State Department staffers have slammed President Biden’s full-throated support for Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in a dissent memo.
The memo was obtained by POLITICO, which reported that the blistering critique of Biden’s handling of the war reflects the sentiments of many US diplomats, especially at the middle and lower levels. HuffPost previously reported that a “mutiny” was brewing within the State Department.
One request made in the memo is for the US to support a ceasefire in Gaza. The Biden administration has said it supports a “humanitarian pause” but has refused to use the term ceasefire.
The memo also calls on Biden administration officials to publicly criticize Israel’s military tactics and treatment of Palestinians. The memo says the lack of public comments critiquing Israel “contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor, which at best does not advance, and at worst harms, US interests worldwide.”
“We must publicly criticize Israel’s violations of international norms such as failure to limit offensive operations to legitimate military targets,” the memo reads. “When Israel supports settler violence and illegal land seizures or employs excessive use of force against Palestinians, we must communicate publicly that this goes against our American values so that Israel does not act with impunity.”
The memo criticizes the US for accepting the high civilian casualty rate in Israel’s bombardment, saying that doing so “engenders doubt in the rules-based international order that we have long championed.”
According to POLITICO, it’s unclear how many people signed the memo or if it was submitted to the State Department’s Dissent Channel, which was established during the Vietnam War to give diplomats a way to criticize policy. The report said the memo’s demands are “unlikely to get far with Biden or his top aides, at least not anytime soon.”
Right on State Dept.!
Erdogan quoted Blinken who apparently said thatvwhen he goes to Israel he goes “primarily as a Jew and secondarily as Secretary of State.” Erdogan also pointed out that if any leader from the Middle East followed the suit and identified primarily as Moslems, how wellvwill that be received.
With such a boss with very much confused identity and priorities, no wonder the professionals are trying to save this shipwreck of US diplomacy.
The list of countries that withdrew their ambassadors or broke relations is growing in Latin America, Africa and Asia by the hour.
This genocide so brazeny declared, so systematically carried out makes it impossible to defend or legitimize Israel’s decisions.
We knew this was coming, it was all but certain when Josh Paul quit. If memory serves dissent memos are not made public, one assumes if it wasn’t submitted through the formal channel it was an end run to get it to the public before officialdom could whitewash the content.
If the “rules-based international order” wasn’t already mortally wounded with the global majority experiencing RBIO as western rules for western profit, ergo BRICS, Israel may have brought the nails to the gravesite.
It was submitted through the formal Dissent Channel. And it was leaked.
“Dissent cables” are not immediately made public. Sometimes they are eventually released, for instance in response to FOIA requests. Sometimes they are not.
Update your résumés and recommender lists, people.
“contributes to regional public perceptions that the United States is a biased and dishonest actor”
Ah, so it shows the truth. A “DC gaffe” that accidentally exposes the truth.
Exactly. That’s why the “many US diplomats, especially at the middle and lower levels” will soon vanish. With only Blinken and Nuland remaining, the State Department has all it needs. Especially true since we don’t do diplomacy anymore.
“Public perceptions’ a polite way of saying bald faced reality..
I am not impressed. It seems they just disagree on the flavor–not the actual menu. Basically, the main menu is still human suffering, war, and genocide. …Still not clear? Okay… Think of it as a disagreement on how best to apply lipstick on a pig. Like, do you apply it on its mouth or do you just give up and eat the pig?
I know and I agree. But I’ll take it. It’s like a shit sandwich minus a turd.
“I am not impressed. It seems they just disagree on the flavor–not the actual menu. Basically, the main menu is still human suffering, war, and genocide.”
“Ceasefire now” has been the core political demand of every one of the three pro-Palestinian rallies I’ve gone to in NYC.
The State Department action demanding a ceasefire strengthens that popular political demand – both by validating ‘the street’ demand and – by exposing the extraordinary internecine defection within government – undercutting the authority of US support for Israel’s ongoing war crime.
It is to be hoped that – as well as strengthening mass protest – this State Department act will enable greater criticism of Israel and demands for a ceasefire in Federal and State legislatures, and in the mainstream press – with ‘even major actors in the State Department demand a ceasefire’ the can opener by so-far cowed legislators, papers, and organizations.
Upshot: there is nothing to be gained by protesters’ belittling the State Department action; rather, protesters should spin it as ‘a win for pro-Palestine voices,’ ‘a win for truth,’ and ‘a win for American resistance to genocide’ – a win enabled by the surging pro-Palestine rallies.
“American values”?????
Hah!
QUIT NOW!
Regarding Israel and anything doing with the Israeli lobby, Joe Biden is a politician who is in conflict of interests. Indeed, Biden has often said publicly, that he is a ‘Zionist’.
