A senior official for the U.S. State Department has resigned after a report she worked on falsely concluded that Israel has not been blocking humanitarian assistance to Gaza, going against the overwhelming view of the experts who contributed to the report.
Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year State Department veteran who served as a senior civil military adviser for the State Department’s Chief Humanitarian Office, said she was horrified when she found out the Biden administration falsified the document, which was then used to justify sending billions of dollars' worth of weapons to Israel.
Although the team had found that other factors also affected the flow of aid into Gaza, such as a lack of security caused by Hamas, it was obvious to them that Israel had a hand in limiting the medical supplies and food that made their way across the border to Gaza.
“It is absolutely the opinion of the humanitarian subject matter experts in the state department, and not just in my bureau – people who look at this from the intelligence community and from other bureaus. I would be very hard pressed to think of anyone who has said [Israeli obstruction] is not an issue,” she noted.
According to Gilbert, the subject matter experts who had worked on the report were taken off of it and informed it would be edited by those at a higher level, which meant they did not know what it would say until it was released.
She said that although she had been initially hopeful that the report would be honest since the White House showed some signs it may be toughening its stance on Israel, announcing a few days before the report’s release that it would pause sending 2,000-pound bombs to Israel that have been causing serious destruction in Gaza, she was “shocked” when she read the report when it was published on May 10 and saw the words “it is our assessment that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance.”
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According to Gilbert, this is the opposite of what the experts who compiled the report concluded – and the Biden administration was well aware that the report’s statements were false.
“That is not — that is not the view of subject matter experts at the State Department, at USAID, nor among the humanitarian community,” she said.
“And that was known. That was absolutely known to the administration for a very long time, not just within the government, but having received reports and letters from organizations on the ground in Gaza, organizations the U.S. government funds, credible organizations, saying Israel is blocking humanitarian assistance.”
A clause in the Foreign Assistance Act requires the U.S. to stop selling arms and providing security assistance to countries that are determined to have blocked the delivery of American aid. It seems clear that the Biden administration wanted the report to conclude Israel was not blocking aid so they could continue supporting their war efforts in Gaza.
Dozens of Biden administration officials have resigned over Gaza policies
Gilbert, who had been a subject matter expert for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration and worked in several war zones, left her post as a result, sending in her resignation just two hours afterward.
So far, nine Biden administration officials have publicly resigned over his policy on Gaza, while dozens more have left quietly without making an announcement. The first official to publicly resign, Josh Paul, told The Guardian that he was aware of other similar resignations that are about to take place over similar concerns.
Meanwhile, the U.S. continues sending weapons and aid to Israel as they pursue their offensive in the city of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians have been seeking refuge.
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