US State Dept official steps down in protest against Biden‘s ‘blind support’ to Israel. A representative of the US State Department resigned on Wednesday in protest of Washington’s decision to increase military aid to Israel and claimed that the US-backed Israeli war on Gaza would cause more suffering for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Josh Paul, a director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, claimed that President Joe Biden’s administration was repeating errors that Washington has been making for years in a memo that was posted online on Wednesday.
He added, “Israel’s response, and with it, the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation will only result in more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people.”
He said that the Biden administration’s “blind support for one side” was causing policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse”. He said, “I fear we are repeating the same mistakes we have made these past decades” and “I decline to be a part of it for longer.”
“I knew it was not without its moral complexity and moral compromises, and I made myself a promise that I would stay for as long as I felt the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do,” wrote Paul, who was involved in the delivery of armaments to US allies for more than 11 years.
Also read: Biden blames Palestinian group for Gaza hospital attack
As a US State Dept official steps down in protest against Biden’s ‘blind support’ to Israel, on October 7, Gaza’s dominant armed organization, Hamas, attacked southern Israel, prompting Israel to attack the besieged Palestinian enclave in retaliation. At least 1,400 people have died as a result of the violence in Israel, and close to 3,800 in Gaza.
He stated, “I feel I have reached the end of that bargain in our current trajectory with regard to the continued – rather, enlarged and expedited – provision of lethal arms to Israel.”
Paul stated in an interview with The New York Times that “continuing to give Israel carte blanche to kill a generation of enemies, only to create a new one, does not ultimately serve the interests of the United States.”
