US govt staffers prepare mass walkout to protest Biden's Gaza policies
To mark the 100th day of Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza, hundreds of staffers across top government agencies plan to walk out of the job and demand Biden call for a ceasefire
Federal employees across 22 US government agencies will hold a “Day of Mourning” on 16 January and are planning to walk off the job in protest of the White House's unconditional support for Israel's mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, according to organizers who spoke with the DC-based news outlet Al-Monitor.
Calling themselves the “Feds United for Peace,” the leaders of the dissent effort say the expect “easily hundreds” to join the walkout after having secured commitments from staff at nearly two dozen agencies, including the Executive Office of the President, the National Security Agency, the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Naval Research Laboratory.
“Others expected to join in the protest work for agencies including the Food and Drug Administration, the National Park Service, the Federal Aviation Administration and Environmental Protection Agency,” Al-Monitor reports.
“What you're seeing with this effort is something very unusual, and that is for dissent to be manifested via a physical act,” the organizers said, adding that the protest action “grew out of a collective desire to do what we could to influence the Biden administration’s policy on this issue.”
Anger has been brewing among US government staffers for the past three months over the White House's refusal to demand an end to Israel's genocidal practices in Gaza and to secure the unrestricted entry of humanitarian aid to alleviate the suffering of nearly two million displaced Palestinians.
The internal discontent first burst into public view when Josh Paul, a former State Department official, resigned in October in protest over what he called Biden's "blind support" for Israel.
“This is shameful, craven, and should frankly turn the stomach of any decent human being,” Paul told the Washington Post in December about the ongoing transfer of US weapons to Israel.
Tariq Habash, the former special assistant in the Education Department's Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, also tended his resignation last month over Biden's mishandling of the Gaza crisis.
"I cannot stay silent as this administration turns a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives, in what leading human rights experts have called a genocidal campaign by the Israeli government," Habash said in his letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona.
In November, more than 1,000 officials in the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – the soft-power arm of the CIA – signed an open letter urging the White House to call for an immediate ceasefire.
Anger inside the State Department has also been growing, with at least three cables criticizing the government's policy on Gaza being filed via the internal “dissent channel.”