Chas Freeman, Jr. and His Anti-Israel Fable

Chas Freeman, Jr. is a former American ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Whether he was posted there because he already agreed with the anti-Zionist and antisemitic attitudes of the Saudis, or whether he came to share those attitudes while stationed to Riyadh, or whether he is simply doing the bidding of Saudis, who, in gratitude for his spreading false studies about Israel, contribute to his bank account, is unknown. But just now he has been spreading word on social media of a supposed arm “patch” worn by IDF soldiers that shows an outline of all the territory Israel plans to take over, including parts of Egypt, all of Jordan, Lebanon, and parts of Syria and Iraq. Exactly how tiny Israel would. be able to seize and hold such a vast area is not made clear. More on Chas Freeman’s fable about the “Israeli patch” can be found here: “Former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia spreads absurd anti-Israel libel about an ‘IDF patch for Greater Israel,'” Elder of Ziyon, September 15, 2024:

Chas W. Freeman Jr. is a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and an energetic hater of Israel.

I saw in an Arabic website that Freeman claimed that “Ultimately, Israel has a goal not only to empty Palestine of Palestinians, but also to dominate its region.” He added that there is a military badge worn by some people in the Israeli Defense Forces “showing Greater Israel , which includes parts of Egypt , northern Saudi Arabia , all of Jordan , Syria, Lebanon, and even the Euphrates in Iraq, that is, parts of Iraq.”

Freeman claims that Israel “has a goal…to empty Palestine of Palestinians.” How’s that? Ethnic cleansing? But Israel took over Gaza in 1967, and did not “empty” the Strip of any Palestinians. Instead, the Arab population nearly tripled, from 400,000 in 1967 to 1.3 million in 2005, when every last Israeli was pulled out of Gaza. In Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the “West Bank”), the story was the same. In 1967, when Israel took over the area following the Six-Day War, there were 900,000 Arabs in the area; today there are three million. And in Israel behind the green line, there were 160,000 Arabs in 1949, and today there are two million. Yet Chas W. Freeman, Jr. wants you to believe that Israel’s goal is to empty “Palestine of Palestinians.”

I could not find this specific interview, but I saw where Freeman made the claim about the “military badge” on a mailing list on June 19…

He is claiming that IDF soldiers publicly display a map of “greater Israel” showing their goal to conquer all the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, with the Hebrew phrase “The Promised Land of Israel.”

Where did he find this photo?

It was first tweeted by anti-Israel journalist Motasem A Dalloul (profile: “Follow me to help me expose #IsraeliCrimes and #GazaGenocide”)  on June 16. He gave no source as to where he found this.  It spread, using a lot of fake accounts, and then was then picked up by a Jordanian site Roya News where it went viral.

Motasem Dalloul is a Palestinian propagandist-cum-journalist living in Gaza. He is apparently the original source of this “IDF patch” calumny; he provides no source for the claim, which is strong evidence that he himself is the fabricator. In any case, the story went viral on Arab sites — one more false story about the threat of a future Empire of Israel “from the Nile to the Euphrates.”

There is no evidence of such a patch on sale, or any photos of it before this date. Ryan McBeth, an open source intel analyst, did some research on it and found (among other things) that IDF policy does not allow any unauthorized patches on uniforms. However, I have seen at least one soldier wear a  “Moshiach” patch so I don’t know how well this is enforced. (And the Moshiach patch, which can be found online,  might even be authorized.)

From my own perspective,  the fact that the image uses a green-tinged grey scale indicates to me that it was easier for someone to Photoshop a grey scale image – color is much more difficult. The “Greater Israel” patch is also much brighter than the Israeli flag patch, [sic]

In short, the only source for this image is highly suspect. No Gazan could have taken that photo and no Israeli source can be found for it. One can be certain that if soldiers were wearing such patches, Haaretz and +972 would be reporting it….

Both Haaretz and +972 are left-wing Israeli publications that would be eager to publish information about “crazed right-wing Israelis in the IDF” who wear “from the Nile to the Euphrates” patches, but they apparently haven’t found the slightest evidence to support that claim.

A preposterous charge is made by one Motasem Dalloul, Palestinian propagandist/journalist in Gaza, that IDF soldiers are now wearing an arm patch showing an outline of a future greatly expanded Israeli state that includes parts of Egypt, all of Jordan and Lebanon, most of Syria, and some of Iraq. Never mind that wearing unauthorized patches is illegal in the IDF. Never mind that not a single example of such a patch, save for the one fabricated by Dalloul for his tweet, has ever appeared. Never mind that no Israeli official or military man has expressed a desire for such a Greater Israel. Never mind that, far from wishing its western border to extend to the Nile, in the 1979 peace treaty Israel willingly handed back the entire Sinai to Egypt. Still there are crazed antisemites willing to believe the impossible worst of the Jewish state, and to spread the word of its imaginary malevolent plans hither and yon. Most of these people are Arabs. But one of them, alas, is our former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas W. Freeman, Jr.