President Donald Trump’s pick to be the United States ambassador to the United Nations has become the latest administration nominee to express the belief that Israel has “biblical” dominion over the occupied West Bank.
Elise Stefanik’s comment on Tuesday came during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where she also pledged to further Trump’s “America First” mission.
“If confirmed, I stand ready to implement President Trump’s mandate from the American people to deliver America First, peace-through-strength national security leadership on the world stage,” she said during her opening statements.
If confirmed as ambassador, Stefanik explained she would audit US funding for the UN and its constellation of agencies. She would also seek to counter China’s influence at the international organisation and bolster Washington’s staunch support for Israel.
But it was her views on the West Bank that signalled the starkest contrast between the Trump administration and that of his predecessor, President Joe Biden.
Stefanik was definitive when asked if she shared the view of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and former National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir that Israel has a “biblical right to the entire West Bank”.
“Yes,” she replied during the exchange with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen.
When pushed if she supported self-determination for Palestinians, Stefanik sidestepped the question.
“I believe the Palestinian people deserve so much better than the failures that they’ve had from terrorist leaders,” she said. “Of course, they deserve human rights.”
A wider shift
Over the last four years, the Biden administration provided resolute support for Israel at the UN. It repeatedly vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire to stop Israel’s war in Gaza.
However, the administration had been willing to stand up to its “ironclad” ally on the issue of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Such settlements are considered illegal under international law.
Stefanik’s comments were the latest indication that the incoming Trump administration would take a very different tack.
Trump’s first term saw a surge in settlements, with his administration removing a four-decade-long US policy that recognised the expansion into the West Bank as illegal.
Upon taking office on Monday, Trump cancelled Biden-era sanctions on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of violence against Palestinians.
Trump’s pick to be the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has also supported Israeli settlements in the West Bank, citing the Bible as justification. In a 2017 interview with CNN, for instance, Huckabee argued that the Palestinian territory did not exist at all.
“There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria,” he said, using a biblical name.
And in 2008, when he was campaigning for the presidency, Huckabee asserted that the Palestinian identity itself was a fiction.
“I need to be careful about saying this, because people will really get upset. There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian,” Huckabee, who has not yet faced a confirmation hearing, said at the time.
‘Standing with Israel’
Stefanik has long been one of Trump’s most ardent defenders in the US House of Representatives.
In December 2023, however, she rose to a new level of prominence with her viral questioning of three university leaders from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, pressing them over alleged “anti-Semitism” on campus. Two of the three presidents resigned in the aftermath.
Critics have said her accusations helped spur other university leaders to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on campus, out of fear of public backlash.
In her opening address at Tuesday’s confirmation hearing, Stefanik hailed herself as “the leader in combating anti-Semitism in higher education”, citing her 2023 interaction with the university presidents.
“My oversight work led to the most-viewed testimony in the history of Congress,” she said. “This hearing with university presidents was heard around the world and viewed billions of times.”
Responding to questions from bipartisan lawmakers, Stefanik pledged to continue — and extend — the US legacy of support for Israel at the UN. The US is one of five permanent members of the UN Security Council and therefore wields veto power.
She repeated the US position that Israel is unfairly targeted by the UN, decrying what she called “anti-Semitic rot” within the organisation.
The US currently pays about one-fifth of the UN’s regular budget, a regular point of ire for Trump.
On Tuesday, Stefanik promised “a full assessment of all the UN sub-agencies” to make sure “that every dollar [goes] to support our American interests”.
She added she would oppose any US funds going to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).
Legislation passed by the US Congress last year bans funding through March 2025 for the agency, which humanitarian groups say provides irreplaceable support to Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza.
In her hearing, Stefanik also defended Israel, despite criticisms from UN experts that its methods in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”.
“It is a beacon of human rights in the region,” Stefanik said of Israel.
Stefanik’s hearing came just hours after former Senator Marco Rubio, Trump’s pick for secretary of state, became the first member of the incoming administration to be sworn in.
