More than 400 US officials sign a letter protesting Biden’s Israel policy
More than 400 political appointees and staffers representing some 40 government agencies sent a letter to President Biden on Tuesday protesting his support for Israel in the Gaza war.
The letter, part of growing internal disagreement over the administration’s support for the war, calls on the president to broker an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and push Israel to provide humanitarian aid to the area to let. It is the latest of several protest letters from officials across the Biden administration, including three internal memos to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken signed by dozens of State Department employees and an open letter signed by more than 1,000 US Agency employees. for International Development.
The signatories of the letter submitted Tuesday and circulating among USAID employees are anonymous, the USAID letter explains, out of “concern for our personal safety and the risk of possible loss of our jobs.” The signatories to the State Department dissents must make their names public, but those cables have not been publicly released.
Although the Biden administration has recently begun to express concern about the high number of Palestinian civilians killed while urging Israel to exercise restraint, that emerging criticism does not seem to reassure many in the U.S. government.
The letter, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times, began by denouncing the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and then urged Mr. Biden to stop the bloodshed caused by the military retaliation campaign of Israel in Gaza.
“We call on President Biden to urgently demand a ceasefire; and to call for a de-escalation of the current conflict by ensuring the immediate release of Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians; the restoration of water, fuel, electricity and other basic services; and the passage of adequate humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip,” the letter said.
Two political appointees who helped organize the letter to Mr. Biden said the majority of the signatories are political appointees of various faiths working across the government, from the National Security Council to the FBI and the Justice Department.
Some of the signatories helped Mr. Biden win his 2020 election and said in interviews they were concerned that the administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza conflicted with Democratic voters’ positions on the issue.
“The overwhelming majority of Americans support a ceasefire,” the letter said. link to a poll October shows that 66 percent of Americans, including 80 percent of Democrats, believe the United States should pressure Israel for a ceasefire.
“Moreover, the Americans do not want the US military to become involved in another costly and pointless war in the Middle East.”
Israel launched a ground invasion of Gaza last month in response to bloody Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that the Israeli government said killed about 1,200 people. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive so far, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.