The 12 former members of the Biden administration, who resigned over the last nine months in angry protest against the administration’s Israel-Gaza policy, have now joined together, in a renewed effort to force a policy change. All signed a joint statement, released July 3, titled “Service in Dissent: Joint Statement of U.S. Government Officials who have resigned over U.S. policy towards Gaza, Palestine and Israel.”
Their four-page statement excoriates the illegality and immorality of U.S. policy towards that area. They charge that “the Administration’s policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security. America’s diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza,” a policy which not only is “morally reprehensible,” but which “also put a target on America’s back,” and made a laughingstock of Secretary Blinken’s talk of a “rules-based international order.”
Why have they taken this action now?
“Whether in the civil service, foreign service, armed forces, or as political appointees, each of us has sworn an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and as our nation celebrates its Independence Day, each of us are reminded that we resigned from government not to terminate that oath but to continue to abide by it; not to end our commitment to service, but to extend it…. Alone, we each made the somber and difficult decision to resign.… But today we stand united in a shared belief that it is our collective responsibility to speak up.”
