President Joe Biden’s Gaza policy is “a failure and a threat to U.S. national security” that “dehumanizes both Palestinians and Jews” and must be immediately overhauled, 12 former U.S. government officials who resigned over Biden’s controversial approach argued in their first joint public statement, which they shared exclusively with HuffPost.
The statement outlines steps the former officials — four from the State Department, three from the military, one from the U.S. Agency for International Development and four from Biden’s political staff — recommend for a change of course. It suggests they will continue to challenge the administration on public platforms, increasing pressure on Biden’s team to show progress in winding down the U.S.-backed Israeli offensive and addressing the humanitarian crisis it has created.
And it underscores how discontent over the administration’s Gaza policy, already widespread within the administration, could continue to grow. The statement urges officials who remain in the administration to challenge their leaders “not to be complicit,” and among the signatories is a previously unknown resigner: Anna Del Castillo, the first high-profile White House official to leave the administration over Gaza. Del Castillo was deputy director at the Office of Administration before leaving in April.
“Each of us swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and as our country celebrates its Independence Day, we are all reminded that we resigned from government not to end that oath, but to continue to uphold it; not to end our commitment to service, but to renew it,” the statement said. “This failed policy has not achieved its stated goals — it has failed to make Israelis safer, it has emboldened extremists while being devastating to the Palestinian people, and it has perpetuated a cycle of poverty and hopelessness, with all that cycle implies, for generations to come. As a group of dedicated Americans in service to our country, we insist that there is another way.”
Spokespeople for the White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Only outside pressure can get the ball moving.Harrison Mann, former Army major who resigned over Gaza policy
In interviews before the statement’s release, the signatories presented themselves as a multi-ethnic, multi-faith “microcosm of the American government,” in the words of Josh Paul, the first official to resign in a development HuffPost revealed in October.
The signatories described how over the months of the war — which began after the Palestinian militant group Hamas carried out a shock attack in Israel last October — they lost hope that Biden would recalibrate his strategy, leading them to view his administration as “intransigent,” a word used repeatedly in the statement.
Harrison Mann, a Jewish veteran of the U.S. Army who served for 13 years and left the military last month, recounted several times when he believed that clear danger and excesses could prompt Washington to reconsider its full support for Israel.
From his then-position at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Middle East bureau, Mann was struck early in the campaign by the U.S. government’s failure to “really investigate anything that looked like the Israelis were killing a lot of civilians.” (The U.S. and Israel say the Israeli military takes steps to protect civilians, though Biden has privately said Israel has carried out “indiscriminate bombing” in violation of the rules of war.)
In January, Mann thought the “highly predictable” killing of three U.S. soldiers at a base in Jordan — which Biden blamed on militias with ties to Iran and sympathies to Hamas — might prompt a change in U.S. policy. A few weeks later, the killing of aid workers by the Israeli military through the nonprofit World Central Kitchen could have forced a change in U.S. policy, given the pattern of Israeli attacks on medical workers, Mann said, as could the Israeli invasion of the city of Rafah, which Biden had warned about.
“There were many times where, against all logic, I was hopeful that we would see change, and I think we all understood — some of them quicker than I did — that outside pressure is the only thing that can get the ball moving,” Mann said.
Tariq Habash, a Palestinian American who was appointed by Biden to the Education Department and who resigned in January, said he never envisioned “crossing the Democratic Party” given his belief that in current American politics it is the political faction “that recognizes humanity and racial equality” — but he felt he had no choice as Biden enabled Palestinian suffering abroad and attacks on Palestinians inside the US.
The former officials described to HuffPost what they saw as the alarming implications of Biden’s Gaza policies, arguing that his team’s refusal to change them has disrupted the normal process of deliberating on important U.S. policy.
““The threat of this becoming a broader war is not being paid enough attention,” said Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who resigned in March. She specifically spoke of the fear within the administration and among outside national security experts that Israel will decide it can count on American support to start a war in Lebanon against the Hamas-linked militia Hezbollah. Such a fight could quickly entangle the two sides’ powerful allies, the US and Iran, with far-reaching consequences.
The threat of this becoming a wider war is not getting enough attention.Annelle Sheline, former State Department official
Hala Rharrit, a career diplomat who resigned from the State Department in April, said she had “never seen this level of silencing and self-censorship on any policy” among government officials.
“Our country’s political and economic interests in the region have also been significantly damaged, while US credibility globally has been seriously undermined at a time when we need it most, as the world enters a new era of strategic competition,” the statement said, echoing language from Biden’s team. applications when describing the stated goals, such as strengthening US influence in relation to China, Russia and other countries.
“Who doesn’t laugh when the secretary [of State Antony] Blinken describes the “rules-based international order” while simultaneously undermining it to benefit Israel?,” the statement continues, while also arguing that Biden’s administration has failed domestically to protect the free speech rights of students opposing the war in Gaza.
Those who were fired want the Biden administration to refocus on the larger issue of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They envision steps such as applying the U.S. laws that ban military aid to foreign forces responsible for human rights violations — something the US, Israel’s main military supplier, has never done in the case of Israeli troops — and do more to demonstrate that the US supports Palestinian self-determination and opposes Israeli settlements in regions that would be crucial to a future Palestinian state, particularly the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
At the same time, the signatories seek greater safeguards to prevent future US presidents from allowing a foreign partner to commit acts of impunity and make the US complicit in possible war crimes, such as “killings and forced starvation” in Gaza.
“There is “An urgent need for change in the organizational cultures and structures that have enabled the current U.S. approach,” their statement reads. “This includes strengthening oversight and accountability mechanisms within the executive branch, greater transparency regarding arms transfers and legal deliberations, an end to the silencing and sidelining of critical voices, and legal change through the legislative process.”
The statement, recorded on July 4 and released as Democrats question Biden’s leadership qualities, is nonpartisan but paints a bleak picture of his presidency and a call for radical change.
“Both our individual and collective experiences reveal an administration that has placed politics above just and fair policy; profit above national security; lies above facts; directives above debate; ideology above experience, and special interests above the equal enforcement of the law,” the fired wrote. “May we all have the moral courage to speak out and push for a better world, for a better America.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misstated the office where Anna Del Castillo was deputy director.
