Biden policy on Israel-Gaza sparks warnings, dissent, resignations

In May, the State Department published a report saying it is “reasonable to assess” that Israel may have used American weapons in violation of international law. But it also said it could not definitively connect American weapons to specific cases.

“It is difficult to acquire that information in an active combat zone,” Miller said. “But I would also say we didn’t exactly work very hard to try to acquire the information.”

U.S. law prohibits military assistance from being sent to countries that restrict the delivery of American aid, like food and medicine. Experts who track aid, including from multiple international organizations and the State Department itself, have found that Israel has continually blocked aid to the people of Gaza.

Brett McGurk, White House coordinator for the Middle East and one of President Biden’s closest advisers, declined a 60 Minutes request for an interview. But a senior White House official told 60 Minutes that government lawyers have not determined that Israel has violated the laws of armed conflict, and therefore American weapons have continued to flow.

The official said Hamas could end the war by returning the estimated 95 hostages still in Gaza. Miller sees the war ending when Israel says it’s over.

“Absent intervention from the United States or for someone else to compel or to force a decision, it ends when Netanyahu says it’s over,” he said.

Devastation in Gaza

America’s stamp is everywhere across the decimated Gaza. Hala Rharrit, a U.S. diplomat who resigned in protest, said she believes what’s happened in the 25-mile strip of land would be impossible without U.S. arms.

Rharrit spent nearly two decades posted in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, where she worked on human rights and counterterrorism. She was stationed in Dubai as deputy director of regional media when war broke out. Part of her job at the time was to monitor Arab press and social media to document how America’s role in the war was perceived in the Middle East. Rharrit sent daily reports to senior leadership in Washington containing gruesome images and warnings.

“I would show the complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of mostly children,” Rharrit said. “And that’s the devastation.”

Rharrit said in some cases, she was shut down when she tried speaking up.

“I would show images of children that were starved to death,” she said. “In one incident, I was basically berated, ‘Don’t put that image in there. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to see that the children are starving to death.'”

But others told her to keep the images in, stressing that they needed to be seen.

U.S. support of Israel impacts America abroad

In the White House, the belief is that cutting off weapons to Israel would lead to an even longer, deadlier conflict, and that it is America’s military support and diplomacy that has prevented a wider war in the Middle East.

But FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress in November 2023 that the war in Gaza has raised the threat of a terror attack at home.

The acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Brett Holmgren, told 60 Minutes that anti-American sentiment driven by the war in Gaza is at a level not seen since the Iraq War. Groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS are recruiting on that sentiment, issuing the most specific calls for attacks on America in years, Holmgren said.

The anger throughout and beyond the Arab world is palpable, Rharrit said. She documented protests and the burning of U.S. flags.

“[This is] very significant because we worked so hard after the war on terror to strengthen ties with the Arab world,” she said.

Rharrit believes U.S. support of Israel has put a target on America’s back.

“And I say it as someone that myself has survived two terrorist attacks,” Rharrit said. “I say it as someone who has worked intensely on these issues and has intensely monitored the region for two decades.”

Three months into the war, Rharrit says she was told her reports were no longer needed. She resigned last April. She said one of her breaking points was the death of a little girl named Sana al-Farra, whose picture she included in one of her reports – one of thousands of children killed so far in Gaza.

“She has her princess dress, and she’s in the picture waving her wand with a huge, beautiful smile,” Rharrit said. “I saw my child in that child.”