Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Tuesday with Moosa Zameer, the foreign minister of the Maldives, despite the fact that the Indian Ocean nation has banned Israelis from entering, in a move intended to exclude Israeli Jews.
As Breitbart News has reported, the Maldives sought to ban Israelis from entering the country earlier this month:
The move is the latest in a growing list of unfriendly gestures by Muslim states towards Israel, intended to oppose operations to neutralize Hamas following its invasion of Israeli territory. On October 7, thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded the country and engaged in a host of atrocities including the massacre of entire families, documented instances of torture and gang rape, and the mutilation and desecration of corpses, in some cases filmed for entertainment.
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The office of Maldivian President Muizzu announced on Sunday that the president “has resolved to impose a ban on Israeli passports.”
However, as Breitbart News reported last week, the Maldives realized that since 20% of Israelis are Arab, its ban affected them as well. The ban had evidently intended to target Israeli Jews alone; now it is being adjusted.
None of that came up, evidently, in Blinken’s meeting with the foreign minister of the Maldives. The State Department reported, in a statement it said was attributable to spokesman Matthew Miller:
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Maldivian Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer today in Washington, DC. Secretary Blinken reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to partnering with Maldives to promote a free, open, secure, and prosperous Indo-Pacific region. The Secretary highlighted the U.S. donation of eight patrol boats to Maldives and, working with Congress, the planned provision of $2 million in hydrographic support to help Maldives mitigate the impact of rising sea levels. The Secretary and the Foreign Minister discussed additional opportunities to enhance cooperation on addressing the climate crisis, economic growth, maritime security, and other bilateral priorities.
Blinken also posted a photo of his meeting with Zameer on X, with a positive message that did not mention the ban on Israelis:
In November, Zameer emerged from his ministry office to express solidarity with anti-Israel protesters.
The State Department’s official definition of antisemitism includes “the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.”
Israeli government spokesman David Mencer declined Wednesday to comment on Blinken’s meeting, but said that the Maldives’ “outrageous exclusion of Jews” paralleled the Nazis’ policy of making Europe “judenrein,” i.e. free of Jews.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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