A revolt is brewing within the Biden administration over how the White House is handling the Israel-Gaza war, as the civilian death toll and mass Palestinian displacement soars, and as Biden's top officials continue to say "no conditions" have been placed on how Israel uses US-supplied weapons. Pressure from the press pool is also piling on, with near daily spats and antagonistic back-and-forth exchanges on display in the State Department and White House briefing rooms.
This week there have emerged reports of scathing 'dissent memos' criticizing White House Israel policy being circulated, collecting many hundreds of signatures chiefly from among State Department and USAID staff. A primary theme of the pushback and pressure is that President Biden must change course on the Gaza crisis.
First, on Monday Politico obtained and published portions of a memo issued by State Department personnel...
The memo has two key requests: that the U.S. support a ceasefire, and that it balance its private and public messaging toward Israel, including airing criticisms of Israeli military tactics and treatment of Palestinians that the U.S. generally prefers to keep private.
The memo, marked "sensitive but unclassified' was sure to leak, and that was likely the point. It bluntly underscores that Biden's policy is hurting America's standing in the world as much of global opinion has been appalled at the Gaza death toll which this week surpassed 10,500.
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Next, hundreds of staffers at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have issued a letter calling for an "immediate ceasefire" while also criticizing the White House's failure to hold Israel accountable in any way for "numerous violations of international law" and the huge numbers of Gaza civilian casualties, especially among women and children.
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On Thursday, CNN issued a new investigative report quoting senior White House staffers as saying they increasingly "cannot stomach" defending Biden's policy anymore. The report also describes "great moral anxiety" - in the words of one unnamed senior admin official, who is quoted in the following:
Angst, unease and outrage are spreading through corners of the Biden administration as Israeli forces show no signs of letting up their relentless attacks inside Gaza and the civilian death toll in the besieged enclave -- already in the thousands -- continues to climb.One month into the Israel-Hamas war, some senior officials privately say there are aspects of Israel's military operations they simply cannot stomach defending; calls for the US to back a ceasefire are growing among government employees; and others are distraught by the incessant images of Palestinian civilians being killed by Israeli airstrikes, multiple sources told CNN.
"It has created great moral anxiety," said one senior administration official. "But no one can say it because we all work at the pleasure of the president and he's all in."
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CNN notes that a full-on revolt is underway in the State Department: "Some of the fiercest backlash has come from inside the State Department, including an official who publicly resigned from the agency last month over the Biden's administration's approach to the conflict," the report says. "Elsewhere in the administration, officials are quietly fuming as the civilian death toll mounts."
The civilian death toll as claimed by "Gaza health authorities," who previously claimed that an Israeli bomb hit a hospital killing 500-900 people.
It was not a bomb, it was not Israeli, it did not hit a hospital, and third-party estimates say that 10-50 died.
But let's go with Hamas's farcical numbers. Sure, "10,000" civilians have died, and here's my favorite part of every death toll -- "mostly women and children."
But what about the puppies, Hamas? Surely many, many adorable puppies died as well.