Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) praised the Washington Free Beacon on the Senate floor on Monday evening for its exclusive reporting on an effort by the Biden administration State Department to ban U.S. officials from using the term "Abraham Accords," the name of the historic peace agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors that were brokered by the Trump administration.
The Free Beacon reported in early June, based on internal State Department edicts, that U.S. diplomats were instructed to avoid calling the Abraham Accords by their official name, saying that they should only be referred to as "normalization agreements." The term "Abraham Accords" was also purged from State Department talking points, documents, statements, and official communications, multiple sources confirmed to the Free Beacon at the time.
The report sparked accusations that the Biden administration was downplaying the historic peace agreements, which marked the first time in history that Israel was officially recognized by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and later other Arab nations. Following the Free Beacon’s exposé, the State Department altered its position, saying officials would now "refer to the Abraham Accords as such."
Cruz described the administration’s decision as Orwellian.
"At the beginning of the Biden administration, the State Department even issued internal guidance prohibiting the use of the phrase, ‘Abraham Accords.’ Those words were verboten—'You may not say those words,'" Cruz said. "The instructions were instead to call them the ‘normalization agreements.’ George Orwell is no doubt looking down from heaven and smiling at the power of language to be redefined. There are no Abraham Accords now, they’re normalization agreements. Once again, the only reason that the public knows about this is because journalists revealed it—this time it was the Washington Free Beacon."