Annelle Sheline says ‘I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,’ claiming Biden is flouting US law over Israel

A human rights official has resigned from the US state department over Gaza saying the Biden administration is flouting US law by continuing to arm Israel, and is hushing up evidence that the US had seen on Israeli human rights abuses.

  • PugJesus@kbin.social
    272·
    8 months ago

    I honestly never expected cracks in America’s support of Israel to happen so quickly. This is an almost half-century old beast being fought.

    Or maybe I should be astounded it took this long?

    Either way. I hope the administration feels the pressure and adjusts accordingly.

    • Zagorath@aussie.zoneEnglish
      52·
      8 months ago

      So quickly? It’s late March, and this has been escalating since early October. That’s almost six months. It’s a testament to how strong US support for Israel is that it’s taken this long for such mild pushback (abstaining at the UN and publicly explaining all the reasons you couldn’t support the resolution, one rando resigning…hardly strong condemnations) to begin to show in the face of such extreme atrocities.

      Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see even this much. It’s fantastic. But we should still keep it in perspective.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
        5·
        8 months ago

        Let me put it this way - I wasn’t expecting US support to appreciably erode for another generation, minimum.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    31·
    8 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    Annelle Sheline, said she had hoped to have an influence on policy by staying at her post in the Near Eastern section of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, taking part in discussions, signing dissent cables and raising her concerns with her supervisor.

    On Monday, the state department said it had received assurances from Israel officials and “not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law”.

    The state department has said it is reviewing evidence of civilian harm under a mechanism established by the Biden administration last year, weeks before the Gaza war broke out, but Sheline said the results of those investigations would only be made public when the White House wanted them to be.

    “There are a lot of people working on this at State but at the end of the day, the public policy does have to be something that the White House signs off on,” Sheline said.

    She said she believed administration policy was being driven by domestic political considerations, but argued that domestic politics were shifting on the issue, pointing to the significant “uncommitted” protest vote in the Democratic presidential primary election, and suggested that the Biden administration had misjudged the mood.

    Sheline credited this shift for helping lead to the US abstention on a UN security council resolution on Monday, allowing it to pass after the US vetoed three earlier draft texts over the nearly six months since the war started.

    The original article contains 774 words, the summary contains 241 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

    • Sanctus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      122·
      8 months ago

      The fuck is this misjudged the mood? What fucken mood you gotta be in to accept aiding genocide. We should be a figurative shield around Palestinians right now. Instead we’re sharpening the teeth of the beast that created Hamas and is actively consuming all Palestinians. This bureauspeech is sickening. These aren’t numbers on a spread sheet. Fucking misjudged the mood fuck you.

      • juicyOPEnglish
        31·
        8 months ago

        Remember, these are the ghouls that took us into Iraq. They were just running the same program on autopilot.