Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday officially tapped Yechiel Leiter, a career official active in the settlement movement, to be Israel’s next ambassador to the United States.
Leiter, whose son was killed last year fighting in Gaza in the war against Hamas, will take office on January 20 when Donald Trump returns to the White House.
“Yechiel Leiter is a highly talented diplomat, an eloquent speaker, and has a deep understanding of American culture and politics,” Netanyahu said in a statement on Friday. “I am convinced that Yechiel will represent Israel in the best possible way, and I wish him success in his role.”
According to Haaretz, US-born Leiter was active in his youth in Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League and immigrated to Israel with activists from the far-right organization.
After moving to Israel he received a PhD from Haifa University and has served as deputy director-general of the Education Ministry, chief of staff of then-finance minister Netanyahu and acting chairman of the Ports Authority.
In 2008, he ran in the Likud primaries and placed on the party’s list, but did not make it to the Knesset.
Family and friends of Israeli soldier Moshe Leiter, including his father, Yechiel Leiter, mourn at Moshe’s funeral at the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem on November 12, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Leiter serves as director-general for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs think tank, and is on the faculty of the Ono Academic College in central Israel, teaching philosophy.
Leiter, an ordained rabbi, has resided in West Bank settlements and been active in their establishment and growth for decades. In a 1994 book, “A Peace Plan to Resist,” Leiter argued against the Oslo Accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.
According to Haaretz, he wrote a 2020 article advocating for Israel to annex the West Bank.
Leiter was one of the first residents of the Admot Yishai neighborhood founded in 1984 in the West Bank city Hebron, and two years later he founded an organization to support settlement in the disputed city.
From 1989-1992 he served as chairman of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Hebron. He now lives in Alon Shvut, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc.
Israel Ganz, chairman of the the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization representing local authorities in settlements, lauded Leiter’s appointment.
“Dr. Leiter established the international desk at the Yesha Council in the 1990s and has since been a key partner in English-language advocacy for Judea and Samaria,” Ganz noted, using the Biblical term for the West Bank.
His appointment comes almost exactly one year after his son, Maj. (res.) Moshe Leiter, was killed fighting Hamas in the northern Gaza Strip on November 10, 2023, following the terror group’s October 7 attack against Israel.
Netanyahu told the story of the fallen soldier during his speech to the US Congress in July, noting the presence of Leiter in the audience.
Netanyahu’s office announced Thursday that he had asked the current ambassador in Washington, Michael Herzog, to extend his three-year term until US President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. While couched as an extension, the announcement effectively denied Herzog, who was appointed by the previous government, an additional year in the post.
According to the Ynet news site, Netanyahu first offered the ambassador job to Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a longtime ally who is also originally from the US and has previously held the role, but Dermer refused.
Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer arrives for a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on January 29, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
The prime minister reportedly then tapped Ophir Falk, a senior Netanyahu adviser who has been heavily involved in talks to secure a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas, but Falk also declined.
Trump, whom Netanyahu was thought to be rooting for in the American election, embraced a hawkish foreign policy against Iran during his first term as president, and took a relatively positive view of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Those close to the Republican president-elect have suggested he will employ a similar approach in his second term.
The Times of Israel reported last week that, before the election, Trump told Netanyahu that he wanted Israel to wrap up the war in Gaza by the time he would return to office.
A former US official told The Times of Israel last week this includes the return of those held hostage by Hamas, and the families of seven American hostages have called on Trump’s transition to begin working for their release.
It is believed that 97 of 251 hostages abducted by terrorists on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
