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List of US officials resigned over Biden's support for Israel in Gaza war

A growing number of US staff, including officials who worked closely on the arms trade and human rights policy, have resigned over the Biden administration's continued arms transfers to Israel for its war in Gaza. They charged his government of being complicit in the hunger and slaughter of Palestinians, as Israel's campaign over Gaza enters its ninth month. The joint statement of the former officials reads:"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." Resigned officials who spoke to CNN earlier said many of their former colleagues felt the same way but were in no position to resign. The joint statement ends with a message to these colleagues telling them that their "voices matter". The officials include Mohammed Abu Hashem, Lily Greenberg Call, Anna Del Castillo, Stacy Gilbert, Tariq Habash, Maryam Hassanein, Maj Riley Livermore, MAJ Harrison Mann, Josh Paul, Hala Rharrit, Annelle Sheline and Alexander Smith.

Critics have called on Biden to freeze US arms sales as leverage against Israel to halt its military operations.

Lily Greenberg Call
Lily Greenberg Call, Special Assistant to the US Department of the Interior's Chief of Staff, was the first Jewish political appointee to resign in protest at United States support for Israel in the Israel–Hamas war. She accused U.S. President Joe Biden of using Jews to justify U.S. policy in the conflict. She said that the United States has long enabled "Israeli war crimes and the status quo of apartheid and occupation," asserting that Biden has the power to call for lasting peace. "And yet I am certain that the answer to this is not to collectively punish millions of innocent Palestinians through displacement, famine and ethnic cleansing," Call wrote. "Israel's ongoing offensive against Palestinians does not keep Jewish people safe — in Israel nor in the United States."

Harrison Mann
Earlier this week, U.S. Army officer Harrison Mann also left the military and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for the "unconditional" U.S. support for Israel's war in Gaza, which he said allowed the "killing and starvation of innocent Palestinians." Mann, who served in the military for 13 years and came from a European Jewish family, expressed deep "shame and guilt" over his association with the events. Harrison Mann resigned in November over Gaza policy and made his reasons public in May. Mann, who comes from a Jewish family of European descent, stressed that his work "unquestionably contributed to that support," saying: "This has caused me incredible shame and guilt."

Hala Rharrit
Hala Rharrit, a U.S. diplomat and veteran Foreign Service officer the State Department's spokeswoman for the Middle East and North Africa, resigned on April 25 in opposition to the US policy in Gaza. “More bombs, more killings is not the answer,” said Hala Rharrit.

Maryam Hassanein
Maryam Hassanin, who was a special assistant to the Ministry of Interior, resigned from her job on Tuesday. He strongly criticized Biden's foreign policy, describing the war against Palestinian as "genocide". She wrote "When my family and I, alongside other Muslims and Arab Americans, turned up to vote for President Biden in 2020, it was because the Biden campaign promised justice. That promise and faith in the administration has been shattered."

Mohammed Abu Hashem
Muhammed Abu Hashem, a Palestinian American, said last month that he was ending his 22-year career in the US Air Force. He said he lost relatives in Gaza in the ongoing war, including an aunt who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October. In an interview with the Washington Post, he said that it was "extremely emotional" for him to know that "the amount of bombs that are being supplied to Israel was the cause of her death." "I knew right then that I can’t be part of the system that enabled this," he said.

Riley Livermore
Riley Livermore, who was a US Air Force engineer, said in mid-June that he was stepping down. "I don't want to be working on something that can turn around and be used to slaughter innocent people".

Alexander Smith
Alexander Smith, a contractor for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), said he had to choose between resigning and being fired after preparing a speech on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, which was canceled by USAID shortly before delivery. In his resignation letter, he wrote:“I cannot do my job in an environment in which specific people cannot be acknowledged as fully human, or where gender and human rights principles apply to some, but not to others, depending on their race,” he wrote.

Stacy Gilbert
In another resignation on Tuesday, Stacey Gilbert, a State Department official from the US Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Immigration (PRM), sent an email to colleagues explaining that she resigned over an administration report to Congress that falsely claimed Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. "I know the difference between right and wrong. What happened in this report is wrong, and this report is being used to justify continuing to do what we've been doing," Gilbert told HuffPost in an interview. Gilbert was the fourth State Department official to publicly resign since October 7.

Anna Del Castillo
Anna Del Castillo, deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, left the post in April, becoming the first known White House official to leave the administration over Gaza policy.

Annelle Sheline
State Department official Annelle Sheline resigned in March from the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, in opposition to the policies of Joe Biden toward Israel. She said she believed Israel was clearly "in violation of so many laws and has broken so many of these boundaries," Often contradicting the government's public statements "that I don't expect we'll actually see a real shift." She said she could not serve a government that "enables such atrocities."

Tariq Habash
Tariq Habash, a political appointee to the Ministry of Education, resigned on January 4 in protest at the government's failure to stop Israel's ongoing collective punishment tactics against Palestinians in Gaza. "I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government." He is at least the second official and the first known person of Palestinian descent to resign in protest over the US response to the war.

Josh Paul
Josh Paul, a senior State Department official specializing in arms transfers, resigned in October after stating the U.S. government continues to sell weapons to Israel despite its record of human rights abuses. As the director of the State Department's Office of Military-Political Affairs, he described Washington's support for Israel's war as "blind support." He described Biden policy in favor of "the status quo of the occupation" and a "shortsighted, destructive, unjust" policy that "will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people — and is not in the long term American interest."

Andrew Miller
According to the Washington Post, Andrew Miller, the assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, was a critic of Biden's "bear hug" approach to Israel during the war and was described by those who know him as a staunch supporter of Palestinian rights and state formation.

Aaron Bushnell
Aaron Bushnell, 25, a US Air Force officer, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington on February 24, declaring that he would "no longer participate in genocide."