Annelle Sheline, 38, a foreign affairs officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor with almost one year of service under her belt, on Wednesday, resigned in protest of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, The Washington Post reported.
In October 2023, Josh Paul, who served as director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, handling arms transfers, announced his resignation because the Biden administration continued to send weapons and ammunition to Israel even though it refuses to allow Hamas Nazi agents to go on terrorizing its citizens but hammers them instead with US-made warplanes (State Department Official Resigns Saying the US Is Ignoring the Needs of Arab Nazis).
Paul praised Sheline for her brave move, telling the Post: “When the staff of that bureau feels that there is no more they can do, it speaks volumes about the Biden administration’s disregard for the laws, policies, and basic humanity of American foreign policy that the bureau exists to advance.”
Media coverage | Due to the US’s complicity in the Israeli war on Gaza, Annelle Sheline, a State Department human rights staffer in the Bureau of Democracy and Labor, has resigned.
In an interview, Sheline stated that her focus had been on promoting human rights in the Middle… pic.twitter.com/CK29dguCG0
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) March 27, 2024
So far, familiar stuff. The extreme anti-Israel staff at the State Dept. does not approve of the Jewish State’s existential war against an enemy sworn to destroy it, especially if said enemy happens to die as a result.
What baffled me was the sub-headline of the WP’s Hannah Allam and John Hudson article, which went: “The protest resignation is the latest sign of dissent brewing in some quarters of government.”
Webster’s basic definition of dissent is, “to differ in opinion.” This would suggest that in Josh Paul’s and Annelle Sheline’s work environment at the State Dept. they ran frequently against extreme, or even moderate pro-Israel voices from which they dissented.
But, of course, no such voices exist at Foggy Bottoms, home to the most Arabist contingency inside the American government since May 14, 1948, and probably earlier, too.
The dissent these two extremely anti-Israel bureaucrats encountered was that of the Biden administration insisting on supplying the Jewish State with the weapons and ammunitions it so desperately needed to conduct a lawful war against Hamas in Gaza.
Because, let’s face it, had Israel decided not to obey international law in Gaza, the war could have ended on October 8, in the late afternoon or early evening.
REMEMBER NAPALM?
Napalm is an incendiary mixture of a gelling agent and a volatile petrochemical that was used in firebombing whole cities in Nazi Germany during World War II. Napalm burns at temperatures of between 1,470 and 2,190 °F. It burns longer than gasoline, is more easily dispersed, and adheres to its targets. It also sucks up the oxygen from entire swaths of urban buildings, causing as many victims to suffocate as be incinerated. With the rage in which the people of Israel were suffused as more and more details of the Hamas atrocities were emerging, the nation would have applauded, men, women, and children, as the Air Force obliterated the entire Gaza Strip, north to south, with flames that could be observed from outer space.
It is a miracle that the Israeli leadership restrained itself and opted instead to invade Gaza with infantry and armored vehicles, sparing the lives of civilians and concentrating on killing only the Nazis. It was a costly decision: hundreds of IDF soldiers have already given up their lives so “innocent” Arabs would not perish en masse. But fighting a conventional war against the Nazis required renewed supplies of weapons and ammunition which Israeli soldiers were spending at alarming rates.
And so, the dissent that American and other media outlets have been pointing to in the Biden administration does not include even one noticeable bone fide, no ifs and buts pro-Israel voice.
Not one employee, for instance, resigned in disgust from the State Dept. after UN Envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield was ordered to support the enemies of Israel at the Security Council this week (With the UN on their Side, Hamas Rejects the US Brokered Hostage Release Deal). That’s because there are no pro-Israel employees in the State Dept.
The Jewish Museum in Prague has a permanent exhibition of children’s drawings and paintings from the Terezin-Staat concentration camp. It is called, “There Are No Butterflies Here,” which is the title of a poem written by a tiny Jewish inmate that included the lines, “I have not seen a butterfly here / There are no butterflies here, in the ghetto.”
There are no butterflies in Foggy Bottom. On November 11, 2023, The Hill reported: “Israel’s war against Hamas is deepening divisions among nonpartisan American government officials, who are raising alarm that the Biden administration’s ironclad commitment to Israel is failing to take into account key issues of concern.
“Letters and memos of dissent are circulating among State Department staff. The documents are described as being led by early- and mid-career officials staking out a position that puts them at odds with senior leaders.”
And earlier, on October 19, 2023, the Huffington Post reported that “Some department staff said they feel as if Blinken and his team are uninterested in their own experts’ advice as they focus on supporting Israel’s expanding operation in Gaza, where the Palestinian militant group Hamas is based.”
But Blinken and his team, as a betrayed Israel is discovering these days, are a whole lot more dangerous than those lower-ranking officials who merely loath Israel. The senior foreign policymakers are plotting to use the blood that’s being shed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza to lubricate the creation of a Palestinian State that would surround Israel with terrorists on every side.
By the way, I love the term, “the Palestinian militant group Hamas.” Makes you think of summer camps and singing Kumbaya by the fire on the beach.
Incidentally, if push comes to shove, it’s never too late to drop Napalm. Those American chemists (I’m looking at you, Louis Fieser) made death so cost-effective and efficient.
