As people in the United States sat down to Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners this past holiday season, Palestinians in Gaza on Day 419 of the Israeli genocide of Gaza—and U.S. complicity in that genocide—were facing starvation, lack of water, tents purposefully destroyed by U.S. bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes and drones, and rain and cold from the winter storms.
Here in the U.S. families enjoyed meals prepared primarily by mothers and wives.
Yet, many mothers and wives and aunties of these families had day jobs with the Biden administration and were key participants in the U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of the 44,000 Palestinians in Gaza whom we know have been killed by U.S. weapons, the hundreds of thousands who have been injured and perhaps 100,000 who are still buried beneath the rubble.
As women, wives, mothers and grandmothers, one would have hoped that these women policy makers and policy implementers would have attempted to stop the Biden administration’s complete and total unwavering support of the State of Israel as the Israeli government shocked the world with its extreme retaliation and retribution against Hamas and the Palestinian people after the horrific events of October 7, 2023.
We all should be horrified and perplexed at the number of high-ranking women in the Biden administration who were part of the genocide. They worked prominently in an administration that defied international and U.S. domestic law in the provision of more than 100 million pounds of weapons to Israel that were purposely used to kill Palestinians and—more recently—Lebanese citizens. More women will unfortunately be complicit as the incoming Trump administration continues Biden’s hawkish Israel policy.
In this article, I identify more than 20 women who served in key positions in the Biden administration in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policies that defended the unlawful actions of the Israeli government toward Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and citizens of Lebanon.
The spouses of government officials who did nothing to stop the U.S. complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza also have been named as they have had the daily opportunity to appeal to their spouses to stop the insanity of genocide.
All of these women are extremely well-educated. Most have graduate degrees in law, human rights, medicine, health and refugee issues. Most have worked in the U.S. government in previous administrations. All are well traveled and have been to conflict or post-conflict regions.
I have included a good deal about their employment in the government and national think tanks as it is important to recognize each one of them has had extensive experience in government and publicly recite the ways they have helped humanity—except for Palestine.
They all know the legal ramifications of the U.S. providing weapons to other countries. They know right from wrong and yet have chosen to stay with the Biden administration and its complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
But, none of them demanded that the U.S. stop its part in the genocide of Palestinians. Instead, each remained supportive of the Biden administration’s continuing to send U.S. weapons to Israel. They should all be marked for the rest of their careers and lives as women who should have done something, anything, to stop the genocide.
They, and we, know what the Israeli government/military is doing to the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. The horrors are spelled out in the legal brief filed by South Africa before the International Court of Justice—“Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel).”
On November 28, 2024, in the Oxford Union debate with the motion “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide,” author Susan Abulhawa reminded us of the hypocrisy of U.S. and many other Western leaders who refuse to stop the Israeli genocide.
Abulhawa reminded us: Because if the roles were reversed
“It’s clear to me that we’re not here to debate whether Israel is an apartheid or genocidal state. This debate is ultimately about the worth of Palestinian lives; about the worth of our schools, research centers, books, art, and dreams; about the worth of the homes we worked all our lives to build and which contain the memories of generations; about the worth of our humanity and our agency; the worth of bodies and ambitions.”
“Because if the roles were reversed…
if Palestinians had spent the last eight decades stealing Jewish homes, expelling, oppressing, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, raping and killing them;
if Palestinians had killed an estimated 300,000 Jews in one year, targeted their journalists, their thinkers, their healthcare workers, their athletes, their artists, bombed every Israeli hospital, university, library, museum, cultural center, synagogue, and simultaneously set up an observation platform where people came to watch their slaughter as if a tourist attraction;
if Palestinians had corralled them by the hundreds of thousands into flimsy tents, bombed them in so-called safe zones, burned them alive, cut off their food, water, and medicine;
if Palestinians …
made Jewish children wander barefoot with empty pots;
made them gather the flesh of their parents into plastic bags;
made them bury their siblings, cousins and friends;
made them sneak out from their tents in the middle of the night to sleep on their parents’ graves;
made them pray for death just to join their families and not be alone in this terrible world anymore,
and terrorized them so utterly that their children lose their hair, lose their memory, lose their minds, and made those as young as 4 and 5 years old die of heart attacks;
if we mercilessly forced their NICU babies to die, alone in hospital beds, crying until they could cry no more, died and decomposed in the same spot;
if Palestinians used wheat flour aid trucks to lure starving Jews, then opened fire on them when they gathered to collect a day’s bread;
if Palestinians finally allowed a food delivery into a shelter with hungry Jews, then set fire to the entire shelter and aid truck before anyone could taste the food;
if a Palestinian sniper bragged about blowing out 42 Jewish kneecaps in one day as one Israeli soldier did in 2019;
if a Palestinian admitted to CNN that he ran over hundreds of Jews with his tank, their squished flesh lingering in the tank treads;
if Palestinians were systematically raping Jewish doctors, patients, and other captives with hot metal rods, jagged and electrified sticks, and fire extinguishers, sometimes raping to death, as happened with Dr. Adnan al-Bursh and others;
if Jewish women were forced to give birth in filth, get C-sections or leg amputations without anesthesia;
if we destroyed their children then decorated our tanks with their toys; if we killed or displaced their women then posed with their lingerie…
if the world were watching the live-streamed systematic annihilation of Jews in real time, there would be no debating whether that constituted terrorism or genocide.”
