The Settler's Man in Washington
Israeli official Yossi Dagan helped to operate a get out the vote campaign inside Israel in support of Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign. However, his Israeli influence operations did not stop at the 2024 elections.
At the same time, he says he was pushing the incoming Trump administration to rescind U.S. sanctions against Israeli settlers and to cultivate American support for Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Once Trump took office, the President granted Dagan's wish, cutting sanctions. However Dagan's influence operations within the U.S. government extend well beyond the White House, into the office's of Senators, U.S. Reps and prominent Evangelicals.
Dan Friedman and I show the scope of Dagan's influence for Mother Jones:
Glen Stellmacher
Shortly after we published our investigation, Trump said he "will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank." However, facts on the ground show that Israel has already begun officially declaring Palestinian villages Israeli territory, nullifying Palestinian IDs and requiring a permit for Palestinians to enter their own homes within "the state of Israel." That is annexation, and its happening now.
Just this morning, Dagan wrote on his Facebook that "The coordination between Netanyahu, [Minister of Strategic Affairs of Israel Ron] Dermer and Trump has never been tighter."
Dagan has said that Israel doesn't need American permission to move forward with Israeli conquest over the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including Gaza.
"I say the northern [Gaza] strip first,” Dagan said in December 2024. He added that he’d tell Prime Minister Netanyahu, “Establish one settlement there, fly the Israeli flag, open a nursery school. That would be a message of victory that would echo across the Middle East.”
The continued territorial expansion of Israel [regardless of its genocidal violence and environmental destruction] provides personal benefits for some American Zionists who are close to Dagan and Trump.
At an event this year in New York, after saying that "we got President Trump elected," Joseph Frager told an Israel Heritage Foundation dinner with Israeli officials that, "Israel is getting bigger and bigger, thank god... every day... It's harder and harder to find property for a reasonable price...If we don't have Yehuda and Shomron [West Bank], I don't know where I'm gonna live when I end up in Israel."