Twelve former members of the Biden administration are calling its policy in Gaza a failure and a threat to U.S. national security.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, foreground next to bannister, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Tel Aviv on Nov. 30, 2023. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)
By Edward Carver
Common Dreams
Former Biden administration officials this week sharply criticized its Gaza policy, arguing that the continued supply of weapons to Israel is not only “morally reprehensible” but also a violation of U.S. and international law.
In a joint statement, 12 officials who’ve resigned in protest in the last nine months set forth a list of recommendations and urged their former colleagues in the administration to use American leverage to help bring an end to the assault on Gaza.
“The administration’s policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security,” the statement says. “America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza.”
The 12 signatories included former officials from a wide range of posts and backgrounds.
One was the the administration’s latest defector: 24-year-old Interior Department special assistant Maryam Hassanein, who resigned on Tuesday, telling HuffPost that “serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians.”
Biden administration appointee, Maryam Hassanein, has resigned from her position in the Department of Interior, in protest of the US government's complicity in the Israeli genocide.
Hassanein is the third and youngest political appointee to resign from Biden's administration… pic.twitter.com/pdrBzwrMfr
— PALESTINE ONLINE ?? (@OnlinePalEng) July 3, 2024
Hassanein was the first Muslim American administration appointee to resign, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which applauded the resignation on social media. She said the administration was engaging in the “dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims.”
Another signatory was Harrison Mann, the most senior military official to have left in protest of the Gaza war. Mann had been a major at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He made the news this week when he told The Guardian that Israel was seeking out a war with Lebanon for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political gain.
After a 13-year career in the military, Harrison Mann left his role at the Defense Intelligence Agency over the U.S.'s "nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel."
He advises others to also rethink and resist their potential contributions to violence in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/Kb9yO1aPMt
— Democracy Now! (@democracynow) June 11, 2024
Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year-old State Department veteran who resigned in May over a key report, dealing in part with whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Gazans, that she says contained “patently false” findings, was also among the statement’s signatories, as was Lily Greenberg Call, a former Interior Department official who was the first Jewish American appointee to resign in protest of the administration’s war policy.
.@StateDept "subject matter experts are absolutely in agreement that Israel is blocking humanitarian assistance. There's no doubt," Stacy Gilbert tells @AymanM. She resigned from State after its report with "patently false conclusions" said the contrary. pic.twitter.com/8d1pslRTE4
— DAWN MENA (@DAWNmenaorg) June 4, 2024
The joint statement, timed to come on the week of Independence Day, warns that the U.S. government is risking its international credibility and the safety of its own citizens by putting a “target on America’s back.”
The authors argued that the administration was “willfully violating multiple U.S. laws and attempting to deny or distort facts, use loopholes, or manipulate processes to ensure a continuous flow of lethal weapons to Israel.” They cited the Leahy Laws that forbid providing military support to forces engaged in human rights violations.
The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars per year in military aid and has significantly increased its support during the war. In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill providing at least $15 billion in military funds for Israel.
The former officials called for an end not just to the U.S. supply of weapons for the war but also the “diplomatic cover” the U.S. provides for Israeli military occupation and settlements in Palestinian territory. The administration should announce that U.S. policy is “to support self-determination for the Palestinian people,” they wrote.
The 12 ex-officials also called for an “immediate expansion” of humanitarian aid to Gaza and funding to help rebuild the territory.
Their statement comes as Israel continues to pummel Gaza with strikes that kill Palestinian civilians. Nearly 38,000 Gazans have been killed in the last nine months, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Several strikes that killed Palestinian civilians, including a massacre in Rafah in late May that killed at least 45, have been undertaken with U.S.-made weapons, forensic analyses have showed.
The conditions for those who have survived the Israeli bombardment are dire, with Gazans forced to live amid sewage and debris.
“Civilians in Gaza are clinging to their dignity under the most inhumane conditions,” Sigrid Kaag, United Nations senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator, said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The war has not merely created a humanitarian crisis, it has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery,” she said.
Edward Carver is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
This article is from Common Dreams.
Views expressed in this article and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Biden should be charged with war crimes by the I.C.C. He should be sharing Milosevic’s cell with Netanyahu.
At last some form of dignity is coming to the fore. My first wish now is that the perpetrators be punished severely and secondly that they start negotiations with Russia.
And the same goes for our supply of money and weapons to Ukraine. Very dangerous for our own safety. These wars are not helping America.
Hopefully all of these war criminals including Joe Biden, Anthony Blinken, Netanyahu and all of their ilk will be rounded up and thrown in the slammer then prosecuted for murdering thousands of innocent men, women, and children.
Thank you former administration officials for standing up for what is right and for bringing the Leahy Laws to our attention!
“What National Security”??? American shenanigans (putting it mildly) hide behind this ‘national security’ myth.
Not only is U.S. foreign policy morally bankrupt, and a threat to national security. It is, as well reprehensible overall, besides being the major immediate threat to global peace and security!
And on top of it all, having a president who, tragically, now made obvious to all internationally, is not at all times even aware of his own intellectual state of mind in rapid deterioration.
Danger! What danger?
So, Genocide Joe violated national and international law with his Genocide? I’ll bet he and his accomplices were not worried at all about not having that Supreme Court ruling that gives old Cracker Joe immunity. I’m willing to bet the liberal Supremes who were engaged in hand-wringing see no problems with Biden’s criminality Over There.
I have been following CN since before Russiagate. I find its coverage invaluable. I won the nomination for Congress in the southern district in West Virginia. I believe our empire with its wars, coups, and sanctions is morally wrong and offers nothing to our citizens.
And this is the CORRUPT ’empire’ that wants to tell the rest of the world how to behave. Hysterical…if it weren’t so sad.