May 15 (UPI) — A Jewish official in the U.S. Interior Department has become the first staffer appointed by President Joe Biden to resign over the administration’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.
Lily Greenberg Call, who is the special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, accused Biden on Wednesday of using Jews as political pawns and cited her Jewish heritage as the reason for her resignation.
“Any system that requires the subjugation of one group over another is not only unjust, but unsafe. Jewish safety cannot — and will not — come at the expense of Palestinian freedom. Making Jews the face of the American war machine makes us less safe,” Call wrote in her resignation letter, which was shared by the activist group IfNotNow.
“I reject the premise that one people’s salvation must come at another’s destruction,” Call said. “I am committed to creating a world where this does not happen — and this can’t be done from within the Biden administration.”
Call, who labeled the war against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide,” is in the minority among American Jews who tend to be strong supporters of Israel.
According to the Pew Research Center, 89% of American Jews see Israel’s reasons for going to war against Hamas as valid regardless of how they feel about the way it is being waged.
“The president has the power to call for a lasting cease-fire, to stop sending weapons to Israel and to condition aid,” Call added. “The United States has used nearly no leverage throughout the last eight months to hold Israel accountable; quite the opposite, we have enabled and legitimized Israel’s actions with vetoes of U.N. resolutions designed to hold Israel accountable. President Biden has the blood of innocent people on his hands.”
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks that killed approximately 1,200 people in Israel.
While Call is the first Biden appointee to resign over Israel’s war in Gaza, she is the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to quit in protest.