A State Department dissent memo obtained by Axios slams President Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, saying the US is backing Israeli “war crimes.”
The memo was signed by 100 State Department and USAID employees and says the US should reassess its policy toward Israel and call for a ceasefire in Gaza, where over 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel unleashed its bombing campaign.
According to Axios, the memo was organized by a foreign affairs officer who previously said on social media that President Biden is “complicit in Genocide” by supporting Israel’s war.
The memo says Israel’s actions “all constitute war crimes and/or crimes against humanity under international law” and criticizes the US for doubling “down on our unwavering military assistance to the (Israeli government) without clear or actionable redlines.”
President Biden was targeted in the memo for “spreading misinformation” and “questioning the number of deaths” coming from Gaza’s Health Ministry. Since Biden accused the Palestinians of lying about the death toll, a senior State Department official said the number is actually likely higher than what’s being reported.
“Members of the White House and (the National Security Council) displayed a clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians, a documented unwillingness to de-escalate, and, even prior to October 7, a reckless lack of strategic foresight,” the memo reads.
The memo was submitted to the State Department on November 3 through the dissent channel that was established during the Vietnam War to give diplomats a way to criticize policy. It’s the latest sign of the significant opposition to Biden’s full-throated support for Israel within the State Department.
Last week, POLITICO reported on a separate dissent memo that called for the US to push for a ceasefire and for Biden administration officials to publicly criticize Israel’s tactics. HuffPost reported earlier that a “mutiny” was brewing within the State Department.
Well what do you expect Israel to do-allow 2.3 million hostiles into their country-ask the UN to arrest Hamas leaders, stand by and do nothing,waste their soldiers lives on namby pamby meaningless moves, or just root out as many terrorists as possible? It is actually Hamas that shows a clear disregard for Palestinian lives.
nice to hear from you although you are a horrible example of a human being. israel should be made to share the territory according to the population not their military superiority.
It’s their perceived racial superiority that enables the Israelis to gleefully commit genocide.
This. It seems that being special allows you carte blanch to commit atrocities whenever you like. Must be “nice” to have a universal get out of jail free card.
The first nations of America wanted to share the land look what happened to them .
I wonder how you would feel if some strangers came and kicked you out of your home, forced you into an open air concentration camp and blocked access to the outside world?
Are you ready to demand some homeland for the Palestinian people, where they are allowed to make a living? How about Wyoming or Montana, as you know that is American Indian land to be honest about it. The American Indians too were expelled from their land and forced on reservations and poverty. Nothing wrong with that or not?
Hamas is fighting for basic human rights for their families and themselves, for a future, which they have been denied over several generations. Would you like to change places with them?.
No I would not want to change places with the Palestinians or any other enslaved people. Don’t worry our time for misery is just getting started. Just wait until the next election and we will all reap what we have sown
yes, no matter who is elected
I fear the neocons will start a war against Iraq, Iran, and Syria, Turkey may well respond militarily and so will Russia and Hezbollah, the whole ME will go up in flames, Israel included. The world is fed up with the Israelis and the USA. Why else did Biden move the NAVY to the ME if not for more wars? Biden and his cabal are killers, war criminals, he is doing all he can to attack China too. Russia and Turkey will support the Palestinian’s human rights.
I wish he could.. he’d fold up like the little POS that he is.
“Hamas is fighting for basic human rights” The did act like that on Oct 7. Hamas are bad people who kill children and then use children as human shields.
What are the Israelis fighting for, they are murdering unarmed Palestinians, mostly women and children including babies. Why do the Israelis turn off the energy on incubators and other ER MEDICAL EQUIPMENT? IT IS CALLED THE MASSACRE OF A NATION in GAZA.
They weren’t always hostile.
I expect the US not to hand over billions of their citizens dollars and deploy 2 carrier groups and a thousand Marines to assist Israel in its murderous rampage. Unfortunately much of Congress has been bought off by AIPAC so they will continue to serve a foreign state https://candidates.aipacpac.org/page/featured/
Gold1444; What you write so accurately is a difficult poison pill to swallow.It amazes me how so many people can be fooled for so long.Humanity needs help badly and quickly politics be damned.
Every member of Congress is bought and paid for by Corporate America the real power in the US .
who are the corporates beholden to? banks. who is in charge of banking ? not Hindus.
I understand what you’re implying. But I hope you’re wrong.
let’s hope not. We can only hope there IS a white hat alliance…
Hows the weather in Tel Aviv, ” Jake”?
Tel Aviv is cloudy with the chance of rain showers of Hamas Rockets…!
Sure, just Hamas. They are the ones dropping state of the art munitions on a densely populated area that is largely civilian in nature. Once more with the bullshit that Israel has no choice.
How would you recommend Israel handle Hamas and Gaza after Oct 7?
Not with collective punishment that indiscriminately kills woman and children. How’s that? Trying to pretend there is nothing between what Israel is doing and Israel doing nothing is just senseless bullshit. Just for starters, how about taking the US’ advice and use precision bombs instead of 2,ooo lb. bombs that weren’t made for densely populated areas? It’s not like other options would have allowed for any more incursions by Hamas into Israel but their far right government wants Hamas destroyed and they aren’t concerned how many innocents die.
