Palestinians standing next to a vehicle in Deir Al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on April 2, 2024.Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/AP
Last week, Annelle Sheline publicly resigned from the State Department in protest of the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. “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,” Sheline explained in a CNN op-ed outlining why she quit. “We are appalled by the administration’s flagrant disregard for American laws that prohibit the US from providing assistance to foreign militaries that engage in gross human rights violations or that restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.”
Sheline, who is 38, holds a PhD in political science from George Washington University and previously worked at the Quincy Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC that aims to promote responsible statecraft. At the State Department, Sheline was doing a two-year fellowship at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which is often known as DRL.
Her work focused on promoting human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. While she did not work on Israel-Palestine directly, Sheline participated in internal dissent discussions and forums. Still, the US backing of Israel’s military campaign, she told me, affected her ability to do her job. Sheline found that it was becoming almost impossible to make a difference because of the lack of credibility of the United States. “The civil society groups are not really interested in having anything to do with the US government right now,” she explained, “understandably.”
Sheline was well aware that resigning publicly could foreclose future job opportunities within the US government, but felt that the stakes were too high not to do so. She told Democracy Now! that she could not help but imagine a future conversation with her young daughter. You were at the State Department. What did you do?
“I want to be able to tell her that I didn’t stay silent,” she said, holding back tears.
Sheline and I spoke on Tuesday about why she quit and what she hopes her protest will mean.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Was there a moment when you became convinced that it was better to resign than to try to influence the direction of how the war was being handled from the inside?
I don’t think there was necessarily one clarifying moment. It became clear over time that being on the inside, I wasn’t going to be able to make a difference. I tried through the dissent channel. State had internal fora, which I participated in. I tried to do what I could on the inside.
In terms of deciding to go public, it came from observing the ways in which public pressure—including through things like the uncommitted campaign—seems to be the only thing that is getting this administration to shift even a little bit. When colleagues asked if I’d be willing to resign publicly, that is what ultimately caused me to make that decision. My hope is that by resigning publicly I can contribute to this effort to build public pressure.
I do think that many, many people are suffering quietly. Everybody has this learned helplessness. Or they’re afraid of being seen as antisemitic. But I think many, many, many Americans are horrified by what’s happening. So, I would encourage people to publicly express their opposition to the policy by putting up a “Ceasefire in Gaza” sign. Because I think that’s what it’s going to take: Other people seeing that they’re not alone.
You’ve said that a political calculation has been made within the administration to support Israel. How did you come to that conclusion?
It comes from conversations with people, whether it’s in State or not in State, of just trying to understand: Why is the US continuing to do this, even in abrogation of American laws? This administration has talked a lot about overcoming the ways that the previous administration broke the law or the previous president breaks laws or disregards international institutions, etc. The Biden administration wanted to reestablish America’s moral leadership or standing for legal leadership, yet they are not following American laws.
So to try to understand why they continue to make that calculation, what I’ve heard people say is it must be the political calculus. The assumption is it’s just too politically toxic to do anything other than be in lockstep with the government of Israel. It seems that is changing and I just hope that the administration is paying enough attention to realize that they might be making the wrong political calculus here. And if they’re making these decisions based on politics, it’s time to make some new decisions.
In looking into Joe Biden’s record on this issue, I came across a 1984 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing at which he was arguing in favor of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem decades before Donald Trump did so. Biden said at the time: “I don’t know why we just don’t simply move it to the western sector of Jerusalem and be done with it…If the Arabs can sustain and understand and swallow our policy in Lebanon, they can take about anything.” Conscious or not, how is a bias toward seeing Israeli lives as more real and more valuable impacting how the war is being conducted?
We’ve heard over and over the dehumanization coming out of official statements from the White House, from the State Department. Palestinians died rather than were killed by Israel. So much more of an emphasis on the anguish of the families of hostages, which obviously is very real and devastating anguish. But again, if the policy is to get the hostages back then let’s make that the policy and actually make that happen. But clearly that is not what the government of Israel is actually interested in doing, or at least [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has few political incentives to try to get the Israeli hostages back.
One hundred percent I would agree that both Biden himself and the administration writ large have demonstrated that they consider Israeli lives to be worth more than Palestinian lives.
You’ve talked about how decisions about the war are being made at the very top. Who do you see as shaping the direction of the war and what is the impact of having such a small group in charge?
This question comes up a lot. Who is responsible? Is it Biden? Is it [White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa] Brett McGurk? Is it [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan?
My sense is that Biden is a self-identified Zionist and I think has been very clear, like in that quote you just read, in everything he’s said. It’s not so surprising that this is the policy he’s taken given his history and statements.
In terms of McGurk and his role in pushing for Israeli-Saudi normalization and his support for the United Arab Emirates. The willingness of the Biden and the Trump administration to overlook public opinion in the Middle East to align with these authoritarian rulers and to discount what people actually would want in the region is really frustrating.
The State Department has repeatedly claimed that it has found no violations of international law by Israel. In A Problem from Hell, Samantha Power, who is now in charge of USAID, quotes a former State Department official as saying: “The intelligence community is responsive to what the bosses want to know.” How much do you think that the US not finding violations of international law is a function of trying not to find them?
