Biden Officials Who Quit Over Gaza Call Out Enablers Who've Changed Their Tone

Sanjana Karanth
Fri, October 3, 2025 

HUFFPOST

With the growing wave of world leaders and diplomats publicly supporting Palestinian rights, Biden appointees who resigned from the administration over its Gaza policy want to ensure that those who they say used their power in office to enable Israel’s destruction of the enclave don’t get a cushy landing without accountability.

In a joint statement first obtained by HuffPost, the 10 former U.S. officials said that the Biden administration’s initial “acquiescence to Israel’s political and military objectives over international and U.S. law” essentially gave Israeli forces the green light to deny both Palestinians and the hostages enough food, shelter, medicine and safety in Gaza without consequences.

“While the Trump administration is equally responsible for ignoring these laws, if the Biden administration had adhered to U.S. law and stopped weapons transfers to Israel when these violations began, they could have changed the tempo and trajectory of what has now been declared a genocide and makes the return of the hostages only more remote,” said the statement, signed by resignees Lily Greenberg Call, Stacy Gilbert, Maj. Riley Livermore, Tariq Habash, Mike Casey, Maj. Harrison Mann, Lt. Cmdr. Hani Nofal, Alexander Smith, Annelle Sheline and Josh Paul.

A pro-Palestinian protester carries a banner that says ''war criminal'' while chanting slogans during Secretary of State Antony Blinken's speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington D.C., on May 21, 2024. "Blinken, you will be remembered as the butcher of Gaza," one protester yelled as Capitol police removed him. Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty ImagesMore

The Biden administration had and continues to face scrutiny over its unconditional military and diplomatic support for Israel, choosing to send billions in bombs that Israeli forces would use on Palestinians — in violation of international humanitarian law — while claiming such attacks were simply in self-defense. Reporters would be told that the U.S. trusts Israel to investigate itself when there were reports of killing an American, with rare public follow-ups.

“Really what it came down to, for me in the end, was when we were just actively going to go with whatever the Israelis wanted to do in terms of the future of Gaza,” said Casey, a former State Department officer who quit in protest after spending four years in Jerusalem documenting Gaza.

Casey told HuffPost that he and his colleagues would present thorough reports and propose strategies for a post-ceasefire Gaza, only for the National Security Council and the State Department to ignore them for Israel’s suggestions. It was also a point of frustration, he continued, that U.S. officials would publicly claim the administration supports a two-state solution while doing very little to make tangible changes toward that goal.

Some former senior officials who led the charge in Biden’s approach to Israel and Gaza have recently either softened or changed their tone on the offensive, joining the global wave of criticism toward Israel. Most of the shifts — either through opinion pieces, podcasts or on panels — range from acknowledging they tried their best to admitting they should have done more.

“They had all the information available to them and all the recommendations, and they chose this path that was just taking the Israeli narrative over anything else, continuing to provide weapons, accepting reports that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid, which was not true,” Casey said. “Just pushing things forward against all recommendations and advice. They weren’t just silent and complicit, they actively made it happen.”

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, nicknamed “The Butcher of Gaza” by pro-Palestinian protesters, is now calling for the enforcement of international laws and norms. Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew and former Middle East envoy David Satterfield wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs last month about stopping the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told The Bulwark podcast that he supports withholding weapons for use in Gaza. However, he still stood by his original decision not to withhold armaments while under the Biden administration, as he believed Israel was still facing threats. His deputy, Jon Finer, called for conditioning aid to Israel in Politico last week. And former State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller now says he believes Israel has committed war crimes.

Most of those officials now hold positions at universities and policy think tanks — some are even professors or fellows. The resignees implied that the officials are changing their tone in order to remain in Democratic circles, where support for Israel has plummeted.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller speaks to reporters during the daily press briefing in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 7, 2024. Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images

“We cannot let U.S. officials who downplayed, dismissed or denied Israeli war crimes, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, to ever return to power,” the statement said, while also calling out Biden officials who remain silent on Gaza.

Blinken, Lew, Satterfield and Miller did not respond to requests for comment. Finer and Sullivan declined to comment.

“The timing of this letter is telling. While the whole world is focused like a laser on whether the recent flurry of diplomatic activity will bring an end to the war in Gaza, these people are focused like a laser on scoring points against fellow Democrats,” a former NSC staffer who worked with some of the officials told HuffPost. “It shows where their priorities are.”