Employee of US Interior Department becomes Biden’s first Jewish appointee to resign over Gaza war

On Wednesday, a staffer of the Interior Department quit their job because they are Jewish and don’t agree with the US helping Israel in the war in Gaza.

Lily Greenberg Call, who works for the Interior Department, said that President Joe Biden is using Jews as a reason for the US policy in the conflict.

Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of Biden and Vice President Harris. He was also an activist for Israel before joining the government.

She is one of at least five high-ranking staff members who have publicly resigned in protest of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war against Hamas. She is the second person appointed by the government to leave their job, after another person with Palestinian heritage quit in January.

Her letter said she was happy to join a government that she thought had the same ideas as her for the country. “But, I can’t continue to work for this administration with a clear conscience,” she wrote.

In a talk with The Associated Press, Call mentioned things that Biden said at a White House event and a Holocaust Memorial event in Washington. Biden said that if there was no Israel, no Jew would be safe and that the Hamas-led attacks were fueled by a long-standing goal to destroy the Jewish people.

“He is showing that Jews are the main people in charge of the American military. ” “That is very wrong,” she said, mentioning that her family members were killed by the government.

The attacks led by Hamas on October 7th killed around 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s army fought against Hamas in Gaza and more than 35,000 people from Palestine died.

The Biden administration has asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to aim more carefully at Hamas to protect civilians. It stopped sending bombs to Israel because it didn’t want them to be used in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

“I believe the president needs to understand that there are people in his administration who think this war is very bad,” Call said about the war and US support for it. “For everyone, including Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, and Americans, and also for his chances of winning the election. “