Former U.S. ambassador Charles (Chas) W. Freeman, Jr., who withdrew his name from nomination as chairman of the U.S. National Intelligence Council in the Obama Administration on March 13, 2009, has been president since 1997 of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), a Washington, D.C.-based group which "challenge(s) the conventional wisdom" on issues involving the greater Middle East.  MEPC has received funding from the government of Saudi Arabia.  Freeman served as U.S. ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 1989-1992.

Freeman, who joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1965, served as director of Chinese affairs at the U.S. State Department from 1979-1981, among numerous other U.S. government postings. He currently serves as co-chair of the United States-China Policy Foundation and has served on the advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), among whose major stakeholders is the communist government of China and Chinese state-owned companies.  He has justified the Tiananmen Square massacre as "overly cautious behavior" by the Chinese leadership, and described the uprising in Tibet against China as "race riots."

This report summarizes Freeman's positions on Middle East-and Israel-related issues in his own words.