The Shift: State Department official resigns over Gaza policy

State Department resigns amid growing anxiety over Biden’s Gaza policy

State Department official Josh Paul resigned from his position over the Biden administration’s Gaza policy. He worked for the State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

“It is my firm belief that in such conflicts, for those of us who are third parties, the side we must pick is not that of one of the combatants, but that of the people caught in the middle, and that of the generations yet to come,” wrote Paul in a Linkedin post announcing his departure. “It is our responsibility to help the warring parties build a better world. To center human rights, not to hope to sideline or sidestep them through programs of economic growth or diplomatic maneuvering. And, when they happen, to be able to name gross violations of human rights no matter who carries them out, and to be able to hold the perpetrators accountable–when they are adversaries, which is easy, but most particularly when they are partners.”

“I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse,” he continued.

Paul’s resignation occurred shortly after HuffPost ran a story by Akbar Shahid Ahmed on Biden staffers who feel stifled over their concern for Palestinians.

“I’m trying to educate people about Palestine through social media, but I’m worried I’ll lose my security clearance for criticizing the president or blaming the U.S. for civilian massacre,” one staffer told the website. “I feel like there’s no place for me in America anymore, and I’m on thin ice with my clearance because of my heritage and because I care about my people dying.”

“It feels like post-9/11 where you feel like your thoughts are being policed, and you’re really afraid of being seen as anti-American or an anti-Semite,” said another official.

Last week Ahmed reported on an internal State Department memo that instructed diplomats from using three specific phrases: “de-escalation/ceasefire,” “end to violence/bloodshed” and “restoring calm.”

U.S. vetos Gaza Security Council resolution

On Wednesday, the United States vetoed a Brazil-sponsored resolution at the United Nations Security Council that called for “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to allow aid to enter.

Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the U.S. couldn’t support the measure because it “made no mention of Israel’s right of self-defense.”

“Though we could not support this resolution, going forward we will continue to work closely with all Council members on this pressing issue,” she added. “Just as we will continue to reiterate the need to protect civilians including members of the media, humanitarian workers, and UN officials.”

Brazilian Ambassador Sérgio França Danese expressed frustration over the veto. “We heeded the call with a sense of urgency and responsibility, in our view the Security Council had to take action and do so very quickly,” he said.  “Council paralysis in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe is not in the interest of the international community.”

Jewish activists protest in front of Warren’s office

At least six Jewish activists were arrested outside Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) Boston office where more than 100 protesters called on her to push for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The Boston Globe reported that activists enterered the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Federal Building and attempted to stage a sit-in in the office.

“Senator Warren has the power to call for the over 100 trucks of humanitarian aid stuck outside of Gaza to be allowed in,” said IfNotNow Boston member Mira Revesz. “But all Senator Warren has done so far is to call for Israel to minimize civilian harm. The past four days have demonstrated heartbreakingly that Israel is not minimizing civilian harm.”

“I appreciate the people who came to my office to share their perspectives and experiences — that’s what democracy is about. Israel has both a right to defend itself from terrorist attacks and an obligation to protect innocent civilians under the international laws of war,” said Warren in a statement later. “Palestinian civilians have a right to humanitarian aid including food, water, shelter, and medicine. There is an urgent need for safe corridors in Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid, and I will continue to emphasize the imperative to protect civilians.”

500 arrested as Jewish activists call for ceasefire in DC

Five hundred Jewish Americans and allies, including two dozen Rabbis, were arrested inside The Capitol Building on Wednesday. The protesters demanded that lawmakers embrace a House resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

The activists wore shirts that said “Not in our name” on the front and “Jews say cease fire now.” They sang, chanted, and held signs.

Thousands protested on the DC streets before entering the rotunda of the Cannon House Office.

“If we don’t get back to our shared humanity, I don’t think we will ever come back from this,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, one of the resolution’s sponsors, told the crowd. “And to our President: I want him to know, as a Palestinian-American and someone of Muslim faith, I’m not going to forget this. And I think a lot of people are not going to forget this.”

