A Jewish official in the Biden administration has resigned due to President Biden’s stance on the conflict in Gaza. Lily Greenberg Call, who served as a special assistant in the Interior Department, cited her Jewish heritage as the reason for her resignation. In her letter, she expressed deep ties to both the United States and Israel but criticized Israel’s actions in the war against Hamas in Gaza, calling it a “genocide.”
Call urged President Biden to call for a ceasefire, stop sending weapons to Israel, and hold Israel accountable for its actions. She accused the President of using Jews as political pawns and endangering them by supporting Israel.
On the symbolic day of May 15, Palestinians commemorate the “Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” which marks the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians following the Arab defeat in the Israeli war of independence. Call rejected the idea that one group’s salvation must come at the expense of another’s destruction, and expressed her commitment to creating a world where this does not happen outside of the Biden administration.
While Call’s position is in the minority among American Jews, with the majority supporting Israel’s war effort in Gaza, she stood firm in her beliefs. Another recent resignation in protest of U.S. support for Israel came from an Army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Major Harrison Mann, who cited his opposition to the killing and starvation of innocent Palestinians in Gaza as the reason for his resignation.