Employees at the State Department privately called for “more to punish Israel” in meetings at Foggy Bottom, according to a new report.
The listening session meetings started in February and have been hosted by Kurt Campbell, deputy secretary of state and former Indo-Pacific coordinator for the White House National Security Council, Jewish Insider reported. News of the meetings comes after various reports on State Department employees expressing dissenting views from the Biden administration’s position on supporting Israel, a key ally of the United States, after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack last year on the Jewish state.
“It was overwhelmingly calls, including from people I respect, [that] we need to do more to sanction Israel, we need to do more to punish Israel, we need to be more seriously considering ways in which we can sanction them, condition aid, cut off aid, reduce weapons flows,” a foreign service officer said of the meetings, according to the report. “There were people whose issues don’t have anything to do with the conflict … who were making the case for why we need to do more to bash Israel.”
Tensions at the State Department have boiled over into public view after Oct. 7, as staffers resigned over their issues with U.S. policy on aiding Israel against its war with Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist faction. The conflict in the Middle East has escalated this week on the heels of Iran attacking Israel directly, an unprecedented event — leading to Israel striking back on Friday.
The U.S. slapped Iran with new sanctions on Thursday in response to the attack, though Republican lawmakers continue to raise concerns about the Biden administration waiving sanctions on Iran that they say have led to billions of dollars flowing to Tehran. The Washington Examiner reported Monday that at least three recent members of an Iranian government-controlled propaganda network visited the Biden White House 10 times since 2022.
To the foreign service officer who spoke with Jewish Insider, there is a “failure of leadership in the U.S. Department of State right now to reinforce internally what the policy is and why the president has taken it, to put into context what Israel is dealing with, whether it’s Hamas’ tactics on the ground, or the fact that it’s actually a two-front war, with Iran lurking in the background.”
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In response, a spokesperson for the State Department said a strength of the U.S. government is “different people working within it have different political beliefs, different personal beliefs, and different beliefs about what United States policy should be.”
“We encourage all individuals to make their opinions known through appropriate channels,” the spokesperson said. “State Department leadership has spoken to this on several occasions, and these listening sessions are just one of the opportunities available for our workforce to convey their valued opinions.”