A storm is brewing in Washington DC, with dark clouds of internal dissent forming over the Biden administration over its support for 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 unprecedented,” Miller said NBC news. “I've never seen anything like it.”
According to the outlet, “The extraordinary scope of dissent within the government, including statements in open letters from government employees, goes beyond what has been seen in previous administrations dating back to the 1980s, until and all during the Iraq war and President Donald Trump's travel restrictions. from predominantly Muslim states, former officials said.”
Since the brutal October 7 attack by Hamas terrorists that left more than 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, dead, the Gaza Strip has been the focus of Israeli air and ground attacks as the Jewish nation tries to eliminate Palestinian militants who often seek refuge in an elaborate system of underground tunnels.
With Palestinian civilians in Gaza caught in the middle, the result has been, according to many, nothing less than a humanitarian crisis, and President Biden's unwavering support for Israel's relentless response is dismaying many federal government officials.
NBC News reports:
Hundreds of federal government employees have signed an open letter to Biden demanding that his administration push for a ceasefire to protect the lives of Palestinian civilians. Dozens of State Department foreign service officers have voiced objections to the administration's handling of the conflict in several official dissenting cables, congressional and administration officials say. And at the US 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 ceasefire and an end to what they see as a US “blank check” for Israel.
The idea that the Biden administration needs a more balanced approach to the conflict transcends “age, race and gender,” according to a current State Department official.
“Not everyone is calling for a change in policy,” the official said, “but they are advocating for a change.”
Israel, many believe, according to the official, should not be able to act with “impunity.” And given the high civilian death toll in Gaza, conditions should be placed on the aid that the United States provides to the Jewish nation.
“We all saw the footage from the seventh [of October]and I think there was widespread support for Israel's right to remove that threat,” the official said. “But we also saw the images that came out afterward. Once images started coming out of the rubble of 5,000 dead, 10,000 dead… we all know the tools they used to kill them.”
These “tools” came in the form of US-made weapons.
Two State Department officials pointed to emails sent to Washington by US diplomats in the Middle East. America's approach to the war between Israel and Hamas is seriously damaging our nation's reputation, diplomats are told by their more level-headed counterparts in the region.
Much of the dissent within the Biden administration comes from younger federal employees.
According to NBC News, “Many but not all of those calling for a change in administration policies are younger employees, including those working for US intelligence agencies, who show more skepticism about support traditional Washington to Israel, sources familiar with the debate said. .”
“They have a different view of American foreign policy than the previous generation,” one source explained. “It's a progressive view that sees the US as having made terrible mistakes and not always being on the right side of history.”
A new NBC News poll seems to confirm that.
“The war has exposed a huge generational gap among left-of-center Americans,” the outlet reports. “A new one NBC News poll shows that 70% of Democratic voters aged 18-34 disapprove of Biden's handling of the war.”
Democrats in Congress are pushing the White House to be more critical of Israel, while senior officials who may agree with them are reluctant to air their agencies' internal laundry in a public forum, some say former officials and sources familiar with Congress. debates
“The question is,” Miller said, “does it have an impact on administration policy?”
That's not clear, but the language of the Biden administration has definitely changed.
After the administration initially rejected calls for a ceasefire, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on November 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 ensure that humanitarian aid reaches them,” Blinken said. “Too many Palestinians have been killed, many have suffered these past few weeks, and we want to do everything we can to prevent them from harm and maximize the assistance they receive.”
According to the State Department, only one employee, Josh Paul, the former head of the department's political and military affairs office, has resigned over the controversial issue.
“On October 18, I resigned from the State Department because I could not support the supply of American weapons to the conflict in Gaza, where I knew they would be used to kill thousands of civilians,” Paul wrote in an article of opinions in The New York Times. “I saw no willingness to reevaluate a long-term policy that has not led to peace and has actually undermined both regional stability and Israeli security.”
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