This is not a defense of the horrors of October 7
This article is not intended to be a defense of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on citizens of Israel that killed 1,200 persons, mostly Israelis but also international workers, some of whom were killed by the Israeli response in killing Israeli citizens in order to prevent the capture of Israeli soldiers, known as the “Hannibal protocol.”
I do not justify the murder of those killed on October 7 but will remind readers that the occupation of Palestine for the past 70 years and the virtually complete blockade of Gaza for the past 17 years, and six Israelis attacks on Gaza is, no doubt, the basis for the violent actions taken by Hamas and other militant groups on October 7.
Putting into Perspective the Past 16 Years of Israeli Attacks on Gaza
According to statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, since the 2008-2009 Cast Lead two-day Israeli attack on Gaza until October 7, 2023, 7,087 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces (5,313 in Gaza, 1,730 in the West Bank and 44 in Israel).
During the same 16 years, 346 Israelis were killed (53 in Gaza, 162 in the West Bank and 131 in Israel).
159,831 Palestinians have been injured during that period (62,988 in Gaza, 96,736 in the West Bank and 97 in Israel).
6,534 Israelis were injured (3,996 in Israel, 2,432 in the West Bank and 106 in Gaza).
| Palestinians | Israelis | |
| Numbers Killed | 7,087 |
346 |
| in Gaza | 5,313 |
53 |
| in West Bank | 1,730 |
162 |
| in Israel | 44 |
131 |
| Number Injured | 159,821 |
6,534 |
| in Gaza | 62,988 |
106 |
| in West Bank | 96,736 |
2,432 |
| in Israel | 97 |
3,996 |
From the Top of the Biden Administration, Women Have Been Complicit in the Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza
Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris
Beginning at the top of the Biden administration, Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris was an integral part of the U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. She was involved in every major discussion and decision-making deliberation about sending huge shipments of weapons to Israel.
While Harris called for a cease-fire, lamented the death toll in Gaza and said she supported Palestinians’ right to self-determination as well as President Joe Biden’s decision to pause a shipment of 2,000-pound bombs in June, she carefully pledged to “ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.” Harris also said she had no intention of breaking with Biden’s Israel policy.
She and President Biden spoke of the “unbreakable bond” with Israel. In the 2024 election, Harris did not recognize the importance of splitting with the Biden administration’s complicity with Israel in the genocide of Gaza and many believe it cost her the election.
Harris is the first female Vice President, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected to this position.
In 2017, she was elected as a U.S. senator from California in which she worked on legislation to fight hunger and improve maternal health care, all of which should inform her of the plight of women and children in Gaza.
In 2010, Vice President Harris was elected Attorney General of California a position from which she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. She won a $20 billion settlement for Californians whose homes had been foreclosed on and a $1.1 billion settlement for students and veterans who were taken advantage of by a for-profit education company.
She also defended the Affordable Care Act in court and enforced environmental laws. Her advocacy for students, homeowners and health should have transferred to the plight of Palestinians who have been mercilessly bombed by the Israeli military with U.S.-manufactured and funded bombs and other weapons.
She is the step-mother of two adult children and the auntie to a number of nieces, nephews and great-nieces.
Jill Biden, wife of President Joe Biden
Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of President Biden, was with President Biden before and after every decision of the administration to supply more weapons to Israel that have killed more than 45,000 Palestinians.
We would have hoped that Dr. Biden would have given moral advice to her husband and reminded him that Roman Catholic leaders, including the Pope, were calling for cease-fires in Gaza, while Biden’s administration was vetoing every cease-fire proposal in the United Nations Security Council.
Jill Biden, Ed.D., is a community college educator, a military mother, a grandmother, and best-selling author. Dr. Biden also traveled the world as Second Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017.
Dr. Biden has three children and seven grandchildren.
Senior Members of the Biden Administration
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
As U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield was one of the most prominent faces of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza. In front of the world, she has vetoed four U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolutions and has lambasted the rulings of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court (ICC). When the ICC finally issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, Thomas-Greenfield said, “We will not arrest them.”
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield retired from a 35-year Foreign Service career which included an ambassadorship to Liberia (2008-2012), and postings in Switzerland (at the United States Mission to the United Nations, Geneva), Pakistan, Kenya, The Gambia, Nigeria, and Jamaica. In Washington, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of African Affairs (2006-2008).
