US envoy Steve Witkoff hits back at ‘neocons' who think military action is solution
Steve Witkoff, US President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, hit back at criticism for his negotiations with Iran and Russia in an interview aired Friday, calling out a 'neocon element' that thinks war is the only way to resolve issues.
'I say it's confirmation bias. They believe, they have a bias toward military interaction,' Witkoff said.
'So, in their minds, anything that is of a military nature to be a solution to that problem, they have a bias towards that. They give no consideration whatsoever to what the consequences are of that,' he said in an interview with Breitbart News.
'The neocon element believes that war is the only way to solve things, and the president believes that his force of personality, the way that he is going to respond to situations, can bend people to do things in a much better way in the interest of the United States government,' Witkoff said.
He added: 'And I believe in that too.'
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'Israel has a sophisticated political communication strategy which rests on its hasbara (propaganda) that has worked hand in hand with its material strategies to control the public spaces in the West through repeating narratives about victimhood and its right to defend itself,' Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS, told Arab News. Monday's strike in Tehran closely mirrors Israel's record in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Under the banner of 'eliminating terrorists,' Israel has killed at least 183 journalists in Palestine and Lebanon, according to CPJ. Others put the figure closer to 220. A separate report published in April by the Costs of War project at Brown University described the Gaza conflict as 'the worst ever for journalists.' Titled 'News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World,' the study concluded that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in all major US wars combined. The report was swiftly attacked by Israeli nationalists, who dismissed it as 'garbage' and factually flawed for not linking the journalists killed to militant activity. 'There is no policy of targeting journalists,' a senior Israeli officer said last year, attributing the deaths to the scale and intensity of the bombardment. But Herrera disagrees. 'Israel is not only targeting journalists, it is targeting the families of the journalists as a strategy to deter their coverage and punish them for reporting the war crimes Israel commits on a daily basis in occupied Palestine,' she said. Herrera cited several examples where Israel appeared to punish journalists by targeting their families. One case was that of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who was broadcasting live when he learned that his wife, daughter, son, and grandchild had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023. 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More recently, in May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier during a raid in Jenin, despite wearing a press vest. Initial Israeli claims blaming Palestinian fire were quickly disproven by independent investigations and the UN. A 2025 documentary identified the suspected shooter, but no one has been held accountable. Foreign media workers have also been killed. In 2014, Italian journalist Simone Camilli and his Palestinian colleague Ali Shehda Abu Afash died when an unexploded Israeli bomb detonated while they were reporting in Gaza. In 2003, Welsh documentarian James Miller was fatally shot by Israeli forces while filming in Rafah. A year earlier, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello — on assignment for Corriere della Sera — was shot dead by Israeli gunfire in Ramallah during the Second Intifada, becoming the first foreign journalist killed in that conflict. No one has been held accountable in any of these cases. 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'Since its establishment in 1948, and even before that though the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the West has protected Israel in the international relations arena. 'The best example of this is the use of the US veto in the UN Security Council or the ever-present declarations that Israel 'has a right to defend itself' by European and American political leadership. 'Until the international community effectively implements sanctions, stops funding and arming Israel, we will only continue to witness Israel's brazen violations of international and human rights law. 'We cannot expect Israel to self-regulate because Israel is not a democracy. Its political and legal systems are subservient to the Zionist ideology of colonization and racial supremacy, and will act to satisfy these aims.'
