The White House’s National Security Council confirmed on Monday that it hired Merav Ceren, a national and economic security expert, as its Israel and Iran director after critics, including antisemitic ones, said she has a conflict of interest due to her prior experience at the Israeli Defense Ministry.
Ceren is “a patriotic American committed to implementing President Trump’s agenda, and these lies are efforts to undermine the president’s agenda,” stated Brian Hughes, the National Security Council spokesman.
The White House says that Ceren—whose brother, Omri Ceren, is legislative director and a former foreign-policy adviser to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who is known for his pro-Israel views—did intern-level work in natural resource management in Judea and Samaria that required liaising with Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories and Palestinian.
A biography for Ceren on the website of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies states that she “worked at Israel’s Ministry of Defense, where she participated in negotiations in the West Bank between Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories and Palestinian Authority officials.”
Ceren’s LinkedIn page does not list any experience at an Israeli governmental body.
Until February, she was deputy policy director of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and she was a senior professional staff member at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and a former national security fellow at the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
Per the FDD bio, Ceren was a researcher and writer at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, studied in Istanbul and received a master’s in international relations from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. It adds that she is fluent in Hebrew, and has Arabic and Turkish proficiency.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which blamed Israel for being attacked shortly after Oct. 7, stated that “placing someone who previously worked for the Israeli military in charge of U.S. policy on Iran and Israel undermines American diplomacy and raises serious concerns about impartiality and the potential for war.”
Rebeccah Heinrichs, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of its Keystone Defense Initiative, responded to a social-media account that posted about an alleged conflict of interest.
“She has a great reputation for competency and being very good on policy, and I’ve never seen anyone who knows her question her patriotism,” she wrote. “What is this?”
“She’s a patriotic American public servant with expertise and trusted by people dedicated to carrying out the national security agenda of the administration. No conflict,” Heinrichs added.
Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, wrote that “this is disgusting.”
“Merav is an experienced professional. We’re lucky to have her in this role, and she wasn’t an official of Israel’s Defense Ministry. She did a fellowship there,” Brodsky wrote. “This may be controversial in Doha and Tehran, but it isn’t here. A former White House chief of staff served as a volunteer in the IDF as well. Take the antisemitism back in the gutter where it belongs.”
Jewish Americans have long faced antisemitic charges of dual loyalty.
“Despite having a Jewish secretary of state and Jewish supporters, President Nixon thought a ‘Jewish cabal’ in his administration was working against him, a distrust that perhaps stemmed from his belief that Jews were ‘born spies,’” according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Jews in public service have also been accused of having dual loyalties between the U.S. and Israel,” the ADL added. “As a former State Department official wrote in The New York Times, Jews who wanted to work on Middle East policy were for a long time viewed with skepticism.”
A 2005 story in The Los Angeles Times reports that Ceren was born in Haifa and “returned to her native country” in 2004 for the first time since leaving as a toddler.
