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‘Incompetence Everywhere’: Fury as US Embassy Says Americans Stuck in Israel Are On Their Own
"The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well," said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Mar 03, 2026
The US Embassy in Jerusalem sparked outrage on Tuesday when it said it was unable to help Americans stuck in Israel leave the country amid an escalating regional conflict with Iran.
In a message posted on social media, the embassy said it "is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel," and recommended seeking help from Israeli tourism officials.
"The Israeli Ministry of Tourism has begun operating shuttles to the Taba Border Crossing as of March 2," the embassy stated. "To be added to the passenger list for a shuttle, you must register via the Ministry’s evacuation form. The US Embassy cannot make any recommendation (for or against) the Ministry of Tourism's shuttle. If you choose to avail yourself of this option to depart, the US government cannot guarantee your safety."
The embassy's message came three days after the US and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran, which has retaliated by launching drone strikes on US allies throughout the Middle East.
Many critics slammed the US embassy for being so unprepared to help its own citizens despite having advance knowledge that a large-scale attack on Iran was a real possibility.
"Mike Huckabee’s embassy is always ready to defend Israel," wrote Zeteo News editor-in-chief Mehdi Hasan, "but not to help American citizens, it seems."
US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said that the Jerusalem embassy's helplessness in the face of an emergency was evidence of "incompetence everywhere."
"So the State Department is forcing everyone to immediately leave the region but is also refusing to help people leave the region," he wrote. "The strike itself is illegal and disastrous but their lack of readiness for what comes next is unforgivable as well."
Murphy's criticism was echoed by former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a one-time ally of President Donald Trump who in recent months has become a staunch critic of the president's decisions.
"American tax payers are forced to give Israel $3.8 BILLION every single year," she wrote, "and here is our own US Embassy in Jerusalem telling Americans good luck getting out, you are on your own. The betrayal is unbelievable."
Tommy Vietor, former National Security Council staffer under President Barack Obama, expressed outrage at the Trump White House for leaving Americans out to dry.
"All those years demagoguing Benghazi and pretending to give a shit about Americans overseas," wrote Vietor, "and now the White House starts a reckless war with Iran and tells everyone trying to escape the chaos that you're on your own."
Sam Stein, a reporter at The Bulwark, observed that the US Department of State only put out an alert encouraging Americans to leave Israel and 13 other countries in the region on Monday, two days after the strikes against Iran began.
"This morning, the Embassy in Jerusalem says it can't help with that," Stein marveled.
Anti-gun violence activist Fred Guttenberg unleashed an angry tirade at the Trump administration upon seeing the US embassy's message.
"THEY HAD NO FUCKING PLAN!!!" he wrote. "Americans are at risk now because they had no FUCKING plan."
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Israel Plans 1,000 New Settlement Homes as West Bank Raids Intensify
"The Netanyahu government is operating on steroids to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise," said one group.
Feb 17, 2025
Israeli authorities are planning to expand a Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank by nearly 1,000 homes, a Tel Aviv-based peace group said Sunday as Israeli soldiers and settlers escalated attacks on Palestinians in the illegally occupied territory.
Peace Now said Israel's Civil Administration has issued a new tender for the construction of 974 new housing units in Efrat, a Jewish-only colony located about 7.5 miles south of Jerusalem between Bethlehem and Hebron. The planned expansion will increase Efrat's population of approximately 11,800 residents by 40% and geographically isolate Palestinian communities in the southern West Bank.
Emboldened by U.S. President Donald Trump's return to power, far-right members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet have vowed to annex the West Bank, which Israel has occupied since 1967 in violation of international law.
On Sunday, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that "the goal for 2025 is to demolish more than the Palestinians build in the West Bank," according to Al Jazeera. This, following the largest Israeli seizure of Palestinian land in the West Bank in decades last year.
"The Netanyahu government is operating on steroids to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise," said Peace Now, referring to the longtime Israeli practice of violating international law by colonizing and annexing Palestinian land to establish what one legal scholar has described as "de facto possession with the aim of attaining de jure possession."
Peace Now continued: "It is now clear that military action alone will not bring a solution to the conflict or security to Israel, and that ultimately we will have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu government is harming Israeli interests and torpedoing the only solution that can bring us security and peace."
In the United States, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement Monday that "the ongoing de facto annexation of the illegally occupied West Bank through the expansion of racially segregated illegal settlements is just one aspect of the far-right Israeli government's ethnic cleansing of the entirety of historic Palestine and of its relentless efforts to block justice for the Palestinian people."
