Annelle Sheline, 38, of the US State Department, which deals with human rights issues in the Middle East, resigned on Wednesday to protest Washington’s support for Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, according to The New Arab.
Sheline told The Washington Post that her work focused on defending human rights in the Middle East and North Africa.
“For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office. However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible.”
She explained her attempts to express concern through dissent cables and at staff meetings, but ultimately decided it was futile “as long as the US persists in supplying Israel with an uninterrupted flow of arms.”
Sheline’s assertion that the State Department possesses sufficient evidence that Israel is violating international law in the Gaza Strip is particularly troubling to the Biden administration.
My colleagues and I watched in horror as this administration delivered thousands of precision-guided munitions, bombs, small arms and other lethal aid to Israel.
Her resignation marked the most high-profile withdrawal from the State Department since Josh Paul, the former director in charge of arms transfers to the US, had stepped down shortly after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
A Gallup poll released on Wednesday has revealed that 55 per cent of Americans oppose war with Israel now, a 10 per cent rise from the last survey conducted by pollsters in November.
