A storm is brewing in Washington D.C., with dark clouds of internal dissent forming over the Biden administration for its support of Israel’s assault on Hamas in Gaza.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, spent decades at the State Department, working there from 1978 to 2003.
He called the turmoil within the Biden administration “unprecedented.”
“It’s remarkable and it’s unprecedented,” Miller told NBC News. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
According to the outlet, “The extraordinary scope of the dissent inside the government, including statements in open letters from government employees, goes beyond anything seen in previous administrations dating back to the 1980s, including during the Iraq War and President Donald Trump’s restrictions on travel from mainly Muslim states, former officials said.”
Since the savage Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists that left more than 1,200 Israelis — most of them civilians — dead, the Gaza Strip has been the center of air and ground attacks from Israel as the Jewish nation attempts to root out Palestinian militants who often seek shelter in an elaborate system of underground tunnels.
With Palestinian civilians in Gaza caught in the middle, the result has been, according to many, nothing short of a humanitarian crisis, and President Biden’s unwavering support of Israel’s relentless response is dismaying to many federal government officials.
Reports NBC News:
Hundreds of federal government employees have signed an open letter to Biden demanding his administration push for a cease-fire to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians. Dozens of foreign service officers at the State Department have voiced objections to the administration’s handling of the conflict in several official dissent cables, congressional and administration officials say. And at the U.S. Agency for International Development, hundreds of employees signed a letter critical of the administration’s approach.
In Congress, hundreds of staff members have held protests and signed letters demanding a cease-fire and an end to what they see as a U.S. “blank check” for Israel.
The notion that the Biden administration needs a more balanced approach to the conflict transcends “age, race and gender,” according to one current State Department official.
“Not everyone is demanding a change in policy,” the official said, “but they are advocating for a shift.”
Israel, many feel, according to the official, shouldn’t be able to act with “impunity.” And, given the high civilian death toll in Gaza, conditions should be put on the aid the United States is providing to the Jewish nation.
“We all saw the pictures on the seventh [of October], and I think there was widespread support for Israel’s right to eliminate this threat,” the official said. “But we also saw the pictures that came out after. Once pictures started coming out of the rubble of 5,000 dead, 10,000 dead … we all know the tools they used to kill them.”
Those “tools” came in the form of American-made weapons.
Two State Department officials pointed to emails sent to Washington from U.S. diplomats in the Middle East. America’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war is seriously damaging our nation’s reputation, the diplomats are being told by their most levelheaded counterparts in the region.
Much of the dissent within the Biden administration is coming from younger federal employees.
According to NBC News, “Many but not all of those urging a shift in the administration’s policies are younger employees — including those who work for U.S. intelligence agencies — who harbor more skepticism about Washington’s traditionally staunch support for Israel, sources familiar with the debate said.”
“They have a different view of U.S. foreign policy than the older generation,” one source explained. “It’s a progressive view that sees the U.S. as having made terrible mistakes and not always being on the right side of history.”
A new NBC News poll appears to bear that out.
“The war has exposed a stark generation gap among left-of-center Americans,” the outlet reports. “A new NBC News poll shows 70% of Democratic voters ages 18 to 34 disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war.”
Democrats in Congress are pressuring the White House to be more critical of Israel, while older, more senior officials who may agree with them are reluctant to air their agencies’ internal laundry in a public forum, according to some former officials and sources familiar with the debates.
“The question is,” Miller said, “does it have an impact on the administration’s policy?”
That remains unclear, but the language of the Biden administration has definitely changed.
After the administration initially rejected calls for a cease-fire, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Nov. 10, called on Israel to do more to prevent the deaths of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
“Much more needs to be done to protect civilians and to make sure that humanitarian assistance reaches them,” Blinken said. “Far too many Palestinians have been killed, far too many have suffered these past weeks, and we want to do everything possible to prevent harm to them and to maximize the assistance that gets to them.”
According to the State Department, only one employee — Josh Paul, the former head of the department’s political-military affairs bureau — has resigned over the controversial issue.
“On Oct. 18, I resigned from the State Department because I could not support the provision of U.S. weapons into the conflict in Gaza, where I knew that they would be used to kill thousands of civilians,” Paul wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times. “I saw no willingness to re-evaluate a long-term policy that has not led to peace and has actually undermined both regional stability and Israeli security.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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