from redacted.inc

Another State Department official has resigned over U.S. support of Israel. In a letter published to CNN, Annelle Sheline says that the Biden administration “is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza.” Here is an excerpt from her letter: 

Whatever credibility the United States had as an advocate for human rights has almost entirely vanished since the war began. Members of civil society have refused to respond to my efforts to contact them. Our office seeks to support journalists in the Middle East; yet when asked by NGOs if the US can help when Palestinian journalists are detained or killed in Gaza, I was disappointed that my government didn’t do more to protect them. Ninety Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been killed in the last five months, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. That is the most recorded in any single conflict since the CPJ started collecting data in 1992.

By resigning publicly, I am saddened by the knowledge that I likely foreclose a future at the State Department. I had not initially planned a public resignation. Because my time at State had been so short — I was hired on a two-year contract — I did not think I mattered enough to announce my resignation publicly. However, when I started to tell colleagues of my decision to resign, the response I heard repeatedly was, “Please speak for us.”

Sheline’s resignation is going viral. She is the third government official to publicly resign after Josh Paul, who resigned in October, and Tariq Habash who resigned in January. 

Will it matter? It doesn’t seem to.