Short answer: Yes, in a qualified, diplomat's way. As of August 2026, Samantha Power's record shows a mainstream pro-two-state, pro-Israel-security US diplomat who has also been openly critical of specific Israeli government policies when she judged US aid or peace-process goals required it.
What Samantha Power has actually said and done
January 2015: As US Ambassador to the United Nations, Power spoke at the UN General Assembly's first-ever meeting devoted to antisemitism, citing FBI data showing that most US religious hate crimes target Jews and calling on countries to appoint special envoys to combat antisemitism, according to UN Meetings Coverage.
December 18, 2015: The UN General Assembly added Yom Kippur to its list of official UN holidays, an effort the US delegation under Power quietly backed alongside Israel's UN ambassador Danny Danon, as reported by Times of Israel and CNN.
December 23, 2016: Power, as UN ambassador, had the United States abstain rather than veto on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements, allowing it to pass 14-0-1. In her Security Council speech, covered in full by Times of Israel, she stated the US commitment to Israel's security was undiminished and criticized the General Assembly for adopting eighteen anti-Israel resolutions that year alone. Wikipedia's entry on the resolution confirms the vote count and abstention.
March 1, 2024: As USAID Administrator, Power visited Israel and the West Bank to press for increased humanitarian aid access into Gaza during the Israel-Hamas war, per a USAID press release.
April 11, 2024: Power told Congress it was "credible" that famine conditions already existed in parts of northern Gaza and said Hamas was "not the impediment" to aid distribution, remarks that CNN reported drew criticism from Israel's supporters.
May 2024: Power told donor countries that humanitarian partners in Gaza described conditions as "worse now than ever before," pointing primarily to Israeli military operations and closed crossings following the Rafah operation, according to The Hill.
July 11-13, 2024: Power traveled to Israel and announced an additional $100 million in US humanitarian assistance for Gaza and the West Bank, while pressing Israeli officials to speed customs processing at Ashdod port and expand the Gaza maritime aid corridor, per a USAID press release and The Jerusalem Post.
January to June 2025: Power left USAID when the Biden administration's term ended (USAID was later dismantled by the successor administration) and returned to Harvard on June 1, 2025 as a joint faculty appointee at the Kennedy School and Law School, per Harvard Kennedy School. She holds no Israel-related government post today.
Who is Samantha Power, and where does she really stand?
Samantha Power is not Jewish. She is an Irish-American former war correspondent and human rights scholar who served as US Ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017 and as USAID Administrator from 2021 to 2025. Her husband, Harvard legal scholar Cass Sunstein, comes from a Jewish-American family and, by some genealogical accounts, descends from the Vilna Gaon; the couple married in 2008.
There is no public record of Power personally donating to Israel-related causes, joining a boycott of Israel, or declining to appear at Israel-related events. Her record on Israel consists entirely of official diplomatic and aid-administration conduct across two US government roles. At the UN, she pushed through recognition of Yom Kippur and the world body's first General Assembly session on antisemitism, and she publicly criticized the UN's disproportionate focus on Israel even as she let the 2016 settlements resolution pass by abstention. At USAID, she visited Israel repeatedly to increase Gaza aid flow and was blunt in attributing bottlenecks to Israeli military operations and border restrictions rather than to Hamas, statements that some of Israel's supporters saw as one-sided. That combination has drawn criticism from both directions: pro-Israel groups such as the Coalition for Jewish Values opposed her 2021 USAID nomination over the 2016 abstention, while critics on the left have said she did not go far enough in confronting Israel over Gaza.
The bottom line
Samantha Power is best described as a mainstream pro-two-state, pro-Israel-security US diplomat who has also been openly critical of specific Israeli government policies, the 2016 settlement expansion and the 2024 Gaza aid restrictions, when advancing US aid and peace-process goals. She is not Jewish but is married into a Jewish family, and there is no public record of her boycotting or shunning Israel.
Wear your own answer
Whatever you make of any single diplomat's record, plenty of people prefer to make their own position unmistakable. Our I Stand With Israel collection is built for exactly that: clear, wearable statements of support you can put on any day of the week, no press release required.
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Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
