The growing dissent over Biden’s Israel policy
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 13 February 2024
⏱️ 32 minutes
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Summary
President Biden’s defense of Israel amid the war in Gaza has roiled his administration. Today on “Post Reports,” we hear from officials who resigned over Biden’s policies. The Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb also explains Biden’s bond with Israel.
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Since the war in Gaza began, the Biden administration has been outspoken in its support of Israel. But as the Israel-Gaza war enters its fifth month and the number of dead in Gaza rises over 28,000, there have been growing calls inside both Congress and the Biden administration for the president to change course.
Congressional staffers have staged walkouts and signed letters demanding a ceasefire. Dissent cables have been leaked. And two officials – Josh Paul and Tariq Habash – have resigned publicly over the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza. Today, they join “‘Post Reports” to explain why they left.
Also, White House reporter Yasmeen Abutaleb breaks down why Biden has been so steadfast in his public support for Israel in spite of growing dissent. She unpacks Biden’s complicated relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and whether Biden may change his approach.
Today’s show was produced by Peter Bresnan and edited by Monica Campbell. It was mixed by Sean Carter. Thanks to Rennie Svirnovskiy and Arjun Singh.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm going to expose myself as a complete nerd right now, but working at the State Department |
| 0:07.3 | was an aspiration I had since childhood. |
| 0:10.2 | This is Josh Paul. |
| 0:11.8 | Until recently, he worked in the U.S. State Department. |
| 0:14.8 | His job for more than a decade was to help manage the transfer of weapons to foreign governments. |
| 0:20.6 | From one day to the next, you be working on Ukraine then Taiwan then Saudi Arabia |
| 0:25.6 | then something in Latin America I think there aren't a lot of places in government |
| 0:29.7 | where you can actually feel that you have a tangible impact. |
| 0:33.0 | But this is one of them. |
| 0:34.6 | Josh's work was always morally complex. |
| 0:38.3 | But at the State Department, |
| 0:39.7 | he says that there was open discussion about |
| 0:42.3 | when and why weapons were given to foreign powers. |
| 0:46.2 | In the arms transfer business, you can't start as doctors do from the premise of do no harm. |
| 0:50.8 | You have to start with you as little harm as possible. And sometimes it is not |
| 0:54.7 | possible to even do little harm. Sometimes there is great harm. And so the United States has |
| 0:59.5 | relationships with a lot of countries with dubious human rights records, autocratic systems of government, |
| 1:05.0 | and yet we provide security assistance, |
| 1:07.0 | we provide arms for them to defend themselves, |
| 1:10.0 | to conduct operations such as counterterrorism operations and in each of these I and several others within the department |
| 1:18.1 | would raise issues and concerns you know what is going to be the impact of these bombs how are they going to be used are they going to result in civilian harm |
| 1:28.2 | Questions like these were top of mind for Josh since October 7th when when Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 people |
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