Biden’s policies in bombing Syria, Iraq and Yemen and supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza and settler violence in the West Bank are deeply immoral and endanger U.S. national security.
It is 3:00 a.m. and I can’t sleep again. All of us concerned about Gaza and the West Bank are spending sleepless nights and busy days trying desperately to pressure the Biden administration to stop its complicity with the relentless Israeli genocide in Gaza, to stop providing weapons and money to Israel and to demand an end to the carnage. Cease-Fire Now!
We awakened to the news that the U.S. has attacked Syria, Iraq and Yemen in retaliation for militants firing missiles into U.S. troop areas in Syria and Jordan and Houthis stopping Red Sea cargo ships. Why have there been attacks on U.S. troops and interests?
The answer is simple. Because the U.S. is occupying Muslim countries illegally and providing military weapons and international protection to Israel in its genocidal military operations in Gaza.
For God’s sake Joe, what the Hell are you doing?
It seems obvious to everyone but YOU, that for our own U.S. national security, the U.S. must stop its irrational protection of Israeli war crimes and demand that Israel stop its massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
Scenes of another day of Israeli bombing of Gaza with tens of thousands of buildings destroyed, Israeli commandos storming a hospital and assassinating three young men as they slept in their Jenin (West Bank) hospital beds, heavy rains pouring into makeshift tents for the million Palestinians now crammed into the area around Rafah, the daily and nightly raids of Israeli military into the West Bank cities and villages destroying roads, homes, cultural centers, Israeli occupation forces stripping men and boys of their clothes, forcing them to kneel for hours in humiliating positions and beating them for days in concentration/detention camps, finding 30 bodies in a mass grave in a school yard, Palestinians who were shot to death with their hands tied behind them by Israeli forces.
Going to the Heartless U.S. Congress
Every day we go to the offices of U.S. congresspersons and plead for them to call for a cease-fire and to pressure the Biden administration to refuse to provide more weapons and money to the Israeli military. After 118 days of Israeli pounding of Gaza, most Senators and Representatives are still repeating “NO CEASE-FIRE. Israel has a right to self-defense. Israel has the right to destroy Gaza and kill as many Palestinians as is necessary to kill the last Hamas militant.”
At least ten Senators and Representatives have Israeli flags alongside the U.S. flag in front of their offices, which brings into question where their loyalties lie.
One member of Congress—Brian Mast (R-FL)—wore his Israeli military uniform into the U.S. Congress in October and is one of the most hate-filled members of Congress, calling the deaths of Gaza children just fine.
Rashida Tlaib, the one member of Congress who is Palestinian-American, continues to receive death threats. Those who speak out to stop the genocide in Gaza are targeted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) with incitement-to-violence messaging and running candidates to replace them in Congress.
Protests in Washington against the genocide in Gaza and the massacres in the West Bank occur daily. A nine-day encampment in the narrow public land on each side of the two-lane road in front of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s home on Chain Bridge Road has brought Palestinian supporters from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia who make sure Blinken (and his family) know that they have blood on their hands for green-lighting the genocide in Gaza.
Biden and Powers Interrupted in Public Talks
President Biden was repeatedly interrupted with calls of “Genocide Joe” in his public speaking engagements, first at a church in South Carolina and last week in Manassas, Virginia, when he gave a speech on reproductive rights. U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power was interrupted in her speech in Washington, D.C., this week by people who have worked for USAID. In her Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Problem from Hell, Power documents America’s repeated failures to stop genocides around the world. Now she is complicit in the Biden administration for refusing to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza.
As the promotional material for her book states: “Power, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, used exclusive interviews with Washington’s top policymakers, thousands of declassified documents, and her own reporting from modern killing fields to provide the answer. A Problem from Hell shows how decent Americans inside and outside government refused to get involved despite chilling warnings, and tells the stories of the courageous Americans who risked their careers and lives in an effort to get the United States to act.”
Power needs to re-read her own book!!!!
Protests Continue in the Streets
Millions of people around the world have taken to the streets in protest. Numerous people in the U.S. have been arrested for blocking streets, highways and bridges, for disrupting congressional hearings, for sitting down and singing in congressional buildings and for chaining themselves to the fence at the White House.
Government Employees from Many Countries Publicly Disagree with Their Governments’ Policies
Scores of government employees continue to publish statements calling into question the silence of their governments to the on-going genocide of Gaza.
On February 2, 2024, 800+ government employees from the U.S. and 12 nations and EU organizations published a letter protesting Israeli policies and stating that the leaders of their countries and organizations could be complicit in war crimes in Gaza.
The letter states, “Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally…there is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”
Some 80 of the signers are from American agencies, with the largest group being from the State Department, one organizer said. Many signers are from European Union institutions, followed by the Netherlands and the United States. National-level officials from eight other member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, signed the letter.
In November 2023, more than 500 employees from about 40 U.S. government agencies sent a letter to President Biden criticizing his policies on the continuous Israeli attack on Gaza. In that letter, the officials also did not reveal their names due to the probability of retaliation by the agencies.
More than 1,000 employees of the United States Agency for International Development released an open letter with the same concerns. Dozens of State Department officials have sent at least three internal dissent cables to Secretary of State Blinken.
According to The New York Times, hundreds of officials in the European Union have signed at least two separate letters of dissent to the bloc’s leadership.
Robert Ford, former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Syria who resigned in 2014 over the Obama administration’s Syria policy, is quoted in The New York Times article as stating that he had never seen a cross-border dissent letter like this new one in three decades of working at the State Department.
Ford added that some diplomats had learned a lesson from the run-up to the Iraq War begun by President George W. Bush: Keeping quiet despite objections to misguided policies, or not going public with them when the stakes are high, could contribute to a disastrous outcome.
As one of three U.S. diplomats who resigned from the U.S. government on the decision in 2003 of the Bush administration to wage war on Iraq, I appeal for others in the U.S. government to continue to sign letters and to consider resignation as Josh Paul has done from the State Department and Tariq Habash has done from the Department of Education.
Biden Wants More Billions for Israel to Continue Its Genocide in Gaza
Despite all of our efforts, it is likely that on Wednesday, February 7, 2024, the U.S. Senate will pass a national security supplemental to provide Israel with another 14 billion dollars, more than three times what the U.S. already provides annually to Israel. Israel is, by far, the largest recipient of U.S. military financing, and the added $10 billion will blow up the foreign affairs budget.
ICJ and the World Will Hold YOU and the U.S. Government Accountable for GENOCIDE
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has warned countries assisting with weapons used in a genocide that leaders are complicit and can be held liable.
President Biden, in case your advisers have not mentioned to you, YOU and THEY are definitely up to your eyeballs in genocide; we and the world will hold you accountable.
CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptions, orders and donations from readers like you.
Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism
Click the whistle and donate
When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.
CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.
Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.
CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.
We sincerely thank you for your support.
Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.
Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.
Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.
Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.
By using this site, you agree to these terms above.
About the Author
Ann Wright is a retired United States Army colonel and retired U.S. State Department official.
She was one of three State Department officials to publicly resign in direct protest of the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.
Since that time Colonel Wright has been a dedicated peace activist.
Ann can be reached at annw1946@gmail.com.