What made Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield’s vetoes in the U.N. Security Council inexplicable is that she was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (2004-2006), the State Department office that funds UNRWA, an organization with an irreplaceable mission of which Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield must have been very familiar.
Thomas-Greenfield has two adult children, a daughter who is a Foreign Service Officer and a son who worked at one time for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
She has one grandchild which makes her vetoes of the cease-fires in Gaza even more inexplicable and heartbreaking…for the 17,000 children in Gaza who have been killed by U.S. bombs and perhaps up to 51,000 children according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) to estimates of orphaned or unaccompanied children, which range from about 17,000 to 19,000. The IRC also said that, “based on previous experience of other crises,” the number is likely as high as 51,000 who have been orphaned.
Samantha Power, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Of all the persons in the Biden-Harris administration who should have refused to stay in government as the U.S. became complicit in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, it is Samantha Power, the Administrator of USAID, the world’s largest development agency with a global staff of more than 11,000 across more than 100 countries.
She had the responsibility for the U.S. response to mass starvation which is consuming Gaza, yet USAID did nothing to stop U.S. complicity.
Ironically, Power has written a Pulitzer Prize-winning book on genocide: “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide. In the book, Power asks the question: Why do American leaders who vow “never again” repeatedly fail to stop genocide?
This is a question she needs to ask herself!
According to the description of her book A Problem from Hell, Power “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 is definitely not the courageous person that she writes about in her book.
As the first administrator of USAID to have a seat on the National Security Council, Power, unfortunately, did not use her position to demand a cease-fire and an end to U.S. weapons to Israel.
Power was at the table in the White House when decisions on U.S. funding of weapons to Israel and lack of pressure on Netanyahu on the starvation of Palestinians have been discussed.
Power has a long history of dealing with international crises. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris administration, she served as the 28th U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations—from 2013 to 2017—under President Barack Obama.
Further, from 2009 to 2013, Power served on the National Security Council staff as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights, where she advised President Obama on issues such as supporting democratic governance, UN reform, LGBTQI+ and women’s rights, atrocity prevention, and efforts to combat human trafficking and corruption.
To add more reasons why Power should have resigned from the administration early into the Israeli genocide of Gaza, Power was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and from 2017 to 2021 served as the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School.
Besides Vice President Harris, of all people in the Biden administration who were in positions of power who should have resigned from the administration due to its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, it is Samantha Power…but she has not ….to her eternal shame.
Ironically, Power has two children who later will no doubt question their mother about her actions during the genocide of Gaza.
Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary
As President Biden’s White House Press Secretary, in almost daily press briefings, Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to answer questions from the press about U.S. weaponry sent to Israel and how it is used by the Israeli military. Her blanket denials of any misuse of U.S. bombs and other munitions by Israeli military units and her justification of the Biden administration’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza ensure that her role will never be forgotten by the press nor the public watching her press conferences.
She previously served in senior communication and political roles in the Biden administration, the Biden campaign, and to then-Vice President Biden in the Obama administration.
Prior to her role on the campaign, she served as Chief Public Affairs Officer for MoveOn.org and an NBC and MSNBC political analyst. Jean-Pierre served as Regional Political Director for the White House Office of Political Affairs during the Obama-Biden administration and as Deputy Battleground States Director for President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. She served as Southeast Regional Political Director for President Obama’s 2008 campaign, Campaign Manager for the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Initiative, and Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Legislative and Budget Affairs for two members of the New York City Council.
She has an adopted daughter.
Two More Spouses and Senior Members of the Administration in Their Own Right
Evan Ryan, wife of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Head of the Office of Cabinet Secretary at the White House
Evan Ryan is not only the wife of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken who had the most prominent part in the complicity of the U.S. in the Israeli genocide of Gaza besides President Biden, but she was also a senior White House official as the Cabinet Secretary and head of the Office of Cabinet Affairs at the White House.
Ryan was Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs and worked in the Obama-Biden White House as Assistant to the Vice President and Special Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement from September 2013 to January 2017. After leaving the White House in January 2017, she served as the Executive Vice President at Axios, a news website founded by three former Politico journalists.
As the mother of two small children, we had hoped she would have had some influence on her husband, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and his total support for Israel as more than 17,000 Palestinian children have been killed with U.S. bombs.
Lael Brainard, Director of the White House’s National Economic Council (NEC) and wife of Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell
Lael Brainard is the wife of Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and was Director of the White House’s National Economic Council (NEC). As NEC director, Brainard additionally served as chair of the White House Competition Council. She resigned her positions as Federal Reserve governor and Vice Chair on February 18, 2023.
As an economic specialist, she knows full well the costs of the purposeful destruction of the infrastructure of Gaza by the Israeli government and the legal ramifications of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza which one would hope she conveyed to her husband, the Deputy Secretary of State.
