An 11-year veteran of the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs resigned his post on Wednesday in protest of President Joe Biden's policy toward Israel following the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust at the hands of Hamas terrorists.
Josh Paul, a now-former director at the State Department with "the U.S. Government entity most responsible for the transfer and provision of arms to partners and allies," as he described it, posted his two-page resignation letter to his LinkedIn page.
"I knew it 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 I the harm I might do could be outweighed by the good I could do," Paul wrote in his resignation letter. "In my 11 years I have made more moral compromises than I can recall, each heavily, but each with my promise to myself in mind, and intact," he said. "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."
While Paul wrote that "Hamas' attack on Israel was not just a monstrosity; it was a monstrosity of monstrosities," he concluded that, "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 - and is not in the long term American interest."
According to Paul, the United States "cannot be both against occupation, and for it" nor "be both for freedom, and against it" and "we cannot be for a better world, while contributing to one that is materially worse." Evidently, aiding Israel as it works to eliminate terrorists who indiscriminately kill both Israeli and Gazan civilians, is an affront to freedom and will make the world worse in Paul's mind.
Using buzzwords that are familiar in the pro-Hamas narrative such as "occupation" and "apartheid," Paul wrote that "collective punishment" is an enemy to his desire for "both protection, and the right to flourish...for Palestinians and for Israelis."
"It is my firm belief that in such conflicts, for those of us who are third parties, the side we must pick is not that of one of the combatants, but that of the people caught in the middle, and that of the generations yet to come," Paul wrote. "It is our responsibility to help the warring parties build a better world. To center human rights, not to hope to sideline or sidestep them through programs of economic growth or diplomatic maneuvering."
What Paul misses there is the fact that Hamas, as the government in the Gaza Strip, is the one putting its citizens in the middle. It literally uses Gazans as human shields, as demonstrated by its work to block evacuation routes after the IDF told civilians to leave northern Gaza. Hamas terrorists also run their operations out of hospitals, launch rockets at Israel from schools, and value women and children only for their usefulness as shields. Terrorists in Gaza routinely bomb their own people due to shoddy rocket misfires. To truly stand for the people "caught in the middle," helping Israel eliminate Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and any other terror groups in Gaza is the action to take.
But that's not Paul's view. Instead, he says he has been "heartened to see the efforts this Administration has made to temper Israel's response, including advocating for the provision of relief supplies, electricity, and water to Gaza, and for safe passage." But Paul, who has experience working with Palestinian officials and in arms sales around the world, knows better. "Aid" to Gaza means aid to Hamas terrorists, and "aid" to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank means aid to corrupt officials, as Katie explained here. Previous aid to Gaza, such as infrastructure to build modern water systems, saw Hamas boast about cutting up pipes to make rockets used to kill Israelis.
Reiterating again that "I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse, and which I wholeheartedly endorse: a world built around a rules-based order, a world that advances both equality and equity, and a world whose arc of history bends towards the promise of liberty, and of justice, for all," Paul apparently thinks this is a "both-sides" situation, one in which Hamas terrorists deserve equal footing with Israel. Never mind, apparently, that if Hamas and its Iranian backers had their way, there would be no liberty or justice for anyone.
While there's reason to be grateful that someone who doesn't support Israel's efforts to root out Iran-backed Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip no longer works in a position of power over arms sales, it's another disappointment that those in the Biden bureaucracy hold such feelings about an equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member