(USNewsMag.com) – A Jewish staffer for the Interior Department quit in protest of America’s support for Israel’s ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip, making her the first political appointee of Jewish heritage to resign.
On Wednesday, May 15th, Lily Greenberg Call resigned from her position as special assistant to the Interior Department’s chief of staff. She also accused President Joe Biden of using Jewish people to justify U.S. policy towards the war, particularly political appointees such as herself.
Before working for the campaign of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, Call was an activist and a longtime advocate for Israel, especially in Washington. She is now one of several mid- to higher-level staffers to publicly resign over Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza against Hamas by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
In her letter of resignation, Call described how excited she was when she first joined the current administration, which she believed had the same vision as she did for America. Now, she says she “can no longer in good conscience continue to represent” the Biden administration, and accused the president of turning Jews into “the face of the American war machine,” which Call said is “deeply wrong.”
Call’s about-face is just the latest blow to an administration that is already bleeding votes from its own base over the president’s support for Israel during a military campaign that has killed over 35,000 Palestinians. Those who support that campaign argue Hamas is responsible for those deaths, particularly for the Oct. 7th, 2023, attack on Israel that killed roughly 1,200, after which over 200 hostages were taken into Gaza by Hamas.
The former Interior Department staffer said a “small group of people” are making the decisions, and that she was “very vocal” at internal meetings during which many appointees expressed similar views and who feel the same way.
Call isn’t the first staffer to resign publicly in protest of the financial, diplomatic, and military support of the Israeli war on Hamas that has been ongoing for seven months, and is the second political appointee. In January, a staffer of Palestinian heritage resigned in protest from the Department of Education.
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