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Israel-based peace group Ir Amim, told Al Jazeera that "since the start of 2025, Israeli authorities have demolished 27 structures in East Jerusalem, including 18 residential units, in what appears to be a systematic effort to remove Palestinians from their homes while simultaneously expanding Israeli settlements."
The Israeli settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to more than 500,000 today. Last July, the International Court of Justice, which is also weighing a genocide case concerning Israel's annihilation of the Gaza Strip, said that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is an illegal form of apartheid that must end "as rapidly as possible."
News of the Efrat expansion came as Israeli soldiers and settlers escalated attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank over the weekend. Occupation forces carried out raids in the towns of al-Issawiya and Salfit, near East Jerusalem, as well as the village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah. Israeli troops also continued their siege and assault on Jenin and the Nur Shams refugee camp, where two young women, one of them pregnant, were shot dead last week.
Armed Israeli settlers from the Mikne Avraham colony also invaded al-Minya, south of Bethlehem, wounding 16 Palestinians including a pregnant woman who was attacked with clubs and rocks, according to Middle East Eye. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported Saturday that settlers sicced dogs on al-Minya residents, wounding two people.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 876 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.
Since launching "Operation Iron Wall" on January 21, Israeli forces have killed at least 53 Palestinians across the West Bank. The Israeli offensive has forced around 40,000 people from their homes in what experts say is the largest displacement in the West Bank since more than 200,000 Palestinians were expelled during the 1967 conquest and occupation.
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Israeli Police Assault Palestinian Christian Worshippers in Jerusalem
Ordinarily, 10,000 worshippers would flock to the church for this festival, but the Israeli police under the new extremist, Jewish supremacist Netanyahu government have refused to allow more than a fraction of them to gather there this year.
Apr 16, 2023
The Arabic press is reporting violent assaults Saturday evening by Israeli police against Palestinian Christian worshippers in Jerusalem attempting to make their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for the "Saturday of Light" commemoration. The police attacks took place at the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in response to Christians objecting to the barriers the police had erected to keep crowds away.
On this day Eastern Orthodox priests descend to the basement where they say their candles are lit from an illumination emanating from the tomb that once held Christ before his resurrection. The lighted candles they bring back up are used to light other candles, and the light is taken by airplane to Eastern Orthodox countries like Greece, Bulgaria, and Ukraine and distributed to churches.
So not only are the Israelis refusing to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian occupation, they are limiting Ukrainian pilgrims from attending the Saturday of Light festivities.
Ordinarily, 10,000 worshippers would flock to the church for this festival, but the Israeli police under the new extremist, Jewish supremacist Netanyahu government have refused to allow more than a fraction of them to gather there this year. Some 1,800 were allowed inside the church and another 1,200 were permitted to gather in the square just outside it.
The Israeli police statement claimed that some of the Christian worshippers attempted to enter the church by force. The police arrested one man, who is charged with attacking them.
The foreign ministry of the government of Palestine issued a statement saying that it "condemns in the strongest terms the occupation forces' attack on Christians celebrating the Holy Saturday in the Old City (Jerusalem), and preventing dozens from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulchre," adding that it considered these actions "strong evidence of the oppression practiced by the occupation forces toward Palestinian citizens, and toward the believers who came to worship in Jerusalem, regardless of their nationality."
The assaults on these worshippers, the ministry said, are "a flagrant attack on the political, historical, and legal status quo, and a brazen violation of the obligations of Israel, the occupying power, in Jerusalem."
The "status quo" is a technical term. According to agreements that go back to the Ottoman period and which were accepted by Israel in 1967 when it militarily seized Palestinian East Jerusalem, each religious community has control over its own religious edifices.
The Eastern Orthodox Church explains: "The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has absolute sovereignty, both in the Church of the Resurrection and the Holy Sepulchre, as well as in the rest of the Holy Sites within Palestine. The Church of the Resurrection, the Golgotha, the Holy Sepulchre and Adam's Chapels, the Crown of Thorns, Centurion Longinus' the Monastery of the Klapon, and the Prison of Christ fall within the spiritual, administrative, and pastoral jurisdiction of the Patriarchate, as well as part of the Praetorium, the Tomb of Panaghia in Gethsemane, the Church of 'Little Galilee' on the Mount of Olives, the site where Protomaryr Stephen was stoned to death, and the house of Theotokos."
It is open season on Christians in Jerusalem since PM Benjamin Netanyahu brought extremists such as Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir and Religious Zionism head Bezalel Smotrich into the Cabinet and even gave them power over the Palestinians.
The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who is appointed by the Vatican, told AP this week that the far, far-right government has emboldened Jewish extremists to attack clergymen and commit vandalism against churches at an unprecedented rate. He said that the extremists now feel that they have government protection, adding, "The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new."
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