She is the mother of three daughters.
Margaret L. Taylor, Chief, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State
As the chief lawyer for the Department of State and prior to this position, as General Counsel for the U.S. Agency for International Development, Margaret Taylor was deeply involved in providing legal cover for the Biden administration’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
She was the head of the office that wrote the legal memorandum underpinning the State Department’s refusal to conclude that Israel is using U.S. weapons in ways that violate U.S. and international law. She refused to write that Israel was committing war crimes and that Israel was starving a population whose homes, schools and medical facilities have been purposefully destroyed by the Israeli government.
In her long career in law, Taylor was a Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution and a Senior Editor at Lawfare. She served as the Democratic Chief Counsel and Deputy Staff Director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through 2018.
Prior to that, as an attorney in the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, she advised on the legal aspects of foreign assistance programs, international economic sanctions, anti-trafficking in persons efforts, and other international law enforcement matters.
She also was a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Taylor received her AB from Princeton University and JD from Columbia Law School, where she served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia Law Review. She clerked for a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
With her extensive legal knowledge, Margaret Taylor is one of the high-level officials who has created the flimsy legal justifications for the U.S. to continue to provide weapons to Israel, making the U.S. complicit in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
U.S. Ambassador Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary for Middle East Affairs, U.S. Department of State
Barbara A. Leaf was the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and traveled with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on all his trips to Israel and other Middle East countries. Her bureau in the State Department assisted in creating and implementing policies that are key to the U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
She has two daughters.
Assistant Secretary Leaf previously served as Special Assistant to President Biden and the Senior Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House’s National Security Council (NSC).
As a former Senior Foreign Service Officer, Leaf served in high-level positions at the State Department and abroad, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Arabian Peninsula and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq. Leaf directed the U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team in Basra, Iraq, and served as the department’s first director of the Office of Iranian Affairs.
Leaf has been the Ruth and Sid Lapidus Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and director of the Beth and David Geduld Program on Arab Politics.
Mira K. Resnick, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs
Mira K. Resnick was the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs. She also served concurrently as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Arabian Peninsula Affairs.
Prior to August 2024, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Regional Security in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. In this capacity she oversaw the Bureau’s Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers, which manages over $80 billion annually in government-to-government defense equipment transfers through Foreign Military Sales, Third-Party Transfers, and Excess Defense Articles.
In 2023, Resnick’s office coordinated $100 billion in foreign military sales, a 55% increase from the previous year.
In his October 2023 resignation letter, Josh Paul, who was the director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs for more than 11 years, cited the lack of discussion in the State Department that was traditionally held before providing weapons to specific units that were being used on civilians, as alarming to him. He said the Biden administration’s “blind support for one side” was leading to policy decisions that were “shortsighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values we publicly espouse.”
Resnick has many links to the U.S. Congress and those who voted for more weapons to Israel. She served as the Senior Professional Staff Member for the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. She has worked on a wide range of topics, including weapons transfers, sanctions, human rights and foreign assistance.
Annelle Sheline, who resigned from the State Department over the Israeli genocide in Gaza, said Resnick’s appointment “reflects a doubling down on the administration‘s determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel’s genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza.”
Resnick graduated from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary.
Ambassador Julieta Noyes, former Assistant Secretary for Population, Refugees, and Migration, U.S. Department of State
Julieta Valls Noyes was Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) from March 31, 2022, until October 4, 2024.
The disastrous decision by the U.S. to stop funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that has provided the infrastructure for medicine, schooling and food for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan was coordinated by Ambassador Noyes.
After more than 20 years working to ameliorate humanitarian crises, Stacy Gilbert, a senior civil-military adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, resigned in May 2024 to protest a State Department report to Congress that was severely edited by senior officials to reflect that Israel was not blocking humanitarian assistance in Gaza, contradicting what aid organizations and experts in the State Department’s refugee bureau and the United States Agency for International Development had been reporting for months.
She wrote in an article for Foreign Policy, “Since early on in this conflict, the U.S. State Department has had all the information it needs to accurately determine if Israel has been obstructing humanitarian assistance, but it has chosen to prioritize unconditional support of Israel over U.S. law.”
Previously, Noyes served as Deputy Director and Acting Director of the Foreign Service Institute from 2018 to 2021. She was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia from 2015 to 2017.
From 2013 to 2015, Ambassador Noyes served as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, where she managed relations with 12 Western European countries and the European Union.
As Deputy Executive Secretary for the Department of State from 2011 to 2013, Ambassador Noyes managed trips and oversaw the preparation of briefing materials for two Secretaries of State.
Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence
Avril Haines was sworn in as the Director of National Intelligence on January 21, 2021. She was the seventh Senate-confirmed DNI and the first woman to lead the U.S. Intelligence Community.
