Stacy Gilbert resigned in protest against State Department report that says Israel isn't blocking aid to Gaza

A career State Department official resigned from her post on Tuesday, saying she could no longer work for the Biden administration after it released a report concluding that Israel was not preventing the flow of aid to Gaza.

Stacy Gilbert, who served as a senior civilian-military advisor to the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), sent an email to staff saying she was resigning because she felt the State Department had made the wrong assessment, The Washington Post reported, citing officials who read the note.

The report was filed in response to President Joe Biden issuing a national security memorandum (NSM-20) in early February on whether the administration finds credible Israel’s assurances that its use of US weapons do not violate either American or international law.

The report said there were reasonable grounds to believe Israel on several occasions had used American-supplied weapons “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law, but said it could not make a definitive assessment - enough to prevent the suspension of arms transfers.

  • @SulaymanF@lemmy.world
    6•6 months ago

    I think a lot of people are kidding themselves if they think there’s no material benefit to the US by keeping Israel as an iron-clad ally in the Middle East

    Not at all. Israel is a greater liability than any benefit they provide. Unconditional support for every Israeli aggression makes the US deeply unpopular in the rest of the region when we were previously popular. It undermines all our rhetoric of freedom and human rights when we partner with such a blatant violator of them. Bin Laden spelled out in his 2001 statement that support for Israel’s atrocities is what motivated 9/11, and doubling down on that support only increased terrorism for the next 20 years.

    And what do we get out of this ironclad support? Did Israel help us in any of our wars in Iraq or Afghanistan? Do they give us any aid or resources or do they demand them from us?

    • @Shyfer@ttrpg.network
      2•6 months ago

      That’s a great point. When Israel kicks out 2 million refugees where are they all going to go? Surrounding countries again. And I’m sure they really don’t like that from a geopolitical point of view, as well as humanitarian. It really encourages every surrounding country to hate us.