A Jewish Biden administration official resigned over President Joe Biden’s stance on the war in Gaza, becoming the first Jewish staffer appointed by the president to resign publicly.
Lily Greenberg Call, special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, cited her Jewish heritage as the reason for her resignation. In her letter, she related her deep ties to the United States and Israel but expressed deep opposition to Israel’s conduct in its war against Hamas in Gaza, calling it a “genocide.”
“The President has the power to call for a lasting ceasefire, to stop sending weapons to Israel, and to condition aid. The United States has used nearly no leverage throughout the last eight months to hold Israel accountable; quite the opposite, we have enabled and legitimized Israel’s actions with vetoes of UN resolutions designed to hold Israel accountable,” she wrote. “President Biden has the blood of innocent people on his hands.”
Call also accused Biden of using Jews as political pawns and endangering them by supporting Israel.
“The United States has long enabled Israeli war crimes and the status quo of apartheid and occupation. That status quo does not keep Israelis safe, nor Jews around the world,” she continued. “It certainly does not protect Palestinians, who have the right to freedom, safety, self-determination, and dignity, just as much as Jewish people do, and every person does.”
“Any system that requires the subjugation of one group over another is not only unjust, but unsafe. Jewish safety cannot — and will not — come at the expense of Palestinian freedom. Making Jews the face of the American war machine makes us less safe,” Call added.
The day of her resignation, May 15, was purposefully chosen as symbolic. Palestinians commemorate it as the day of the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” a term coined by the Syrian Christian intellectual Constantin Zurayk to describe the expulsion of roughly 750,000 Palestinians following the Arab defeat in the Israeli war of independence.
“I reject the premise that one people’s salvation must come at another’s destruction,” Call said. “I am committed to creating a world where this does not happen — and this cannot be done from within the Biden Administration.”
Call’s position is a minority among American Jews, with the overwhelming majority being strong supporters of Israel and seeing Israel as a central part of being Jewish. An Israel on Campus Coalition December poll found that 81% of American Jews support Israel’s war effort in Gaza, Jewish Insider reported.
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Earlier this week, an Army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency resigned in protest of the U.S.’s continued military support for Israel.
Maj. Harrison Mann said he resigned from the DIA over the “nearly unqualified [U.S.] support” for Israel, “which has enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians [in Gaza].”
