(JTA) — A former leader of Israel’s National Security Council defended U.S. National Security Adviser Herbert Raymond McMaster against claims that the American general is hostile to Israel.

Yaakov Amidror, a reserves major-general of the Israel Defense Forces, defended  McMaster, who was appointed in February, in a Jerusalem Post op-ed published Sunday, which Amidror co-authored with Eran Lerman, a former member of the Israeli council and an intelligence specialist.

Amidror, who served as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief security advisor for two years until 2015, wrote in the letter that recent allegations of an anti-Israel bias on McMaster’s part were “scurrilous and harmful personal attacks launched by some American Jews and even a few Israelis” and “an offense against the truth, against basic decency and against the best interests of Israel.”

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Jewish organizations have sparred over the views of H.R. McMaster with the Zionist Organization of America attacking him as anti-Israel and the American Jewish Committee defending him.

ZOA, one of the few Jewish organizations to consistently defend President Donald Trump, issued a report on Thursday sharply critical of McMaster.

The report said that McMaster is undermining Trump’s Middle East agenda and the relationship between the United States and Israel by firing officials supportive of the Jewish state and critical of the Iran nuclear deal, including Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the hawkish former senior director for intelligence on the U.S. National Security Council.

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On Aug. 3, Trump called his national security adviser “very pro-Israel,” an apparent bid to end a barrage of attacks from the right that have depicted McMaster as hostile to Israel. “General McMaster and I are working very well together. He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country,” Trump said.

In the op-ed, Amidror and Lerman wrote that “Israeli officers and scholars who have worked with McMaster say that he was always highly appreciative of Israel and of its contributions to the security of the U.S.. They attest to his broad support for and admiration of the IDF. It is absurd to assert that all these years, hidden underneath McMaster’s friendliness was a grudge against Israel that the general is now free to act on.”

Whatever the reasons for McMaster’s decision to “relieve certain senior National Security Council officials of their duties, antisemitic or anti-Israeli sentiments were certainly not part of the calculus,” Lerman and Amidror added.