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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/03/biden-appointee-quits-israel-gaza/
“I cannot represent an administration that does not value all human life equally. I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government,” wrote Habash, who is Palestinian American and served in the administration for nearly three years."
Biden appointee resigns over president’s handling of Gaza war
Tariq Habash, an official at the Department of Education, is the second Biden official to quit over the president’s support of Israel.
by Yasmeen Abutaleb
January 3, 2024
The Washington Post
A political appointee at the Department of Education announced his resignation Wednesday over the president’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war, marking the second public departure over an issue that has deeply divided the Biden administration.
Tariq Habash, a special assistant who focused primarily on student loan issues and had volunteered on Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, did not work on foreign policy matters. Yet his resignation is notable given that the administration — which has seen multiple dissent memos and open letters calling for the White House to rein in the Israeli government — has faced few resignations over the war.
“I cannot represent an administration that does not value all human life equally. I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government,” wrote Habash, who is Palestinian American and served in the administration for nearly three years.
“I cannot be quietly complicit as this administration fails to leverage its influence as Israel’s strongest ally to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics that have cut off Palestinians in Gaza from food, water, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies, leading to widespread disease and starvation,” Habash wrote.
Israel and its supporters strongly deny that its military campaign is “genocidal,” saying the large number of deaths are in part a result of Hamas’s practice of embedding its fighters amid civilians.
The only other Biden administration official to publicly resign over Biden’s support of Israel so far is Josh Paul, who worked on arms transfers to foreign powers as director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. Paul, who resigned in October, was a career official who had spent more than 11 years in his role. Habash is the first political appointee to resign over the president’s Israel policy.
Biden’s unwavering embrace of Israel after Hamas militants killed 1,200 Israelis and took some 230 hostage on Oct. 7 has roiled his administration unlike any other issue during his presidency. Biden has continued to support Israel and resisted calls for a cease-fire as its retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, displaced more than 80 percent of the population and created a humanitarian disaster in the densely populated enclave.
The president and his supporters argue that Israel had little choice but to seek to destroy Hamas after the horrific attacks and that the civilian casualties have come despite Israel’s efforts to avoid them. But a growing number of officials at all levels within the administration are upset and angry at the sheer number of Palestinian deaths, including thousands of children, though few have put their name publicly to their concerns.
In an interview, Habash cited the repeated U.S. vetoes of United Nations resolutions that would have called for a cease-fire, and he denounced the “collective punishment” of Palestinians as playing a major role in his decision to resign.
Those policies “make it untenable for me to stay because it means my government, the administration I’ve represented, does not view me and millions of Americans who look like me as human. That dehumanization is personal for so many of us,” Habash said. “I felt like I had an obligation to do everything I possibly could to raise alarm bells about what I believed was incorrect policy that was making the world less safe, that was destroying the lives of millions of people.”
In his letter, Habash said he brought “a critical and underrepresented perspective to the ongoing work on equity and justice” as a Palestinian American. He cited his family’s Palestinian Christian roots and their displacement amid the creation of Israel in 1948 during what Palestinians call the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, saying his family has never been allowed to return to its ancestral home.
“Over the last three years, the White House issued numerous press releases noting that this was the most diverse administration in history, that it reflected America. I am part of that America,” Habash wrote.
Habash also said Biden’s policy was putting his reelection — and therefore the future of American democracy — at risk because so many Democratic voters, including young voters, disapprove of his handling of the war.
Asked whether he would support Biden in November, Habash said, “He gets to decide if he wants to fight for my vote and the vote of millions of Americans who support peace, an immediate end to the violence and equal rights for all civilians, including Palestinians.”
Israel-Gaza war
An estimated 100,000 Palestinians have fled to the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah in recent days, the U.N. humanitarian agency said. The Israel Defense Forces on Friday announced an expansion of its operations in Khan Younis.
More than 20,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip during the war between Israel and Hamas, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Hostages: More than 100 held in the Gaza Strip have been released. Here’s what we know about those freed by Hamas so far.
Oct. 7 attack: Hamas spent more than a year planning its assault on Israel. A Washington Post video analysis shows how Hamas exploited vulnerabilities created by Israel’s reliance on technology at the “Iron Wall,” the security barrier around the Gaza Strip, to carry out the deadliest attack in Israel’s history. Stock traders earned millions of dollarsanticipating the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, a study found.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has a complicated history. Understand what’s behind the Israel-Gaza war and read about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Yasmeen Abutaleb is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2019 as a national health policy reporter. Yasmeen co-authored the New York Times No. 1 best seller, "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration Response to the Pandemic that Changed History." Twitter
