Over 800 Officials in US, Europe Sign Letter Protesting War on Gaza

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (AFP)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (AFP)
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Over 800 Officials in US, Europe Sign Letter Protesting War on Gaza

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (AFP)
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. (AFP)

More than 800 officials in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union released a public letter of dissent on Friday against their government’s support of Israel in its war in Gaza.

This came as number of Palestinian-Americans refused to attend a roundtable meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday in protest against the Biden administration's ongoing support for Israel's offensive in the strip.

The signers say they have raised concerns through internal channels but have been ignored.

“Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally,” the letter says. It adds that “there is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

The Israeli military launched a bombing and ground campaign in Gaza after the Hamas Oct. 7 attack.

The document does not include the names of signers because they fear reprisal, said one organizer, an official who has worked in the State Department for more than two decades.

About 80 of the signers are from American agencies, with the biggest group being from the State Department, one organizer said. The governing authority most represented among the signers is the collective European Union institutions, followed by the Netherlands and the United States.

National-level officials from eight other member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, have approved the letter, said another person familiar with the letter. Most of those supporters work in the foreign ministries of those nations.

Support for atrocities

“The political decision-making of Western governments and institutions” over the war “has created unprecedented tensions with the expertise and duty that apolitical civil servants bring to bear,” said Josh Paul, who worked in the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers but who resigned in October over the Biden administration’s support of Israel’s military campaign. Mr. Paul said he knew the organizers of the letter.

“One-sided support for Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, and a blindness to Palestinian humanity, is both a moral failure and, for the harm it does to Western interests around the globe, a policy failure,” he said.

US officials released a few similar letters and dissenting messages last fall. In November, more than 500 employees of about 40 US government agencies sent a letter to President Biden criticizing his policies on the war.

More than 1,000 employees of the United States Agency for International Development released an open letter along the same lines. And dozens of State Department officials have sent at least three internal dissent cables to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.

European objections

In the European Union, which maintains a joint diplomatic corps known as the European External Action Service, as well as agencies dealing with humanitarian aid and development, hundreds of officials have signed at least two separate letters of dissent to the bloc’s leadership.

Only a handful of E.U. nations — prominently Ireland, Spain, and Belgium — have consistently called on their partners and the union to push for a cease-fire and focus on Gazans’ suffering.

Berber van der Woude, a former Dutch diplomat, said she wanted to speak out on behalf of the active civil servants who had signed the letter anonymously because they feared retribution for dissenting.

“Being a civil servant doesn’t absolve you from your responsibility to keep on thinking,” she said. “When the system produces perverse decisions or actions, we have a responsibility to stop it. It’s not as simple as ‘shut up and do what you’re told’; we’re also paid to think.”

A letter to Blinken

Several members of the Palestinian-American community refused to meet with Blinken in Washington on Thursday to discuss the situation in Gaza.

“We do not know what more Secretary Blinken or President Biden need to hear or see to compel them to end their complicity in this genocide,” several of those who rejected the invitation said in a press statement distributed by the non-profit Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU). “They show us every day whose lives they value and whose lives they consider disposable. We will not be attending this discussion which can only amount to a box-ticking exercise. Our families, our community and all Palestinians deserve better.”

“There is one thing that we, our community and countless others around the US and the world, including American unions representing nearly 8 million workers and at least 47 US cities, have been asking of this administration: to demand a permanent ceasefire to save Palestinians lives,” they wrote. “A meeting of this nature at this moment in time is insulting and performative.”

One of the invitees to the roundtable, Dr. Tariq Haddad, said in a letter to Blinken that he initially intended to go to the meeting.

However, “after a lot of soul-searching I have decided that I cannot in good conscience meet with you today knowing this administration’s policies have been responsible for the death of over 80 of my family members including dozens of children,” Haddad wrote in the letter.

“How does one meet for what I was told would be 3 minutes, with a person you hold responsible for not just the killing of your child, but rather the murder of over 80 of your family members?” he asked in his letter.

“My family are subsisting on animal feed, Secretary Blinken, because of your policies,” he said.



Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 17 in Gaza as Ground Troops Enter Palestinian Territory’s North

A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows a smoke plume rising above destroyed buildings in the southern part of the Palestinian territory  on April 3, 2025. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows a smoke plume rising above destroyed buildings in the southern part of the Palestinian territory on April 3, 2025. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
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Israeli Strikes Kill at Least 17 in Gaza as Ground Troops Enter Palestinian Territory’s North

A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows a smoke plume rising above destroyed buildings in the southern part of the Palestinian territory  on April 3, 2025. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)
A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip shows a smoke plume rising above destroyed buildings in the southern part of the Palestinian territory on April 3, 2025. (Photo by Menahem KAHANA / AFP)

Israeli strikes killed more than a dozen people in the Gaza Strip early Friday, as Israel sent more ground troops into the Palestinian territory to ramp up its offensive against Hamas.

At least 17 people, some from the same family, were killed after an airstrike hit the southern city of Khan Younis, according to hospital staff. Hours later, people were still searching through the rubble, looking for survivors.

The attack came a day after Israeli strikes killed at least 100 Palestinians. Hundreds more have died in the past two weeks, as Israel has intensified operations, intended to pressure Hamas to release remaining hostages it took during its attack on Israel in October 2023. On Friday, Israel said it had begun ground activity in northern Gaza, in order to expand its security zone.

Israel’s military had issued sweeping evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza before expected ground operations. The UN humanitarian office said around 280,000 Palestinians have been displaced since Israel ended the ceasefire with Hamas last month.

In recent days, Israel has vowed to seize large parts of the Palestinian territory and establish a new security corridor across it.

To pressure Hamas, Israel has imposed a monthlong blockade on food, fuel and humanitarian aid that has left civilians facing acute shortages as supplies dwindle — a tactic that rights groups say is a war crime. Israel said earlier this week that enough food had entered Gaza during a six-week truce to sustain the territory’s roughly 2 million Palestinians for a long time.

Hamas says it will only release the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a lasting ceasefire and an Israeli pullout from Gaza. The group has rejected demands that it lay down its arms or leave the territory.

The predawn strike on Friday hit a three-story building. In addition to the dead, the attack wounded at least 16 people from the same family. Associated Press reporters saw bodies being carried out in blankets, while others searched for people trapped under the rubble and collected charred remains.

“We don’t know how to collect them and how to bury them. We don’t know whose remains these are. They were burned and dismembered,” said Ismail Al-Aqqad, whose brother died in the strike, as well as his brother’s family.

On Thursday, more than 30 bodies, including women and children, were taken to hospitals in and around Khan Younis, according to hospital staff.

Israel said Friday that it had killed a top Hamas commander in a strike in Lebanon’s coastal city of Sidon. Israel said that Hassan Farhat was a commander of Hamas’ western area in Lebanon and that he was responsible for numerous attacks against Israel, including one in February 2024, which killed an Israeli soldier and injured others.

In Israel’s renewed offensive, troops have expanded the buffer zone, retaking the eastern section of the Netzarim corridor and partially disconnecting northern and southern Gaza.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, known as ACLED, reported there were over 300 airstrike events during 10 days at the end of March — nearly 10 times the number in February.

The war began when Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, most of whom have since been released in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Israel rescued eight living hostages and has recovered dozens of bodies.

More than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as part of Israel's offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t say whether those killed are civilians or combatants. The ministry says more than half of those killed were women and children. Israel says it has killed around 20,000 fighters, without providing evidence.

The war has left most of Gaza in ruins, and at its height displaced around 90% of the population.