Since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, the United States has ramped up intelligence collection on Gaza and is sharing with Israel an extraordinary amount of drone footage, satellite imagery, communications intercepts and data analysis using advanced software—some of it powered by artificial intelligence—all of which is a part of U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. There is apparently no Leahy law to stop intelligence sharing that is used to commit genocide against a people.
Haines has no children.
During the Obama administration, she served as Principal Deputy National Security Adviser from 2015 to 2017, during which time she led the National Security Council’s Deputies Committee. From 2013 to 2015, Haines was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. She was the first woman to hold both of these positions. Gina Haspel was the first woman Director of the CIA.
From 2003 until 2006, she worked in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the Department of State, first in the Office of Treaty Affairs and then in the Office of Political Military Affairs. From 2007 until 2008, she worked for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee as Deputy Chief Counsel for the Majority Senate Democrats under then-Chairman Joe Biden.
Lisa Monaco—Deputy Attorney General of the United States
Lisa Monaco was the 39th Deputy Attorney General of the United States. She is the first woman to hold this position. As the Deputy Attorney General, she was the Department’s second-ranking official and is responsible for the overall supervision of the Department. The Deputy Attorney General serves as the Chief Operating Officer, and the Department’s litigating and policy components, law enforcement agencies, and 93 U.S. Attorneys report to the Deputy.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Washington, D.C., in July 2024, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) demanded that the U.S. Department of Justice open a criminal investigation into him and other Israeli officials for committing or authorizing genocide, war crimes, and torture targeting Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
In a 23-page letter to the Department of Justice’s Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section (HRSP) of the DOJ’s Criminal Division, CCR stated: “Given the frequent travel of Israeli officials and citizens to the United States resulting in their presence within U.S. jurisdiction, and recalling that HRSP is part of a coordinated, interagency effort to deny safe haven in the United States to human rights violators,” the letter states, “the Department of Justice must urgently investigate and hold accountable those responsible for war crimes and other serious crimes being committed on a wide-scale basis in the occupied Gaza Strip, including potentially U.S. and U.S.-dual citizens.”
The Department of Justice ignored the request.
A veteran of the Department of Justice, Deputy Attorney General Monaco served as a career federal prosecutor and in several leadership positions across the Department. She began her Justice Department career as Counsel to Attorney General Janet Reno and went on to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney (AUSA) for the District of Columbia.
She was Chief of Staff at the Federal Bureau of Investigation to then-Director Robert S. Mueller, III; Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General; and Assistant Attorney General for National Security, the first woman to hold that position.
From 2013 to 2017, Deputy Attorney General Monaco was the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Adviser to President Obama. In that role, she coordinated the Executive Branch’s policy and response to a wide range of security issues—including the response to international and domestic terrorist incidents, cyber threats, and natural disasters—and advised the President on all aspects of counterterrorism policy and strategy.
Deputy Attorney General Monaco has served in private practice and taught national security law. She was born and raised in Massachusetts and is a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School.
Monaco has no children.
Andrea Palm, Deputy Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services
Andrea Palm served as the Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of the Department.
As Deputy Secretary of HHS, her staff compiled information on international health issues, including Israeli destruction of medical facilities in Gaza and diseases caused by lack of sewage facilities and water in Gaza, as well as diseases and starvation from the purposeful Israeli actions in Gaza and advises the President and other senior members of the administration on the effects of U.S. bombs used by the Israelis.
She has no children of her own but is “an aunt to her sister’s two daughters, as well as to children on her husband’s side of the family.”
Previously, Palm held a number of policy and operational roles in the Obama-Biden administration at HHS, including Acting Assistant Secretary for Legislation, Counselor, Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to the Secretary.
During her eight-year tenure, she worked on a variety of administration priorities, including the Affordable Care Act, as well as providing leadership for the Department’s work to combat the opioid epidemic.
Other senior women in the Department of Health and Human Services who should publicly oppose the Israeli destruction of virtually all the medical facilities in Gaza and the starvation of two million Palestinians in Gaza are:
- Cheryl Campbell-Assistant Secretary for Administration
- Melanie Egorin-Assistant Secretary for Legislation
- Melanie Fontes Rainer-Director of Office for Civil Rights
- Christi A. Grimm-Inspector General and four other senior women in the Office of Inspector General
- Bertha Alisia Guerrero-Director, Intergovernmental and External Affairs
- Admiral Rachel Levine, MD-Assistant Secretary for Health and Head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps
Kathleen H. Hicks – Deputy Secretary of Defense
Kathleen H. Hicks was the first woman to serve as Deputy Secretary of Defense.
In charge of the operations of the Department of Defense, Hicks was a major part of the implementation of sending U.S. weapons to Israel that are used in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
In addition to intelligence support from DOD, the Department of Defense has provided members of the elite Joint Special Operations (JSOC) force which has experience in hostage rescues. Members of the group have been working in Israel, in partnership with U.S. intelligence officers, since shortly after the war began.