There is no surprise that he does not call for a ceasefire to stop the human slaughter in Gaza. He has been bought and paid-for a long time ago. Basic morality is not part of his thinking.
Morality includes honesty and he is not big on that either.
I bet the staffers are mostly of ME origin…. and it is true, it is not gonna go far because the staffers are nobody, almost second citizens…!
“I bet the staffers are mostly of ME origin.”
Why?
Because non-ME staff are tight-lipped like the rest of westerners…!
“Because non-ME staff are tight-lipped like the rest of westerners”
1/ How do you know? – you first wrote I bet the staffers are mostly of ME origin.” Remember?
A bet is a conjecture. But now you’re not “betting”? Now you know that, in the State Department the “non-ME staff are tight-lipped” vs the ME staff? How do you now know that?
2/ “like the rest of westerners”?
Like the citizens marching in extraordinarily large international rallies demanding a ceasefire, majorities of US “westerners” poll as wanting a ceasefire. As with the deliberately leaked State Department dissent, that’s not “tight-lipped.”
Aaah, the famous state department dissent channel where dissenting voices goes to die…(including maybe the careers of a few brave dissenters)
They never listen to these, thinking back to Ann Wright’s dissenting cable on the Iraq invasion, bit I’m glad that at least there is voices against the war machine out there…
Canada is a wholly owned subsidiary of Benjamin Netanyahu and company
“ In the four weeks since the Israeli prime minister began the wholesale destruction of Gaza, Canada’s emissaries – big and small – have been preoccupied with Israel’s interests at the expense of Canadians they purport to serve at home and abroad.
Worse, several furtive and suddenly mute “media relations” hirelings have refused to answer detailed questions about whether Canada agreed to haul an untold number of Israeli reservists back to Israel on Canadian military aircraft, so they could, presumably, join in the genocide of Palestinians as well as the horror being endured by hundreds of besieged Canadians, who, since October 7, have tried to escape the murderous madness engulfing Gaza.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/7/canada-is-a-wholly-owned-subsidiary-of-benjamin-netanyahu-and-company
There is NO GENOCIDE-as soon as Hamas is eliminated and hostages freed-the war will stop.
But it’s unlikely that the Israeli regime will be willing to free its hostages.
Yes. People have got to stop using that word. Mass slaughter would suffice. There not really trying to kill them all. I mean they still got a way to go to get to the killing ratio of past skirmishes. That 1400 number really kicked up the brutality allowed meter.
How many of the 1400 were killed by Israel in disregard for the lives of the hostages? Has that 1400 been verified?
Believe me, I have my doubts also. I use the 1400 number because that is what Israel needed to go full blown genocidal. It’s like our 9/11. Never mind the truth, the rampage was on.
“engenders doubt in the rules-based international order that we have long championed.” When you make up those “rules” yourself, you can interpret them any way you want.
Reading Bamford’s book Spyfail – had to stop for a bit cause it was depressing – this won’t amount to much. Low level state department officials have complained for decades that the higher ups bow to Israel – from granting visas to spies to ignoring Israel’s nuclear weapon building (even when parts were being smuggled out of the U.S. to build them).
When the State Department was controlled by Arabists and oil interests,was that OK? If France, UK, Pakistan, and India-all friendly nations- can have nukes,why not Israel?
well i remember when Biden said that “i am a zionist” even though he is a life-long catholic.
Being a Zionist has nothing to do with your religion. I’m Jewish and I’m anti-Zionist, and the Christian fanatics are very pro-Zionist.
America can issue all the condemnations in the world but we’d still be sending them money and weapons. If anybody was serious about stopping Israel we’d just stop supporting them and they’d collapse. But we won’t do that because America is Israel’s b**ch.
“If anybody was serious about stopping Israel we’d just stop supporting them and they’d collapse. But we won’t do that because America is Israel’s b**ch.”
1/ Evidence “they’d just collapse”? Israel doesn’t need US weapons. More plausibly, withdrawing support would ramify into a European withdrawal of support – increasing diplomatic and financial pressure for a Palestinian state, the root of the problem.
2/ No, America is not Israel’s b: the US has its own longstanding imperial purposes in ‘projecting power in the Middle East’ via Israel – with the ‘Israel lobby’ simply one aspect of the powerful US bipartisan ‘uni-war’ party.
(3/ Of course I know the ‘somebody’s b’ expression. But I still don’t like the word ‘bitch,’ which is mainly a derogatory word for women. I won’t engage in argument about this, and it is not the point of my post, and it does not delegitimize your post – just want to ‘go on record’ with my feeling.)
Antony Blinken is the guy behind the Biden policies and he is the Secretary of State. Why can’t these people call a spade a spade and recognize the admin is packed with dual citizens such as Blinken, whom, I’ve read, sits on an Israeli government board (seems illegal if you ask me).