Since there are no military targets to be bombed there are only unarmed people to be bombed. They bomb for one reason only to slaughter and kill the defenseless people, mostly unarmed women and their young children and babies, and the bombs are on top of the misery to live without food and shelter and water and energy and medicine. The horror the women suffer knowing their children are hungry and thirsty and they can’t help and comfort them. The Israeli Nazis are monsters, we have no business supporting the crimes against humanity. We make ourselves to war-criminals. Have we no decency? An old demented criminal sits in the Oval Office, why can’t he be removed from office?
It is a problem that we are war criminals. But for me, the biggest problem is we do war crimes while $hitting “moral superiority” on people’s faces.
But the mainstream media tells me the only monsters are Russians!
And Hamas.
There will shortly be a number of long term state department officials becoming unemployed as a result of signed dissent.
That will make them martyrs, and there voices will be far more powerful than they are now (which I think is a good thing)
Does it matter? Trump will fire them all anyway.
When the US ran out of targets to bomb in Iraq they bombed the same targets over and over again , it seems the I.D.F is doing the same thing .
Removing Biden won’t solve a thing. Might make us feel better but his replacement will be the same. Or worse.
Actually, getting an obvious war crimminal like Biden out of office will do a lot even if the next person in might do the same or worse. At least a message is being sent to all who enter office that being complicit in crimes of war will number their days in office short.
I agree and will be glad if I’m proven wrong.
You’re both right. Getting the old cold warrior out and replacing him with a newer version are likely to happen in succession, but I would applaud seeing the old bastard go, given the phenomenal amount of damage he’s done here at home and abroad.
his replacement won’t be worse – this time we live in IS the Biblical harvest . The world is heading to the 1000 year jubilee. The ‘bad’ will be separated from the ‘good’ and the world will be a better place. Should be soon – NCSWIC .
A bigger war in the ME attacking Iran and Syria is not protecting Israel, in that case it too will likely be turned to rubble. What victory would that be? The war would easily spread to Europe and the USA.
The aircraft carriers are not in the ME to help wipe out the Palestinian people, they are unarmed and Israel needs no help. They are there to attack Iran and Syria.
The Zionist didn’t have to look far for an example of how to “mow the law”. Viciously. Dresden. Fire bombing Japan. Then the BIG one; two nuclear weapons dropped on a civilian population, one of which the navigator used as a target point a church steeple. A CHURCH STEEPLE! We know how to do it. Oh yeah. Carpet bombing, dropping bunker busters, and the new invention (in WWII), napalm, dropped on targets in France. We are really, really good at killing. Yeah we are.
Good to see some sanity within the U.S. government, albeit apparently only in the lower rank and file. When will the sanity bubble up?
It should be obvious to all by now Biden and Nutandyahoo are partners in war crime. These guys need to be taken to the Hague.
unfortunately that will not be happening.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law
Read the BARBORROSO SECRET .
Warning: From a review: “The story line is so good it makes you think did this actually happen?”
Samantha Power heads USAID. Let that sink for a moment. Just having her name in the same sentence as “AID” fu@ks my brain up. And, no. I’m not hopeful.
America is second to none when it comes to committing war crimes and the reason it` sees nothing wrong with the I.D.F committing the same crimes .
The memo was submitted to the State Department .. through the dissent channel that was established during the Vietnam War to give diplomats a way to criticize policy.
back when dissent was anonymous. now there is an internet and nobody is actually anonymous anymore.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
You see Kids, even when Israel buys and blackmails every U.S. lawmaker, judge or celebrity, they have no control over the permanent DC employees that control the daily function.
I consider the people in DC who actually work for a living to be just like the folks who live down the street…. Oh wait, they are the folks who live down the street!
But quickly disappear when Xi makes an appearance.
I assume that this will only prompt Biden to double down on his original ideas. I just hope that the rest of the world will recognize that Biden is the problem, rather than blaming the whole country. (wishful thinking, I know)
Biden is responsible for the Executive branch, not the Legislative branch. As for the “rest of the world,” it’s lived through 80 years of the West’s Rules-Based-International-Order and 30 years of US hegemony and well knows the problem, better than the psyops/propagandized American public.
My comment was about perception. I think, and I’ve seen evidence in comments posted in various places, that a majority of people think that Biden’s policies reflect the way all Americans view the world. In fact, however, the propensity to provoke military conflict did not occur until he entered the Oval Office. Moreover, this was a topic that was skillfully avoided during his election campaign.
In terms of Biden’s policies on Gaza, I used the term “the rest of the world” to describe the 165 out of 210 countries who did not vote to support US position at the UN General Assembly which called for an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza. Biden is defying that resolution, and were it not for our veto, I consider it likely that a similar resolution would have prevailed in the UN Security Council.