Prior to becoming deputy secretary, Hicks held the position of senior vice president, Henry A. Kissinger Chair, and Director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. From 2009 to 2013, she served as the Principal Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, she was responsible for advising the secretary of defense on global and regional defense policy and strategy.
She also served as deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy, plans, and forces, leading the development of the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review and crafting guidance for future force capabilities, overseas military posture, and contingency and theater campaign plans.
From 2006 to 2009 Deputy Secretary Hicks was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She began her career as a civil servant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, serving from 1993 to 2006 in a variety of capacities and rising from Presidential Management Intern to the Senior Executive Service.
Christine Wormuth, Secretary of the Army
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth is the first woman to be appointed as Secretary of the Army.
Under her leadership, the U.S. Army provided large amounts of munitions to Israel that have been used in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Also under her leadership, the U.S. Army was designated as the military service to construct the doomed $300 million pier for delivery of humanitarian goods and food into Gaza when the Biden administration refused to pressure the Netanyahu government strongly enough to get land access for thousands of trucks that were lined up in Egypt waiting to drive into Gaza.
Prior to confirmation, she was the Director of the International Defense and Security Center at the RAND Corporation.
Prior to RAND, she served in several roles during the Obama administration. From December 2010 until August 2012, she was a special assistant to the president and senior director for Defense at the National Security Council. Wormuth then served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Forces, and led the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review.
From 2014 to 2016 she served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, where she advised the Secretary of Defense on the full range of regional and functional national security issues.
Wormuth entered the government as a Presidential Management Intern and began her public service career in the Policy Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 1996 through 2002. After leaving government, she worked in the private sector on defense issues, and then was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for five years.
Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues
Dr. Geeta Rao Gupta is a leader on gender, women’s issues, and HIV/AIDS who served as United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues after her appointment in May 2023.
She previously served as executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women and senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation since 2017. She is frequently consulted on issues related to AIDS prevention and women’s vulnerability to HIV and is an advocate for women’s economic and social empowerment to fight disease, poverty and hunger. But Ambassador Gupta made NO statements concerning the 45,000 Palestinians killed in the Israeli genocide, nor about the purposeful starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza.
On July 19, 2024, Ambassador Gupta, Director of the White House Gender Policy Council Jennifer Klein and Principal Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer, met with Israeli and Palestinian women leaders working to advance peace and security efforts in the region.
The White House press release stated: “Participants discussed the impact of the current conflict and humanitarian crisis on women and girls and offered their perspective on the critical role of women leaders, particularly from civil society, in resolving the conflict and sustaining long-term peace. The meeting highlighted the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to end the conflict in Gaza through the ceasefire and hostage release deal, advance the rights and address the needs of women and girls, and prioritize women’s meaningful participation in peace and security processes, whose inclusion leads to more effective policies, stronger countries, and enhanced regional and global stability.”
But the Biden administration continues to provide weapons to Israel for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
Dr. Gupta is former president of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). She began working with ICRW in 1988 as a consultant, researcher and officer, and headed the private, non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., from 1997 through April 2010. She stepped down to join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as a senior fellow from 2010 to 2011. Appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, she served as deputy executive director for UNICEF and the vice chair of the board for the GAVI Alliance (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization) from 2011 to 2016.
Michele Sumilas, Acting Deputy Administrator of USAID
Michele Sumilas was Acting Deputy Administrator and Deputy Administrator for Management and Resources at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Deputy Sumilas previously served as the Assistant to the Administrator of the Bureau for Planning, Learning, and Resource Management (PLR).
She previously served as Executive Director of Bread for the World, a Christian, anti-hunger advocacy organization, which should have given her the motivation to speak out against U.S. complicity in the Israeli starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
She has two college-age adult children.
Her government experience includes serving as USAID Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff during the Obama administration, and on the House Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations. Prior to serving in government, Sumilas worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Health Council.
Isobel Coleman, Deputy Administrator of USAID for Policy and Programming
Isobel Coleman was USAID’s Deputy Administrator for Policy and Programming, responsible for USAID’s policy and programming and overseeing the Agency’s Regional and Pillar Bureaus. She has traveled all over the world for children’s education and has written and spoken extensively on the importance of women in every type of job, yet she has not spoken out against the Israeli destruction of the educational institutions in Gaza and the Israeli genocide of children of Gaza.
While working at the United Nations, she worked on the “unfair exclusion of Israel within the UN system,” and negotiated an agreement to recognize Yom Kippur as an official UN holiday.
As Deputy Administrator, she guided USAID’s crisis response, including representing USAID on the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council, and oversaw Agency efforts to promote food security, global health, democracy and economic growth, and address the root causes of conflict—everywhere, apparently, except Palestine.
