Jewish staffer quits over Biden's support for 'Israel's genocide' in Gaza

An Interior Department staffer has become the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of US support for Israel's "genocide" in besieged Gaza.

Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, on Wednesday accused President Joe Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in Israel's war.

Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government.

She is at least the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to make public their resignation in protest of the Biden administration's military and diplomatic support of the now seven-month Israeli war in Gaza.

She is the second political appointee to do so, after an Education Department official Tariq Habash resigned in January.

Her resignation letter described her excitement at joining an administration that she believed shared much of her vision for the country. "However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration," she wrote.

'State-sponsored violence'

In an interview with The Associated Press, Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said "Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe" and at an event at Washington's Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the October 7 Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an "ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people."

"He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong," she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by "state-sponsored violence."

The Biden administration on Tuesday began the early stages of a process to move ahead with a new $1 billion arms deal for Israel, according to two congressional sources.

Israeli military's relentless bombing in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, a majority of them babies, children and women — and wounded over 79,000. Another 10,000 Palestinians are feared buried under the debris of bombed buildings.

"I think the president has to know that there are people in his administration who think this is disastrous," Call said of the war overall and US support for it. "Not just for Palestinians, for Israelis, for Jews, for Americans, for his election prospects."

"I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amidst President Biden's disastrous, continued support for Israel's genocide…what is the point of having power if you will not use it to stop crimes against humanity?" she asks.

In the last few months, there has been a flight of top officials from Biden administration, citing their moral and ethical difference with the way the White House has conducted its Middle East policy since October 7.

This week a senior US army officer Harrison Mann, an army major, resigned, citing his country's support for Israel as a reason for the widespread loss of Palestinian civilian lives, adding to a string of resignations by high-ranking American military and civilian officials.

The resignation of Dr. Annelle Sheline from the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor stands out as the most significant exit from the department since Josh Paul, a senior official in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, also departed.

Hala Rharrit, a foreign service officer with over 18 years of experience, recently resigned, emphasising, "We have lost our moral footing," and characterising US attempts to halt the Israeli conflict in Gaza as an ineffective strategy.

Israel has since October last year killed at least 35,233 Palestinians — majority of them babies, children and women — and wounded over 79,141 while some 10,000+ Palestinians are feared buried under the debris of bombed buildings amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

Some 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger, on the brink of starvation, and a full-blown famine is under way in the north, according to the UN.

In the occupied West Bank, nearly 500 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded since October 7, along with daily arrest by the Israeli occupation army.

Some 80 percent of Gaza's population of 2.4 million Palestinians have fled their homes since the start of Israeli invasion, with many forcibly displaced multiple times.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to ensure its forces do not commit acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.