US Embassy in Saudi Arabia posts video editing out Israel from Trump’s trip

A video posted by the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia edited out President Donald Trump mentioning his trip to Israel, but the State Department said it was “an inadvertent mistake” and not deliberate.

The video, in which Trump’s speech last week announcing the trip was edited to cut mention of Israel, has since been removed from the embassy’s social media. Another video with the complete speech was uploaded to the embassy’s YouTube account on Monday.

A State Department official told JTA in a statement that the embassy had taken the video from the social media account of a private Saudi citizen without realizing that Israel had been edited out.

“Upon learning this, the US Embassy immediately corrected the error, took down the video, and loaded the correct version to its social media accounts,” the official said. “The Embassy expresses its regret for this inadvertent mistake.”

Senior House Democrat Eliot Engel blasted the video, saying in a letter sent Monday to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that the embassy’s alleged editing implies the United States accepts Saudi Arabia’s refusal to recognize Israel as a state.

Israel and Saudi Arabia do not have formal diplomatic relations, but have reportedly developed close security ties behind closed doors in the face of mutual distrust of an ascendant Iran.

Saudi Arabia will be Trump’s initial stop on his first foreign trip as president later this month, followed by visits to Israel and the Vatican.

Engel is the top Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee. He said the US has long fought efforts by Middle East nations to “delegitimize” the Jewish state. He said he was appalled by the embassy’s “incomplete and misleading video.”