Ambassador Coleman previously served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management, Reform and Special Political Affairs. She was formerly a partner with McKinsey, the Chief Operating Officer of GiveDirectly, and spent more than a decade as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Stephanie L. Hallett—Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
Stephanie L. Hallett was the acting U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the month following the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. Hallett was the senior U.S. official on the ground in Israel for meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cabinet. Her staff at the U.S. Embassy arranges all the visits of Secretary of State Blinken and other U.S. officials. U.S. military officers on her staff coordinate weapons shipments with the Israeli military.
She was the Chargé d’Affaires (acting ambassador) at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem from July 21 to November 2, 2023, when Jack Lew was sworn in as Ambassador. Hallett now is the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Israel. She is a career diplomat with a background in the Middle East and North Africa including DCM in U.S. embassies in Nicosia, Cyprus, Muscat and positions in U.S. embassies in Bahrain and Egypt. She was also Director of Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council.
Ambassador Yael Lempert—U.S. Embassy in Jordan
She has extensive experience in the Middle East including an assignment with the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. Prior to serving in Jordan, Ambassador Lempert was the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs through May 2023. She served as Acting Assistant Secretary from August 2021 through May 2022.
Ambassador Lempert served as Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in London from January through July 2021, and as Deputy Chief of Mission for the two years prior. She was Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Egypt and North Africa from June 2017 to December 2018, and the Senior Director for the Levant, Israel, and Egypt at the National Security Council from 2014 to 2017, also serving as Special Assistant to the President from 2015 to 2017.
Prior to her assignment at the NSC, Ambassador Lempert served for three years as the Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem. She worked from 2009 to 2011 at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, where she spent more than half of her tour as the Acting Deputy Chief of Mission, including during the February 2011 evacuation of the U.S. citizen community and embassy personnel.
From 2006 to 2009 she was the chief of the Internal Political Affairs Unit at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt. Other previous assignments include Director for Iraq at the National Security Council; Governance Officer at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad; Special Assistant for South Asian and Near Eastern Affairs to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Iraq desk officer; and tours in the Department of State’s Bureau of Nonproliferation and the U.S. Consulate General in Shanghai.
Evyenia Sidereas, Deputy Chief of Mission, US Embassy, Cairo, Egypt
Evyenia Sidereas served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Her staff coordinated U.S. government issues with the Government of Egypt.
She thus bears some responsibility for the inability of the U.S. government/U.S. embassy to persuade the Government of Egypt to open the Rafah gates to allow food to go into Gaza began the starvation of the population of Gaza.
Ms. Sidereas served most recently as the Chargé d’affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Doha, the State Department Director for Arabian Peninsula Affairs, Gulf Director at the National Security Council, and as Political Minister-Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin.
Dr. Dafna H. Rand, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL)
Dr. Dafna Rand has served in numerous roles across the State Department, including: Director, Office of Foreign Assistance; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL); Policy Planning Staff member.
From 2017-2021, she served as the Vice President of Policy and Research at Mercy Corps, a non-governmental organization working in 40 countries to support communities in need of medical aid and food security, both of which the Palestinians of Gaza desperately require.
Dr. Rand has three children. Having her own children should give her capacity for action for the children of Gaza who are being starved and frozen to death by the Israeli military and the complicity of the U.S. government.
She also served at the National Security Council during the Obama administration. Dr. Rand is the former Deputy Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and a former professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). She earned a PhD in political science at Columbia University and an AB at Harvard University. She knows better than to be complicity in the genocide of Gaza.
Lisa A. Carty, United States Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council
Lisa Carty is a retired U.S. diplomat who serves as United States ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in the Biden administration. She is also the wife of CIA Director Bill Burns. Carty served twenty-five years as a U.S. diplomat in Asia, the Middle East and Russia.
With her work in the United Nations and specifically with UNRWA and the Bill and Melinda Gate’s Foundation’s Global Health Program, Carty certainly understands the horrific genocide of Gaza and the U.S. participation in that genocide.
She is the mother of two daughters.
Maggie Goodlander, wife of Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan
Maggie Goodlander is the wife of Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. Goodlander is an attorney with extensive experience in the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House. Goodlander ran for the U.S. Congress in 2024 and won the position of U.S. Representative for New Hampshire’s 2nd Congressional district.
Besides being an attorney well-versed in international law, rulings of the International Court of Justice on the Israeli actions in Gaza and having the opportunity to talk each day with one of the crafters of the Biden administration’s complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, Goodlander should have great sympathy for the mothers of Gaza as she gave birth to a stillborn baby in late 2022.
After graduating from Yale College in 2009, Goodlander worked as a senior foreign policy advisor for U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain.
After graduating from Yale Law School in 2016, Goodlander served as a law clerk to Chief Judge Merrick Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2016 to 2017 and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer from 2017 to 2018.
Goodlander served as counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first impeachment of Donald Trump, where she co-authored a 55-page report describing the constitutional grounds for impeaching Trump.