You can read our full coverage of the event at our site.

ADL smears Jewish activists

The DC chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) smeared the Capitol protesters in a statement and asserted that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt went as far as to compare the Jewish activists to white supremacists in a tweet.

This week, during one of his many appearances on cable news shows, Greenblatt said, “anti-Zionism is actually a prelude to genocide.” In another interview, he was even more direct: “anti-Zionism is genocide,” he declared.

“As Anti-Defamation League officials appear on global televisions denouncing widespread rallies calling for an end to Israeli’s genocidal violence against Palestinians, we are seeing the most dangerous outcome of the ADL’s long history of asserting itself as a civil rights group,” writes Emmaia Gelman at the site. “The ADL’s framing of itself as an advocate against bias is completely belied by its advocacy for Islamophobic policy, its work to foster militarized policing and hyper-surveillance, and its clearly articulated role as an advocate for Israeli policies, including apartheid. The ADL crassly instrumentalizes the public’s real concerns about antisemitism, producing outrageously inflated statistics that list hundreds of protests against Israeli violence as “antisemitic incidents.” As a result of this disingenuous posturing, the ADL is being consulted as an expert on this war.”

Activists have put together some resources for parents concerned about their kids coming home with ADL material from school.

Daily Blogs

As I mentioned in a previous installment of the newsletter, Mondoweiss has been running daily blogs at the site from Palestine and the United States to keep readers informed about the relentless developments. Here’s this week’s in case you missed any:

October 16: ‘

• Six-year-old Palestinian boy fatally stabbed in Illinois hate crime
• Hospitals in Gaza at risk of turning into morgues; Israel to evacuate 28 settlements near Lebanon

October 17:

• Biden off to Middle East to show support for Israel
• Only 24 hours of water, electricity, fuel left, Israeli airstrikes on ‘safe’ zones increase

October 18:

• Biden meets with Netanyahu while protests spread across region
• Calls for Gaza ceasefire mount after Israel bombs hospital

October 19:

• ‘Humanitarian aid to Gaza stalls as Israel renews airstrikes’

Odds & Ends

???????? Biden’s Gaza “aid” plan a fig leaf for genocide

???? Palestine Action US campaign launches to stop Israeli genocide of Palestine and shut Elbit down

☕ Starbucks is suing its union in response to the organization tweeting, “Solidarity with Palestine!” Ryan Grim has the story at The Intercept:

The company had previously condemned the post but is now upping the ante, planning to take the union to court. In a message from Executive Vice President Sara Kelly, Starbucks argued that the union’s use of the name Starbucks confuses customers, and that some customers took their anger over the SWU statement out on store employees. 

The union’s post read “Solidarity with Palestine!” and quote-tweeted an image of a bulldozer breaking through the fence encircling Gaza. More than 9,000 workers at 360 stores have now voted to join SWU, which is affiliated with Workers United and SEIU, according to its website, but they have been met with stiff resistance from the company on a potential contract. The company previously sent SWU a “cease and desist” order threatening legal action and now plans to follow through with that threat. 

???? IfNotNow activists protested in front of VP Kamala Harris’s California home.

???? In Jewish Currents Mari Cohen reports on Palestinian analysts being sidelined on mainstream news shows. CBS News Streaming staff intervened to pull an interview with Palestinian attorney Noura Erakat from replays of a show last week, while two other Palestinian commentators Yousef Munayyer and Omar Baddar had their scheduled appearances canceled at CNN.

“While several Palestinians have been featured on major US networks since October 7th—including Palestinian National Initiative secretary Mustafa Barghouti in multiple CNN interviews and former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesperson Diana Buttu on CNN International—Erakat, Munayyer, and Baddar’s experiences are part of the US media’s long history of marginalizing Palestinian voices,” writes Cohen. “A 2020 +972 Magazine piece by the historian Maha Nassar found that since 1979, only 46 of 2,490 New York Times op-eds discussing Palestine were authored by Palestinians.”

