The Biden administration has any number of officials who disagree with its stance on the Israel-Hamas War, but not as many as there used to be.
Maryam Hassanein resigned this week from her post as Interior Department special assistant, the third known political appointee to depart over President Biden’s support for Israel.
“It has become increasingly clear that Israel’s actions are out of line with America’s policy goals and Israel’s own supposed goals,” said Ms. Hassanein in a lengthy statement.
“President Biden’s genocide-enabling foreign policy is dangerous and unwanted by the American people, most notably by a majority of Democratic voters,” she said.
A dozen executive-branch figures have resigned in protest of the White House policy since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and others, which prompted Israel to declare war, according to a tally by Reuters news agency.
Most of those are career government officials, contractors or military members. Political appointees like Ms. Hassanein are typically brought in because of their demonstrated support for the president, such as their work on the campaign.
Ms. Hassanein said she “joined the Biden-Harris administration with the belief that my voice and diverse perspective would lend a hand in the pursuit of that justice” in the Middle East.
“However, over the past nine months of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, this administration has chosen to uphold the status quo instead of listening to the diverse voices of staff urgently demanding freedom and justice for Palestinians,” she said.
It’s possible the White House was listening instead to the American people. A Harvard-Harris poll released in May shows 79% of voters back Israel in the conflict versus 21% for Hamas.
That hasn’t stopped administration dissenters from making high-profile exits.
Another Democrat Hamas supporter. Gotcha.
— kerry dougherty (@kerrydougherty) July 3, 2024
The first known political appointee to quit was Tariq Habash, a special assistant for the Department of Education’s Office of Planning. A former Biden campaign worker, he announced his resignation in a two-page Jan. 3 letter posted on X.
He said that as a Palestinian-American, “I bring a critical and underrepresented perspective to the ongoing work on equity and justice. But now, the actions of the Biden-Harris Administration have put millions of innocent lives in danger.”
Lily Greenberg Call, a political appointee who served as special assistant to the Interior Department’s chief of staff, made her departure public in a May 28 op-ed in the Guardian.
“Biden was my boss. I resigned because as a Jew I cannot endorse the Gaza catastrophe,” said the British newspaper’s headline on the article by Ms. Call.
She also had worked on Kamala Harris’s 2020 presidential primary campaign.
The departures began with Josh Paul, former director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, who announced his resignation in an Oct. 23 op-ed in the Washington Post.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations praised Ms. Hassanein, a Muslim, for resigning and called on the Biden administration to “reverse course” on the war by demanding a ceasefire.
“We welcome this principled resignation by another Biden administration official who took up their post believing they could help the nation, but instead realized they were becoming complicit in the administration’s enabling of the far-right Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza,” said Nihad Awad, CAIR national executive director.
On the other side was journalist David Collier, who covers antisemitism. He described her resignation letter on X as “Genocide, ethnic cleansing … etc. — the usual nonsense.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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