“I Cannot Be Quietly Complicit”: Second Biden Official Resigns Over War in Gaza

A senior Education Department official and the department’s only Palestinian-American political appointee has resigned over Joe Biden’s response to the war in Gaza.

Tariq Habash, who sent his resignation letter on Wednesday, is at least the second high-ranking Biden administration official to resign in protest over the Israel-Palestine war.

“The actions of the Biden-Harris Administration have put millions of innocent lives in danger, most immediately for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living in Gaza who remain under continuous assault and ethnic cleansing by the Israeli government. Therefore, I must resign,” Habash said in his letter.

“I mourn each and every loss, Israeli and Palestinian. But I cannot represent an administration that does not value all human life equally.”

Nearly all of the 2.3 million people living in the Gaza Strip have been displaced due to Israel’s unrelenting bombardment of the region. Palestinians were forced to flee to designated “safe zones,” only for Israel to bomb those areas, as well. Almost 22,500 Palestinians have been killed, the majority women and children. Some organizations, such as the nonprofit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, put the death toll at nearly 30,000.

South Africa asked the International Court of Justice in late December for an urgent order declaring that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in its nearly three-month assault on the Gaza Strip. White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby criticized South Africa’s lawsuit on Wednesday as “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.”

“I cannot be quietly complicit as this administration fails to leverage its influence as Israel’s strongest ally to halt the abusive and ongoing collective punishment tactics that have cut off Palestinians in Gaza from food, water, electricity, fuel, and medical supplies, leading to widespread disease and starvation,” Habash said in his letter.

Over the last three months, our government has aided in the indiscriminate violence against Palestinians in Gaza—over 22,000 civilians killed, thousands more buried under rubble, and the vast majority displaced from their homes. Despite claims that Israel’s focus is on Hamas, its military actions simultaneously persist across the West Bank where there is no Hamas governing presence, with hundreds of Palestinians killed in the West Bank before October and hundreds more killed since. Additionally, thousands of Palestinians have been detained, arrested, and held without charge or trial—a violation of international humanitarian law. Meanwhile, the President has publicly questioned the integrity of Palestinian death counts frequently used by our own State Department, the United Nations, and numerous humanitarian non-governmental organizations.3 Our representatives at the United Nations have repeatedly voted against the vast majority of the international community, including vetoing resolutions calling for a ceasefire.  And administration leaders have even repeated unverified claims that systematically dehumanize Palestinians. 

Habash is now the second Biden official known to have resigned in protest over the administration’s response to the situation in Gaza. Josh Paul, who had worked at the State Department for 11 years, resigned in October, slamming the government for its “one-sided” policy that prioritized Israel at the expense of Palestinian civilians.

“I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be short-sighted, destructive, unjust and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse,” Paul said in a statement.

Also in October, a director of the United Nations High Commissioner of Human Rights resigned, condemning the organization, the U.S., and western media for their stance on the war. Craig Mokhiber, who had worked with the U.N. for more than three decades, called the situation in Gaza a “text-book case of genocide.”

“Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it,” he said.

Read Tariq Habash’s full letter here.