More than 800 officials in the US and Europe sign a letter protesting Israeli policies

More than 800 officials in the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union released a public letter Friday protesting their governments' support for Israel in the Gaza war.

The letter marks the first time officials in allied countries across the Atlantic have come together to openly criticize their governments over the war, say current and former officials organizing or supporting the effort.

The officials say it is their duty as public servants to help improve policy and work in the interests of their country, and that they are speaking out because they believe their governments must change the direction of the war. The signatories say they have raised their concerns through internal channels but have been ignored.

“Our governments' current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights worldwide,” the letter said, according to a copy obtained Thursday by The New York Times. It adds that “there is a plausible risk that our governments' policies contribute to serious violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

The Israeli army launched a bombing and ground campaign in Gaza after Hamas fighters invaded Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people while kidnapping about 240, Israeli officials said. More than 27,000 people have been killed in Gaza and nearly 2 million displaced since the Israeli offensive began, according to the Gaza Health Ministry and United Nations officials.

The document does not include the names of the signatories because they fear reprisals, said one organizer, an official who has worked at the State Department for more than 20 years. But about 800 current officials have approved the letter as it quietly circulates among national-level employees in multiple countries, the official said.

The effort shows the extent to which pro-Israel policies among American, British and European leaders have created dissension among officials, including many who implement their governments' foreign policies.

About 80 of the signatories are from U.S. agencies, with the largest group coming from the State Department, an organizer said. The governing authority most represented among the signatories are the collective institutions of the European Union, followed by the Netherlands and the United States.

National-level officials from eight other North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, approved the letter, another person familiar with the letter said. Most of these supporters work in the foreign ministries of those countries.

“The political decision-making of Western governments and institutions” about the war “has created unprecedented tensions with the expertise and duties that apolitical officials bring,” said Josh Paul, who worked at the State Department office that oversees arms transfers, but who resigned in October over the Biden administration's support for Israel's military campaign. Mr Paul said he knew the organizers of the letter.

“One-sided support for Israel's atrocities in Gaza, and a blindness to Palestinian humanity, is both a moral failure and, given the damage it causes to Western interests around the world, a policy failure,” he said.

U.S. officials released a number of similar letters and derogatory messages last fall. In November, more than 500 employees from about 40 U.S. government agencies sent a letter to President Biden criticizing his policies on the war. The officials also did not reveal their names in that letter.

More than 1,000 employees of the United States Agency for International Development published an open letter to the same effect. And dozens of State Department officials have sent at least three internal dissents to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

Across the Atlantic, disagreement among European officials has also erupted in the months since Israel's military response in Gaza after the October 7 attack.

In the European Union, which has a joint diplomatic corps known as the European External Action Service as well as agencies dealing with humanitarian aid and development, hundreds of officials have signed at least two separate dissenting letters to the bloc's leadership. Unlike the United States, the EU does not have “channels of dissent” where officials can formally express their disagreement with policy.

The 27 EU countries and their collective institutions have taken different positions on the war, but the majority of governments are largely pro-Israel.

Only a handful of EU countries – notably Ireland, Spain and Belgium – have done so consistently called on their partners and the EU to moderate support for Israel, push for a ceasefire and focus on the suffering of Gazans.

One of the signatories of the joint letter, Berber van der Woude, a former Dutch diplomat, said she had agreed to write her name down in part in support of active officials who feared retaliation for dissent.

Ms van der Woude, a conflict and peacekeeping expert who had served in the Dutch Foreign Ministry, including its mission in Ramallah, in the West Bank, resigned in 2022 in protest against her government's policies. Since then she has been a prominent pro-Palestinian voice in the Netherlands.

She said she was deeply demoralized by the fact that Dutch policy towards Israeli Palestinians was tightly controlled by a very small number of top officials, and that this trend had intensified after the October 7 attacks.

“The fact that you cannot talk about it makes it frustrating because the policy choices and actions of the Dutch ministry are harmful to the situation in the Middle East, but also have an enormous spillover effect on the international rule of law. ” she said.

Dutch diplomats, she added, have grown up in a strong tradition of upholding international law, due to the Netherlands' unique role as home to high-profile institutions such as the International Criminal Court.

Ms. van der Woude said that dissent in situations like the Israel-Hamas conflict, even among the ranks of officials who tend to work behind the scenes and follow the political lead of elected governments, is justified if the policy adopted is seen as harmful. .

“Just because you are a public servant does not absolve you of your responsibility to continue to think,” she said. “If the system produces perverse decisions or actions, we have a responsibility to stop it. It's not as simple as 'shut up and do as you're told'; we are also paid to think.”