A group of U.S. officials who publicly resigned over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy are joining forces to support continued dissent and pressure the administration to change course.
More than half a dozen people from across the U.S. government have quit their jobs in protest, saying they can no longer work for the government, and even more have quietly left. Many of the officials who resigned said publicly that they would instead try to have influence outside the government.
President Joe Biden has come under pressure both abroad and at home over his support for Israel, eight months into Gaza’s war with Hamas — a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, displaced millions and created extreme caused hunger. While the administration’s rhetoric has grown harsher — with warnings that Israel must do more to protect civilians and allow more aid — policy has remained largely unchanged.
The former officials who publicly resigned – Josh Paul, Harrison Mann, Tariq Habash, Annelle Sheline, Hala Rharrit, Lily Greenberg Call, Alex Smith and Stacy Gilbert – said they felt their perspectives, expertise were not being taken into account and concerns, and that their views, expertise and concerns were not taken into account. the government willingly ignored the humanitarian toll caused by Israel’s military campaign. They spoke about the damage they believe America’s war policies have done to the country’s credibility, and about the sense that the administration has not fully understood that impact.
All of the officials who publicly resigned and spoke to CNN said they have many colleagues who are still in the government but agree with their decision to leave.
Providing support and advice to these colleagues – whether they choose to leave or continue to harbor dissent from within – is one of the main reasons they have come together collectively. Another important reason, they say, is to increase pressure on the government to change course.
“We’re thinking about how we can leverage our shared concern and continue to push for change together,” said Paul, a State Department official who publicly resigned in protest in October, becoming the first U.S. official to do so.
“When you have numerous career professionals and presidential candidates … who have resigned because of these policies, that’s an indicator that something is going wrong,” Mann told CNN.
Some of those who publicly resigned had specific breaking points; Others said this was the collective toll of incidents during the conflict.
Gilbert, a career diplomat with more than two decades of experience, told CNN that she had been working on the long-awaited report on Israel’s use of US weapons and whether it had limited humanitarian aid – but then “at some point the subject of experts working on that report works were removed, it was brought to a higher level.”
She did not see the report until it was publicly released on May 10. It found it “reasonable to assess” that US weapons have been used by Israeli forces in Gaza in ways “contrary” to international humanitarian law, but stopped short of officially saying Israel has broken the law. It also concluded that Israel had not withheld humanitarian aid to Gaza in violation of the law.
Gilbert said that while the first conclusion was “fairer than I had seen,” the second was “absolutely not true.”
“It’s not the opinion of experts in the U.S. government, experts in humanitarian aid. It is not the opinion of organizations on the ground in Gaza. So to see in the report, which is so clearly worded, that we find that Israel is not blocking humanitarian aid – that was devastating. It was absolutely terrible. And then I decided to resign,” she said, calling the report’s conclusion a “political” one.
“To say it undermines our credibility is an understatement,” Gilbert said. Gilbert left the State Department in May.
Biden administration officials have said they respect differences of opinion.
“We listen to people. We want to hear their opinion. We want to hear what expertise they bring to the table. But ultimately, it is the president, the secretary and other senior officials who make the decisions about what the policy of the United States should be,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said this week.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power said in an interview with NPR this week that “we at USAID have many positions that are critical of U.S. foreign policy. We have positions that believe we are doing all we can, and my job is to hear those positions, and especially those positions that are based on facts on the ground and ideas about what more we can do.”
“Because the situation is horrible. Citizens live in unimaginable terror and hardship. So if there weren’t people, especially at an organization like USAID, which is rooted in humanitarian and development missions, who are dissatisfied with where we are today, that in itself would be disappointing,” she said.
‘Resignees’ who want to use ‘collective power’
The “layoffs,” as Smith called them, have all been in contact with each other and “hope to use our collective power to speak in press releases to make our voices heard, to speak for many of the employees who are still employed and can’t speak because they want to keep their jobs, which is very fair.”
“If we can be a resource to help others find their voice, find a way to try to bring about policy change, that would be helpful,” Gilbert said, noting that there could be new ways for people within the government to express their disagreements about the policy heard.
“The strategy could change from writing one dissent cable that many people sign, to individuals writing their own cable,” she said, referring to the State Department’s formal channel for expressing opposition so that “people have a way to express what they particularly feel. this and to get a response to each person individually based on their differing views on this policy.” Someone from the department’s leadership agrees to sit down with those who submit dissenting opinions.
Mann said he has advised people with concerns to “put them in writing and ask your supervisor or your chain of command to give you assurances with their name on it that what you are doing complies with both international and U.S. law. and with the ethical standards of the organization you work for.”
Smith, who worked at USAID for four years, said he had always found policy on Gaza “lacking” and that his frustrations with U.S. policies surrounding the war had increased. The “last straw,” however, was the cancellation of a presentation he was due to give on the health consequences of the “collective punishment of citizens” for mothers and children, he said.
“It was apparently the final straw for USAID as well, because they came back with the ultimatum that I could resign or be fired because of personality differences,” he told CNN. He left the agency in May.
A USAID spokesperson said the agency “has not taken any personnel action in response to this presentation,” adding that “as an agency we value and consciously seek out a diversity of views.”
Some officials who publicly resigned said they realized in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that the Israeli government’s response was likely to be extreme.
Greenberg Call, a former Interior Ministry employee who became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign, told CNN: “I spent the first few weeks afterwards reeling from dealing with the trauma and impact of that and the grief of losing people, but I also knew almost immediately that whatever happened, in response, in reaction, would be really cruel, really, really terrible.
She said she was “disappointed” from the start by the government’s response, but “wanted to see what I could do from within because of the proximity of the power I had.”
She told CNN that she felt like the concerns she shared were ignored, and “I was at least somewhat labeled as a troublemaker.”
“There came a point where I personally could no longer have integrity with myself and represent the government,” she said. She left in May.
Mann, an Army officer who worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency, made the decision to resign in November, just weeks after Oct. 7. He is Jewish and the first member of the intelligence community to publicly resign.
“It was the function of de facto hopelessness about the course of the war in Gaza,” he said, telling CNN that it seemed clear to him early on that “the Israelis would kill large numbers of civilians indiscriminately,” and that was the case. will not affect US support. Mann explained that his departure was a “very slow and lengthy process”, so he only left his job this week – and until recently did not tell people the reason for his dismissal for fear of becoming a “persona non”. become. -grata.”
“I realized afterwards that if I had expressed my concerns to my colleagues, and perhaps even to my superiors earlier, I think I would have found many sympathetic ears. And I wish I had,” he said.
Many officials told CNN that they had spoken to other officials who had publicly resigned to seek advice before going public with their own resignations.
“There’s no manual on how to publicly resign in protest, so it was helpful to talk to people who had done it,” Greenberg Call said.
This story has been updated with additional reporting.
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