Middle East Forum
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The Middle East Forum is a publication that John Kiriakou says he had never heard of until a Google alert on his own name surfaced an article attacking him in October 2025. He describes it as "some obscure publication" and "clearly an Israeli publication."

The article

The piece was written by the political adviser to the Israeli foreign minister. On Kiriakou's account it laid out a charge sheet, that he had repeatedly criticized Mossad, repeatedly criticized Israeli actions in Gaza, and repeatedly called those actions a genocide, and concluded that he was antisemitic. Kiriakou's reaction to the label: "that's one of the most ridiculous things anybody has ever said about me. It's just comical."

The second charge is the one he kept. His position on Israel, the adviser wrote, "shows the rot that is taking hold in the intellectual class of the American left", and, in Kiriakou's retelling the following day, that it was up to Israel to stop them "before we damage Israel."

Kiriakou inverted it: "I took that to be a compliment, because to me that means people on the American political left ... are finally coming around and seeing with open eyes what it is that the Israelis are doing to helpless Palestinians." His summary line, "I'm proud at least to be a part of the rotting American intellectual left. I'm going to wear that as a badge of honor."

The comments

The comment thread beneath the article was, he says, "absolutely ferocious," and many of the comments "had to have been from bots", a repeating sequence that began with the accusation of antisemitism and hatred of Jews and ended by calling him morbidly obese, ugly and stupid.

Why he treats it as significant

Kiriakou's stated concern is not the insult but the monitoring it implies: "it shows how closely the Israelis are watching all of us. They're not watching Fox and CNN and MSNBC to make sure everybody toes the line. They're coming all the way down to Consortium News and to John Kiriakou."

He places it inside a longer pattern he first met inside government, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he says, staff "were never permitted to do anything that might anger the Israelis."

See also

- Antisemitism and anti-Zionism
- Senate Foreign Relations Committee
- MOSSAD
- AIPAC
