NEW YORK: US government officials who have resigned in protest over Washington’s role in the Israeli war on Gaza confirm the US complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip.
During an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes, an American TV networks’ news show, the officials stressed that Israel couldn’t have committed war crimes in Gaza without the US military support.
“What is happening in Gaza would not be able to happen without US arms. That’s without a doubt,” said Hala Rharrit, a former diplomat working on human rights.
“I would show the complicity that was indisputable; fragments of US bombs next to massacres of mostly children. And that’s the devastation. It’s been overwhelmingly children.”
Rharrit said she was asked not to report documented images coming out of Gaza that reflect the Israeli crimes. “I would show images of children that were starved to death. In one incident, I was basically berated,” she said, adding, “(I was told) don’t put that image in there. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to see that the children are starving to death.”
She was even told after three months of the Gaza war that her reports were no longer needed.
Josh Paul, a former senior US State Department staffer, also stressed, “There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the US because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane.”
He noted that most of the bombs, the technology, and all of fighter jets and fixed-wing fleet of Israel come from America. Paul resigned on October 18, 2023 due to a policy disagreement concerning the US’ continued lethal assistance to the Israeli regime, after spending 11 years as a director in the State Department’s Bureau of Political–Military Affairs.
Andrew Miller, who was a senior US State Department official and served as deputy assistant for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, noted that Israel was indiscriminately attacking densely-packed areas under the pretext of the alleged presence of one or two targeted individuals.
“The Israelis were using those bombs in some instances to target one or two individuals in densely-packed areas.” Miller, who resigned from his post last June after recognizing the risks of the US’s full-fledged support for Israel while citing family obligations, also noted that Washington drew no red lines for Israel’s war in Gaza.
“I believe the message that [Israel’s] prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu received is that he was the one in the driver’s seat, and he was controlling this, and US support was going to be there, and he could take it for granted.”