???????? The IDF says it has received a cargo plane from the US carrying initial shipments of armored vehicles.

✊ Here’s part of a recent statement from the NDN Collective, an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power:

In every Indigenous language in the world, there is a word meaning ‘we are all related.’ We are in a critical moment where we need to call upon our Indigenous knowledge and act upon that worldview, treating everyone as relatives. This moment requires us to act upon our values, so that a history of genocide does not continue to be repeated. 

We firmly believe that we all deserve to live and die in peace, whenever death comes for us. We mourn the lives already lost, and feel dread knowing that many more will die. This is why we must rise up now and hold the U.S. government accountable in the funding of and profiteering from this war. 

We are horrified, enraged, and grief-stricken at the reality of Israeli and Palestinian lives lost so quickly and with such force. We decry the collective punishment of the Palestinian people, including 2.3 million in Gaza who have lived under Israeli blockade and siege for 16 years. We pray for the safe return of the Israeli people held hostage by Hamas. We stand in solidarity with those – including many anti-Zionist Jewish people – who have been protesting the occupation of Palestine for years, and who are now on the streets demanding for Israel to stop their attacks. 

???? Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman on Twitter: “I will always stand with Israel and look forward to supporting any military, intelligence, or humanitarian aid to get the job done.”

✉️ Muslim and Jewish Hill staffers have signed onto an open letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Today, we write to implore our bosses, Members of the United States Congress, to join calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. Millions of lives hang in the balance, including the 2.3 million civilians — half of whom are children — in Gaza, civilians in Israel, and Jews and Muslims around the world,” it reads. “..Nationwide and in Congress, the voices calling for de-escalation and peace have been drowned out by those beating the drums of war. As Muslims and Jews, we are tired of reliving generational fears of genocide and ethnic cleansing.”

???????? From Newsweek: “The highest-ranking Muslim official in the Biden administration was recently booed while addressing the recent stabbing death of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy.

Dilawar Syed, deputy administrator of the Small Business Administration, spoke on Tuesday to a crowd of approximately 2,000 gathered at a gymnasium in Plainfield, Illinois, during a vigil for Wadea al-Fayoume. The boy was allegedly stabbed 26 times by his landlord. The suspect, Joseph Czuba, 71, is also accused of severely wounding the boy’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, as part of a targeted attack related to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, authorities said.”

???? Media enable ignorance in the service of genocide

???? Columbia Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies Rashid Khalidi appearing on Democracy Now:

 Well, I mean, the president has bonded the United States to Israel at the hip, since very soon after this horrible escalation started. And in so doing, he has made the United States responsible, in the eyes of the world, for everything. And this is the latest example of that. He’s basically read from an Israeli teleprompter, as he seems to do routinely when anything relating to the Middle East comes up. It’s almost as if his lines are scripted in Tel Aviv at the Israeli Defense Ministry, where their disinformation headquarters are located.

And he has, I think, put the United States in a position that I am not entirely sure anybody in his administration realizes. The United States is going to be vilified not just in the Middle East as a result of its unlimited support for Israel. What we are seeing now is only the beginning. The munitions that are being sent, the aircraft carriers that have been sent to the eastern Mediterranean, the huge bill that they’re going to put before Congress for — I’ve seen a figure of $100 billion — is going to cement in people’s minds the idea that the United States and Israel are one, which means that whatever happens in Gaza, going forward, in terms of people being killed, innocent civilians being killed, in terms of population being expelled — basically, we’re talking about ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza — and, heaven forbid, people actually being forced out of Gaza into Egypt, which is still a possibility, even though the Egyptians have resisted — all of these things will be put down not just to Israel, but to the United States. And I don’t think they fully realize — or if they do, they haven’t anything about it — that this is what the president has — this is where the president has put the United States, for whatever reason. Electoral reasons, his own personal sympathy for Israel, it really doesn’t matter. We are now in a situation where the United States, in my view, has put itself in a more precarious position in the Middle East than it has any time since the 1967 War.

