A senior Interior Department official has become the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of President Biden’s support for the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the Interior Department’s chief of staff, who had worked for Biden’s campaign in 2020, said she could no longer be a part of the administration due to the genocidal war.
“I joined the Biden Administration because I believe in fighting for a better America, for a future where Americans can thrive: one with economic prosperity, a healthy planet and equal rights for all people. I have dedicated my career to candidates who I believed would further this vision,” Call wrote in her resignation letter. “However, I can no longer, in good conscience, continue to represent this administration amidst President Biden’s disastrous, continued support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.”
In an interview with AP, Call said Biden was using Jews to justify support for the slaughter. She pointed to comments Biden made at a White House Hanukkah event where he said, “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe.”
Call said Biden was “making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong.”
In her resignation letter, Call wrote, “Jewish safety cannot — and will not — come at the expense of Palestinian freedom. Making Jews the face of the American war machine makes us less safe.”
According to AP, Call was a long-time activist and advocate for Israel before joining the government. In the letter, Call said that she had spent her “whole life” in Jewish communities in the US and Israel.
“People in my community lost loved ones during Hamas’ attack on October 7th, beloveds killed, displaced and taken as hostages. I am terrified by rising antisemitism around the world,” Call wrote. “And yet I am certain that the answer to this is not to collectively punish millions of innocent Palestinians through displacement, famine and ethnic cleansing.”
So far, three State Department officials, an Education Department official, and a US Army officer working for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency have publicly resigned in protest of Biden’s support for Israel. Maj. Maj. Harrison Mann, who worked for DIA, also pointed to his Jewish heritage as a reason for quitting.
“I want to clarify that as the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing — my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany — where the paramount importance of ‘never again’ and the inadequacy of ‘just following orders’ were oft repeated,” he said.