Important Context interviewed a former official with the Biden State Department, who announced their resignation last week over the president’s handling of Israel’s Gaza war.
Annelle Sheline, Ph.D., had been serving as a foreign affairs officer in the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for the last year. But last week, she publicly announced her departure, citing the devolving situation in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military—and the president’s unwavering support for the war.
“Since Hamas’ attack on October 7, Israel has used American bombs in its war in Gaza, which has killed more than 32,000 people — 13,000 of them children — with countless others buried under the rubble, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health,” she wrote in an op-ed for CNN. “Israel is credibly accused of starving the 2 million people who remain, according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to food; a group of charity leaders warns that without adequate aid, hundreds of thousands more will soon likely join the dead.”
Sheline is not the only administration official to leave over the Israel issue. State Department senior official Josh Paul, who was involved in arms transfers to foreign nations, resigned in October while Department of Education policy adviser Tariq Habash, a Biden appointee who is of Palestinian descent, followed suit in January.
Initially, Sheline hadn’t planned on making her resignation public given her brief stint in the administration. But, she explained, the urging of likeminded colleagues, who shared her frustration and dismay, drove her decision.
“My colleagues and I watched in horror as this administration delivered thousands of precision-guided munitions, bombs, small arms and other lethal aid to Israel and authorized thousands more, even bypassing Congress to do so,” she wrote. “We are appalled by the administration’s flagrant disregard for American laws that prohibit the US from providing assistance to foreign militaries that engage in gross human rights violations or that restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.“
In her interview with Important Context, Sheline explained that the U.S. has leverage over Israel that Biden is not using in the form of conditioning military aid, without which the war could not be fought. She noted that Israel’s war efforts are threatening to not only kill many more innocents, but to descend into a broader regional conflict that could suck in the U.S.
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Fmr. State Department Official: White House Not “Sufficiently Grappling With the Reality” In Gaza Conflict