[State Department spokesperson] Matt Miller is lying. They have found violations. They’re just not willing to make them public. That’s not against him personally. He’s just doing his job. He’s the mouthpiece for what the administration wants said on these issues. There are people working very hard inside State to try to hold Israel accountable, but none of that will actually go into effect unless Biden wants it to.
[Editor’s note: According to a spokesperson, the State Department has not “at this point concluded that Israel has acted in violation of international humanitarian law,” but said that “processes are ongoing” for monitoring the situation.]
How do those findings get neutered or ignored as they are moved up the chain?
Some of this stuff I can’t really talk about. The people who are trying to work on this issue don’t want too much attention. People who are trying to work on these accountability measures are afraid that if the measures are leaked before they’re actually put into place that it would mean they would never be put into place. My hope by going public and contributing to public pressure is that the administration decides it is time to implement some of these measures. That it’s just grown untenable to continue to deny reality.
It is unfortunate for me as someone who is quite concerned about the return of a Trump administration—knowing what that could mean for the future of American democracy, for the future of American society. I don’t want to live in that America. I am also just so dismayed by the ways this government is doing so many of the same things as far as the assault on the truth and on what people see with their own eyes. And disregarding US laws.
What would it look like for the administration to be honest about violations of international law and what consequences should follow from that?
The Leahy Laws, for example, that say units of foreign militaries that engage in gross violations of human rights are no longer eligible to receive US military assistance. Or that foreign governments that block American humanitarian aid render themselves ineligible to receive, again, foreign military assistance.
Israel is in violation of both of those laws, and any number of US laws related to those broader stipulations.
Heading into October 7, the Biden administration was following a Jared Kushner-style approach by attempting to build on the Abraham Accords by normalizing relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Post-October 7, it seems like the plan is to do the same thing but on an even bigger scale and with more rhetorical emphasis on Palestinians. Is it accurate to say that the strategy has changed little since October 7 and what do you make of that?
I agree it remains similar. I think it reflects the personalities involved. Again Brett McGurk. This is his big goal. In general, I think the Abraham Accords are unnecessary because these were not governments that were threatening Israel in any way. These were governments that were already quietly maintaining normalized relations with Israel they just weren’t public about it.
The extent to which the previous administration and this administration are willing to make an open-ended commitment to both Saudi Arabia and Israel is in no way supportive of US interests and would only require the US military to support both of these authoritarian governments. And I’m calling the Israeli government authoritarian given its policy of apartheid—as well as within Israeli society itself its efforts to disempower the judiciary.
Committing American service members to go to war to prop up the House of Saud or protect Bibi Netanyahu from going to jail, this is not in US interest. I think the entire Abraham Accord project is unnecessary.
To what extent do you think that some of these policies that seem nonsensical are the result of making an initial calculation that there is no room to challenge Israel because of domestic politics. And then you have to think of things to do within that box and they end up not making much sense?
I would agree with that assessment. Alternatively, what’s been reported is that Biden came in not really wanting to do much on the Middle East, hoping to shift US foreign policy so it’s not so bogged down in the Middle East—as it has been for decades now.
But you had Brett McGurk, specifically, and the National Security Council focusing on trying to get Saudi-Israeli normalization. It would have been a very big deal. It may still be a very big deal, again, because of the open-ended security commitment that that would entail.
It just seems kind of ridiculous. If your boss has told you, I don’t want to hear about your portfolio. You handle it for me. And then what they end up doing—that’s why it was called the Al-Aqsa Flood—Hamas was trying to prevent Saudi-Israeli normalization. I guess I’m sort of confused why Biden hasn’t fired McGurk already.
We’re almost six months into the war. More than 30,000 people have been killed. Widespread famine appears to be imminent, if not already present. Israel seems to be trying to start a regional war. Yet the US is blocking funding for UNRWA, the most important aid organization in Gaza, while sending billions in military aid to Israel. Is there anything that can change Biden’s mind or the White House’s direction?
It seems like political pressure is what has shifted the needle at all. Things like the abstention in the UN Security Council, even though they turned around right away and said it was non-binding. It’s ridiculous. But they did abstain.
I don’t think Biden wants to lose the election over this. I worry a little bit that there are probably some portions, especially within the Arab-American community, that the Democrats have just lost. There’s no way they would vote for Biden after all this.
My hope is that if the administration realizes this could cost them the election and they shift significantly just based on that electoral calculus, that there would be people who otherwise wouldn’t have supported him because of this policy who would reconsider and support him if there was a significant shift.
Using America’s massive leverage in the form of cutting off weapons to Israel. Not providing this military aid to Israel. Insisting that humanitarian aid get into Gaza. Insisting on a ceasefire. People keep saying things like: The US doesn’t actually have that much leverage. No, the US does have leverage. It is not being used. Israel can’t fight the war without US weapons.
Update, April 4, 2023: This story has been updated with a statement from the State Department.
