Private listening sessions were added to State Department employees’s calendars that morphed into venting sessions about President Joe Biden’s pro-Israel stance amid the ongoing war with Gaza.
According to a report from Jewish Insider, three employees revealed that the State Department privately called for “more to punish Israel” in meetings at Foggy Bottom beginning in February. The meetings were held by Kurt Campbell, deputy secretary of state and former Indo-Pacific coordinator for the White House National Security Council.
Employees claimed that the meetings focused on ways to punish Israel and how the United States could “sanction them, condition aid, cut off aid, and reduce weapons flows” into the Jewish state.
“It was overwhelmingly calls, including from people I respect, [that] we need to do more to sanction Israel, we need to do more to punish Israel,” one foreign service officer said. “There were people whose issues don’t have anything to do with the conflict … who were making the case for why we need to do more to bash Israel.”
What stood out to some department employees at recent listening sessions was senior leaders’ unwillingness to defend Biden’s support for Israel’s security, particularly in response to a chorus of employees seeking a harsher stance toward the Jewish state. One result of their reticence is that other lower-level employees who stand by Biden’s support for Israel also do not speak up in those meetings.
The senior foreign service officer who spoke to JI described a “failure of leadership in the U.S. Department of State right now to reinforce internally what the policy is and why the president has taken it, to put into context what Israel is dealing with, whether it’s Hamas’ tactics on the ground, or the fact that it’s actually a two-front war, with Iran lurking in the background.” Via Jewish Insider.
There have been several reports that revealed that State Department employees often expressed suspicion regarding the Biden Administration’s pro-Israel views after Hamas attacked the country last year.
On Thursday, the U.S. slapped Iran with additional sanctions in response to its drone attack on Israel last weekend.
However, Republican lawmakers continue to express their concerns that waiving sanctions could lead to Tehran getting a hold of billions of dollars.
In response to the report, a spokesperson for the State Department said that there are different people with different views and religions about what the nation’s policy should look like working for the U.S. government.
“We encourage all individuals to make their opinions known through appropriate channels,” the spokesperson said. “State Department leadership has spoken to this on several occasions, and these listening sessions are just one of the opportunities available for our workforce to convey their valued opinions.”
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