In January 2021, Goodlander joined the United States Department of Justice as Counselor to the Attorney General under Garland, who had become U.S. attorney general under President Joe Biden and under whom Goodlander clerked after law school. She served as a deputy assistant attorney general overseeing the international, appellate, and policy work of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division from September 2022 to February 2024. After leaving the Justice Department, she briefly served as a White House senior advisor, where she led the Biden administration‘s Unity Agenda for the Nation.
People of Conscience Who Have Resigned from the Biden Administration over the U.S. role in Genocide of Gaza
State Department Resignees
Agency for International Development Resignees
Department of Education Resignee
Department of Interior Resignees
White House Office of Management and Budget Resignee
U.S. Military Resignees
- Major Harrison Mann, U.S. Army
- Senior Master Sergeant Mohammed Abu Hassan, U.S. Air Force
- Major Riley Livermore, U.S. Army
- Joint Statement of Resignees
Postscript—How this article came about
Almost 20 years ago, I wrote an article about U.S. women who were involved in torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and other U.S. dark prisons after 9/11 and in the U.S. wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. I presented the findings at the Women’s Research and Education Institute’s “Women in the Military Conference,” in Washington, D.C., May 19-20, 2005.
I became interested in the topic of women involved in prisoner abuses when I noticed that U.S. women at many levels were linked to the prisons or prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantnamo, Cuba, and Iraq and that there had been little accountability of U.S. men or women who had been involved in those prisons for illegal prisoner abuse and torture.
As a retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel with 13 years on active duty and 16 in the Reserves, and with 16 years working as a U.S. diplomat, in reading press articles about detentions, incarcerations and the abuse and torture of prisoners, I was struck by the number of women who had some role in the detentions—women in the U.S. military, civilian women in various U.S. government agencies and civilian women contractors. Very few of those women or men who were involved in illegal prisoner abuse and torture had been held accountable for their actions. The mere allegation that a person was a threat to national security, seemed to be the verdict that allowed U.S. government employees and contractors to subject the person to abuse, torture and in some cases death.
Women had worked in the intelligence field from making policy to conducting interrogations; managing Iraqi prison operations and guarding prisoners; serving as military and civilian lawyers and dealing with the issues of torture and abuse; medically treating abused and tortured prisoners; and autopsying bodies of detainees who died while imprisoned.
Twenty years later, three Iraqi survivors of U.S. torture won a major victory on November 12, 2024, when a jury in the federal district court for the Eastern District of Virginia awarded each of them $3 million in compensatory damages and $11 million in punitive damages to be paid by American defense contractor CACI, which was responsible for the cruel and inhumane treatment that they endured in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison more than two decades ago.
This is the first time that a U.S. defense contractor has ever been successfully sued for managing a torture program and it is the first finding in any federal court that there was a torture program during the so-called War on Terror, that people were harmed through torture, and that torture was illegal.
20 Years Later, Women in Government Are Still Participating in Criminal Acts of Complicity in Genocide
And now, 20 years after the participation of women military and contractors in the U.S. program of torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other U.S. dark prison sites, we have senior women officials in the Biden administration who are in leadership positions who have refused to criticize or resign due to U.S. provision of weapons, intelligence and legal cover for the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, making them complicit in the genocide and the resulting criminal actions.
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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.
“After graduating from Yale College in 2009, Goodlander worked as a senior foreign policy advisor for U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain.”
Well, that isn’t good, is it?
Further to my previous comment, three months later the Biden administration decided to renew funding to UNRWA and sent immediate disbursement of 5 million dollars to aid Palestinians in Gaza. I an not familiar with any of the other ladies described in this article, so I cannot comment about them.
In reference to the comments about Julieta Vales Noyes being involved with the termination of funding to UNRWA, there is more to this story then is indicated in this article as shown below:
On January 26, 2024, the Biden Administration announced that it temporarily “paused” unobligated U.S.
funding (later confirmed by the State Department to be $300,000) to the United Nations Relief and Works
Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) citing allegations that 12 UNRWA employees
were involved in the October 7, 2023, attacks led by Hamas (a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist
organization) against Israel. The Administration stated that it was “extremely troubled” by the allegations
and was reviewing the “steps the United Nations is taking to address them.” Some UNRWA donor
countries have suspended funding, while others have stated they will continue their funding.
In response to the allegations, UNRWA issued a public statement, stating that it would “immediately
terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation.” U.N. Secretary-General
António Guterres declared that he was “horrified” by the allegations and activated an immediate U.N.
Office of Internal Oversight Services investigation. He appealed to governments to guarantee the
continuity of UNRWA’s operations because it is providing “critical aid” to 2 million civilians in Gaza
amid a major crisis. Some U.N. and other international aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations
have also called on donor governments to restore their support