The US’ chief Israel planner at the Pentagon has been sacked from his role after referring to the Jewish state as a “death cult”.
Colonel Nathan McCormack has been removed from the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s J5 planning directorate after making a number of incendiary posts on a semi-anonymous social media profile.
McCormack, who served as the directorate’s Levant and Egypt branch chief, referred publicly to “Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies,” to Washington having “overwhelmingly” enabled Israel’s “bad behaviour” and pro-Israel activists in the United States prioritising “support for Israel over our actual foreign interests.”
JNS has learned that McCormack, who according to his LinkedIn account had held his current role since June 2024, has also bashed Israel as a “death cult” that is America’s “worst ally”.
“The Western states go to great lengths to avoid criticism of Israel, much out of Holocaust guilt,” McCormack wrote on social media in April, adding: “Israel’s actions over decades have prompted the accusations of ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
In another post, he said: “Netanyahu and his Judeo-supremacist cronies are determined to prolong the conflict for their own goals: either to remain in power or to annex the land.”
“I’ve lately been considering whether we might be Israel’s proxy and not realised it yet,” he opined in April 2024. “Our worst ‘ally’. We get literally nothing out of the ‘partnership’ other than the enmity of millions of people in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”
And in a post replying to the idea of Gazans potentially finding refuge outside the Gaza Strip, McCormack wrote that Israel wants “to expel them and cleanse ‘Eretz Israel’ of ethnic Palestinians”.
Despite some attempts to anonymise his account, McCormack has repeatedly revealed his name and job title on the platform and has posted photos of himself that match his LinkedIn profile and that include his uniform name tag.
Hours after the his posts came to light, a Joint Staff official at the Pentagon told JNS it is “aware of the situation” and “looking into the matter”.
“The information on the X account does not reflect the position of the Joint Staff or the Department of Defence,” the Pentagon official told JNS. “The individual is being returned to his service while the matter is being investigated.”
Returning to service means that “he will no longer be on the joint staff while the matter is being investigated,” the official said.
“We went through and looked at the hyperlinks and the content, so we were able to see the content, and we’re essentially assigning an investigating officer to look into the matter,” the official told JNS. “Our global alliances and partnerships are vital to our national security, enhancing our collective defence, deterrence and operational reach.”
However, a Defence Department contractor who has interacted with McCormack described the postings as “dangerous.”
“This is the kind of bitter oversharing I’d expect from someone who doesn’t know better,” the contractor told JNS. “But at his level and under his own name and likeness? It’s mind-boggling.”
A Pentagon spokesperson called the JC: “We are aware of the situation. Colonel McCormack is administratively assigned to the US Army.
"The information on this Service Member’s personal X account reflects neither the position of the Joint Staff nor the Department of Defense. Our global alliances and partnerships are vital to our national security, enhancing our collective defense, deterrence, and operational reach.”