???? Bono and The Edge pocket millions from deal with Israeli bank

⚖️ Rights lawyers release legal analysis of U.S. complicity in Israel’s unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. From the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) press release:

On the heels of President Biden’s visit to Israel and as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza passes 3,300, expert attorneys from the U.S.-based Center for Constitutional Rights released a legal and factual analysis of Israel’s unfolding crime of genocide against the Palestinian people and U.S. complicity in this grave international law violation. The emergency briefing paper comes soon after the U.S veto of a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning both Hamas’s attack on Israel and all violence against civilians and calling for humanitarian access to Gaza. It also comes as President Biden seeks to secure additional, unconditional military support for Israel.

According to the emergency briefing paper, there is a credible case, based on powerful evidence, that Israel is attempting to commit, if not actively committing, genocide in the occupied Palestinian territory, and specifically against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. The United States has a duty under Article 1 of the 1948 Genocide Convention to prevent acts of genocide, an obligation that has been domestically implemented through U.S. criminal law. The legal and factual analysis provided by the Center for Constitutional Rights describes how, through its ongoing unconditional military, diplomatic, and political support to Israel, the United States is not only failing to prevent genocide, but is complicit. Under international law, the United States – and responsible U.S. citizens, including and up to the President – can be held accountable for their role in furthering genocide.

???????? Stephen Walt in Foreign Policy: ‘America Is a Root Cause of Israel and Palestine’s Latest War’

???? A senior researcher at the ADL named Stephen Rea resigned from the organization and posted about it on social media “I couldn’t square my morals and politics with the direction I saw the org going in,” he wrote.

???? Sarah Lazare and Maya Schenwar in Truthout: ‘Israel’s Violence Will Never Bring “Safety” to Anyone, Including Jews’:

Indeed, it is in the name of Jewish “safety” and Jewish grief that not only Israel but almost all of Europe, and certainly the United States, are marching lockstep behind the new unity government’s maximalist war, as it kills thousands and carries out a potential second Nakba, forcing an estimated 1.1 million people from their homes. Jewish “safety” is the rationale for deploying white phosphorus, which can cause severe toxic burns, in Gaza and Lebanon, as Israel’s defense minister declares “we are fighting human animals.” President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, nearly every member of Congress, and the likes of Lindsay Graham, an open affiliate of antisemitic pastor John Hagee, are all invoking Jewish safety to lend their unqualified support to what is clearly a massacre.

But a growing number of Jews — including many descendants of Holocaust survivors and pogrom survivors — are rejecting the idea that colonial violence ever brings “safety” for anyone. This includes, for some, recognizing that the political ideology of modern Zionism, and the military apparatus that has developed alongside it, is a danger to all, including Jews.

✊ Part of the statement from the Harvard Graduate Student Union Rank-and-File:

On October 16, the Harvard Graduate Student Union (HGSU) held a last-minute special membership meeting calling for a member vote on a statement against Israel’s US-backed genocide of the Palestinian people. This statement, supported by an overwhelming majority of present union members, also expressed support for Harvard students who have been harassed and doxxed for speaking out against over 75 years of Israeli occupation and apartheid. Members at this meeting were met with a coordinated campaign to prevent a democratic vote on this resolution through procedural delays. Access to this members-only meeting was leaked by an attendee to a reporter who began live tweeting the proceedings in a clear attempt to intimidate pro-Palestine members. Subsequently, a minority of members at the meeting proceeded to obstruct a vote on any statement for over three hours. With only 20% of the vote—all that was required according to an obscure union bylaw—the minority forced a two-week delay on publishing the proposed statement. The clear majority of attendees in support of the statement then voted to adjourn the meeting to protest this delay tactic designed to prevent our union from making a timely statement in response to this urgent crisis. We recognize this delay–as well as the ongoing presence of doxxing trucks on campus–as part of a broader Zionist bullying campaign aimed at silencing any resistance to Israel’s genocide.

You can read the entire statement on our site.

Stay safe out there,

Michael