Josh Paul US State Department official resigns over Biden’s ‘destructive’ supply of weapons to Israel, must read his latter

LONDON: A US State Department official has resigned in protest at what he called the Biden administration’s “intellectual bankruptcy” in supplying further weapons and ammunition to Israel, The Guardian reported on Thursday.

Israeli bombings have killed more than 3,700 people in Gaza, while nearly 12,500 others have been wounded, in retaliation for an Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militants.

Josh Paul 3rd
(Former) Director at U.S. Department of State
Today I informed my colleagues that I have resigned from the State Department, due to a policy disagreement concerning our continued lethal assistance to Israel. To further explain my rationale for doing so, I have written the attached note.

Josh Paul, the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said on Wednesday in a letter posted on LinkedIn that the government “rushing” to provide arms to Israel was “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

His resignation came a day after an Israeli airstrike on Al-Ahli Al-Arabi Hospital in the Gaza Strip killed hundreds of people, many of whom were children.

Quds News Network
@QudsNen
State Department official Josh Paul has resigned in protest of the Biden administration’s unconditional backing of the Israeli regime.

“We cannot be both against occupation and for it. We cannot be both for freedom and against it. And we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially worse.”- Paul said

“But I believe to the core of my soul that the response Israel is taking, and with it the American support both for that response and for the status quo of the occupation, will only lead to more and deeper suffering for both the Israeli and the Palestinian people,” he wrote.

“This administration’s response — and much of Congress’s as well — is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia.”

The New York Times reported that Biden planned to ask Congress for $10 billion in “mostly military assistance” for Israel.
Paul characterized the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs as “the US government entity most responsible for the transfer and provision of arms to partners and allies.”

Brian Finucane
@BCFinucane

A must read.

My former colleague Josh Paul resigned today from the
@StateDept
office that approves arms transfers because of the Biden admin’s decision to rush arms to Israel.

I have deep respect for Josh and I know he did not take this decision lightly.

Read his letter.

Rana Ayyub
@RanaAyyub
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15h
State Department official, Josh Paul, who worked on arms transfers to foreign powers resigned Wednesday over the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, declaring he could not support further U.S. military assistance to Israel

He said that in his 11 years at the bureau, he had “made more moral compromises than I can recall.”

Paul wrote: “I knew (the role) was not without its moral complexity and moral compromises, and I made myself a promise that I would stay for as long as I felt the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do. I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued — indeed, expanded and expedited — provision of lethal arms to Israel, I have reached the end of that bargain.”