Growing dissent - as the crisis deepens

Hello all,

Please do keep sharing this petition and encouraging others to sign it --  it lends support to countless foreign policy and security experts who have been pushing for a sane, thoughtful, effective response to the unfolding crisis.

On that note, below are experts from a New York Times article today on the more than 400 US Officials who've signed a letter protesting the Biden Administration's policy and positions via-a-vis Israel in this moment. It includes parts of the letter. 

The full article can be found here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/us/politics/israel-biden-letter-gaza-cease-fire.html

Of course, the stakes are high. In the context of a humanitarian disaster and enormous death toll, most alarming is that various Israeli leaders and officials have openly expressed views that raise questions of genocidal intent. History shows that in past cases of genocide, rhetoric and ideology preceded genocidal actions. Members of the UNSC, and particularly the United States as Israel's ally, have a duty to intervene before more lives are lost -- and certainly to not enable the killing and suffering of civilians. Truth be told, absolutist, genocidal thinking on the part of a large swaths of Israelis is no different from that of Hamas leaders calling for the elimination of Israeli Jews. 

Last, as an update, I've expanded the set of decision-makers addressed in this petition to cover leaders of the United States, United Kingdom and France as well as the UN Secretary General. 

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The letter, part of growing internal dissent over the administration’s support of the war, calls on the president to seek an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and to push Israel to allow humanitarian aid into the territory. It is the latest of several protest letters from officials throughout the Biden administration, including three internal memos to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken signed by dozens of State Department employees as well as an open letter signed by more than 1,000 employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“We call on President Biden to urgently demand a cease-fire; and to call for de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians; the restoration of water, fuel, electricity and other basic services; and the passage of adequate humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip,” the letter states.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans support a cease-fire,” the letter states, linking to a poll from October that shows that 66 percent of Americans, including 80 percent of Democrats, believe the United States should put pressure on Israel for a cease-fire.

“Furthermore, Americans do not want the U.S. military to be drawn into another costly and senseless war in the Middle East.”