Biden’s foreign policy has been disastrous, unquestionably, but his “propensity” to militarism is no greater than any other president since the end of the cold war. Clinton sent troops into Haiti, the Balkans and bombed Yugoslavia/Serbia for 78 days straight. George W Bush took us into Afghanistan and Iraq – we’re still in Iraq. Obama had Libya, Syria, the Ukrainian coup and it’s military build-up, and continued operations in Iraq. Trump started no new wars but didn’t succeed in getting us out of Syria and assassinated Iranian general Qassem Soleimani for which Iran responded by attacking our forces in Iraq.
Yes the global majority does not support the Israeli-Gaza war and vetoing the cease-fire resolution in the Security Council and the GA is the tip of the iceberg of the pressure the US is bringing to bear to support Israel.
“The future’s uncertain and the end is always near.” — Jim Morrison
Responsibility for the war in Ukraine, in my opinion, lies largely with Biden. He was personally involved in the events of 2014, and I suspect that the idea for Zelensky’s 2021 decree to take back Crimea originated in the Oval Office.
His administration has openly talked about war with China by 2025, and has boasted that we have the resources to fight two wars at once. Now he’s parked 2 carrier groups within striking distance of Iran. That these things are happening simultaneously illustrates in my mind a propensity for militarism that dwarfs 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 Clinton, Trump, Obama, or Bush would have considered.
Don’t forget the nuclear sub now stationed in the Red Sea 🙂
Yes Ukraine was in Biden’s portfolio in 2014 but it was Germany, France and Ukraine that agreed to the Minsk accords only to buy time to build up the Ukrainian military to prepare for war with Russia and then each made public statements to that effect after the SMO had started.
You forget it was Clinton that began NATO expansion when there was broad opposition to doing so. George Kennan predicted exactly what has come to pass as well as 50 or so other cold warriors that put their objections in writing – ntm in doing so Clinton broke the “not 1 inch eastward” agreement made with Gorbachev during the German reunification negotiations. There wouldn’t have been a Ukraine war had Bush not announced the addition of Ukraine and Georgia to NATO in 2008. And by the numbers it’s Bush’s War on Terror that’s left millions dead and displaced since 2001.
As far as two-concurrent wars – that’s been a US NatSec policy for as long as I can remember, it’s not new with Biden.
Believing Biden is the greater militarist than any recent president is to misjudge US foreign policy of the past 120 years. We are not now, nor ever have been, the benevolent hegemon we advertise ourselves to be – just listen to the global majority’s who have 80 years of experience with our “benevolence.” We are after all the only country that’s used a nuclear weapon,. a decision that remains contested to this day.
I think you would find this video interesting because of it emphasis what’s happening in both Gaza and Ukraine as it pertains to the long range geopolitical maneuvering among the great powers.
https://thealtworld.com/anthony_cartalucci/brian-berletic-is-the-us-losing-control-in-the-middle-east
Thanks, I’ll give it a look, Brian’s a meticulous analyst & his decade+ in Thailand provides first-hand detail of US southeast asian operations, apparently Thailand is on our color revolution list. When it comes to IR and great power politics, if you’re not familiar with him, I recommend the realist scholar John Mearscheimer. He was on Lex Fridman’s pod a couple of days ago covering power and war back to WW1 through today. Be prepared it’s a 3+ hour interview 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4wLXNydzeY&t=102s
Gaza officials stop updating death toll amid health system collapse
On Friday, the last time the death toll was updated, it stood at
11,078 deaths, 27,490 people injured, and 1.6 million internally
displaced. During the first month of Israel’s onslaught on Gaza, over
300 Gazans died each day. This likely means that the death toll has
already passed 12,000.Throughout the day Monday, footage was widely shared on social media showing unburied bodies piled up at Gaza’s hospitals.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/14/pzaq-n14.html
The toll will be much higher the longer this war last. It is time for Hamas to realize that holding 240 hostages is not going to stop Israel from pounding Gaza. It is time for Hamas to surrendered to prevent more death and destruction in Gaza.
I made a comment a sec ago andI cannot find it, concerning Iran. I misspoke…
Where were all of these concerned people when the fascists in Kiev murdered over 15,000 Slavic Ukrainians from 2014 to 2022 with impunity?
So it is the same old theme: “Some animals are more equal others on the Animal Farm.”
Care to document your figures?
Don’t be so dense, look it up online!
‘Tis a mutiny devoutly to be wished.
Well it’s about time – let the lawyers get to work:
1. The National Lawyers Guild, Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights send (a) Notice & Demand Letter to all Congressional Representatives notifying them the emergency military funding package to Israel supports it’s genocide and war crimes in Gaza and by voting in favor of the bill they risk “criminal and civil liability for aiding and abetting genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity under international law…”
https://palestinelegal.org/news/2023/11/8/legal-organizations-put-members-of-congress-on-notice-of-complicity-in-genocide
2. A group of human rights orgs, Gaza residents and US citizens w/family impacted by Israel’s ongoing assault jointly filed a lawsuit in CA federal district court against President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Monday for failing to “prevent an unfolding genocide.”
https://theintercept.com/2023/11/13/gaza-lawsuit-biden-israel-genocide/