2023-11-15 22:04:00
Josh Paul, who worked in the office responsible for overseeing arms deliveries to US allies, caused a sensation in Washington when he resigned last month. He then criticized the American policy of arms deliveries to certain countries, accusing political leaders of turning a blind eye. “Criticism of Israel is often considered a taboo subject in American politics, and especially in Congress,” says Josh Paul, director of public and parliamentary relations in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for 11 years.
“This deters American political leaders from saying in public what they think in private,” said the one who slammed the door of the State Department last month. It was the Israeli bombings on the Gaza Strip which pushed him to resign because, according to him, “it was clear – and we saw it – that (American weapons) were going to be used to kill civilians”.
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An indignation
The war was sparked on October 7 by a Hamas attack of a scale and violence never seen since the creation of Israel in 1948. Around 1,200 people were killed, according to Israeli authorities, the vast majority civilians. massacred that day.
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In retaliation, Israel vowed to “annihilate” the Islamist movement in power in Gaza. The army relentlessly shells the small, besieged Palestinian territory and launched a ground operation on October 27. Israeli bombings have killed 11,500 people, mostly civilians, including 4,650 children, according to the Hamas health ministry. international indignation at Israel’s response, Washington continues to firmly support its Middle East ally.
Reactions and demonstrations
Josh Paul considers that the transfer of American weapons to countries with questionable human rights records had always sparked debate at the State Department, until the bloody Hamas attack on October 7 “There was no space for discussion or debate on the subject, whereas that had always been the case for the other issues I was confronted with.”
The former official added that the rules limiting arms deliveries are weak, allowing policy makers to “deliberately” “simply not decide” whether the Israeli army violated human rights in the Gaza Strip or not.
Protests and debates over the ongoing war have erupted across the United States, particularly on college campuses, and anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts have increased, according to the Justice Department. Josh Paul said that the levels of division within the American administration, including among elected officials, are comparable to the tensions preceding the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He adds, however, that, in his opinion, most civil servants might not allow themselves to resign, under penalty of “seeing their career destroyed” for having positioned themselves on this conflict.
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