congress with no hard evidence to back up its claims about the strikes.

US officials have also been clear that the real purpose of the military campaign is to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The administration has used drug trafficking as the pretext for the operations, pointing to the large number of overdose deaths in the US, but they are primarily caused by Fentanyl, which doesn’t come from Venezuela or travel through the country on its way to the US.

President Trump has recently authorized the CIA to conduct lethal covert operations inside Venezuela, as the US military is considering launching airstrikes directly against Venezuelan territory.