WASHINGTON:
A top US Education Department official resigned on Wednesday, citing President Joe Biden’s handling of the Gaza conflict, the latest sign of dissension in the administration as deaths continue to mount in the war.
Also Wednesday, 17 Biden re-election campaign officials issued a warning in an anonymous letter that Biden could lose voters over the issue.
Tariq Habash, special assistant in the Ministry of Education’s Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, said: “I cannot remain silent as this government turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinians lives. in what leading human rights experts call the Israeli government’s genocidal campaign.”
Habas, a Palestinian-American and expert on student debt, was appointed early in the Biden presidency as part of developing the Department of Education’s expertise in student loans.
The 17 anonymous Biden campaign officials, in their letter, published on Medium, urged Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
“Biden for the President’s staff has seen volunteers leave in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time because of this conflict,” the officials wrote in the letter.
The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said earlier Wednesday that the US has not observed acts in Gaza that amount to genocide. His remarks were in response to proceedings initiated by South Africa at the International Court of Justice over Israel’s military operations in Gaza.
Israel has also denied claims of genocide in Gaza.
Reading US ‘sees no acts of genocide’ in Gaza, says State Dept
Josh Paul, a former State Department official, resigned from the Biden administration in October in protest of what he called the administration’s “blind support” for Israel.
In November, more than 1,000 officials from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), part of the State Department, signed an open letter calling on the Biden administration to call for an immediate ceasefire.
After at least three cables criticizing the administration’s policy were filed in the State Department’s internal “disagreement channel,” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken acknowledged the disagreements in a November letter.
In December, some Biden administration staff held a vigil near the White House to demand a ceasefire in Gaza.
The attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Israel on October 7 killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli estimates. About 240 hostages were also taken back to Gaza. The total recorded Palestinian death toll from Israel’s retaliatory attack reached 22,313 as of Wednesday, nearly 1 percent of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, Gaza’s health ministry said.
Israeli bombardment has flattened much of the densely populated enclave, leaving most Gazans homeless, with food shortages threatening famine.
The United States has publicly criticized the rhetoric of some Israeli ministers and pressured Israel to limit civilian deaths in Gaza. Critics argue that Washington is not using its leverage as a major arms and aid supplier to influence Israeli policy.
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