A veteran US state department official has quit over what he described as the Biden administration’s “intellectual bankruptcy” in sending more weapons and ammunition to Israel, as Gaza health officials said Israeli bombing had killed more than 3,700 people.
Josh Paul, the director of congressional and public affairs for the state department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said in a letter posted on LinkedIn that the government “rushing” to provide arms to Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse”.
In the letter, first reported by HuffPost, Paul said Hamas’s attack on Israel was “a monstrosity of monstrosities,” reports The Guardian.
“But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” he wrote.
“This administration’s response – and much of Congress’s as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia.”
