The Israel-Hamas war has exposed the dark underbelly of antisemitism in America and around the world. That includes members of the U.S. State Department.

A career official at the State Department who was involved in debates over Israel's conduct in Gaza resigned this week. Stacy Gilbert, served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. She cites disagreement with a report as her reason for resigning.

The resignation of this senior official is unusual because it points to the internal dissent over a report the Biden administration relied on to justify continuing to send aid to Israel in the form of billions of dollars of weapons.  

The State Department claims it welcomes diverse opinions. 

Earlier this month, the State Department used a 46-page unclassified report ordered by Biden this year as a response to Democrats voicing alarm that Israel was obstructing aid to Gaza. 

The administration concluded that there was not sufficient information to draw a firm conclusion but it was "reasonable to assess" that Israel violated international law using weapons from the United States in its military campaign in Gaza. So, American military aid continued to go to Israel.

The report stated that Israel's assurances that it is not violating U.S. or international law were credible. The State Department official seems to side with the United Nations and international aid groups who work against the United States.

The report also said that Israeli “action or inaction … contributed significantly” to the insufficient flow of food and other critical aid to Palestinian civilians. While it cited improvements in recent weeks, the assessment predated the shutdown of aid flows into southern Gaza this week as Israel began an offensive in and around the city of Rafah.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose proposed legislation propelled Biden to order the report, accused the administration Friday of failing “to do the hard work of making an assessment and duck[ing] the ultimate questions” that it was expected to answer. Van Hollen — who said he was dismayed by the relatively small number of incidents considered in the report and who described the administration’s evaluation of whether U.S. weapons have been involved in violations of international law as “woefully inadequate” — also noted the report’s many contradictions.

Has Van Hollen always been antisemitic? Since the war began in October 2023, he tends to side with the Hamas caucus in the progressive wing of the Democrat Party. Gilbert sounds like a fellow traveler.

“On the day when the White House announced that the latest atrocity in Rafah did not cross its red line, this resignation demonstrates that the Biden Administration will do anything to avoid the truth,” Josh Paul, the first State Department official to resign over Gaza policy, wrote on LinkedIn after this article was published online.

“This is not just a story of bureaucratic complicity or ineptitude — there are people signing off on arms transfers, people drafting arms transfer approval memos, people turning a blind eye,” Paul wrote. People “who could be speaking up, people who have an awesome responsibility to do good, and a lifelong commitment to human rights — whose choice is to let the bureaucracy function as though it were business as usual.”

Good riddance. Doing good does not include denying Israel, our longtime ally, the aid it needs as it fights for its survival against an internationally recognized terror group. Hamas vows to continue to murder Jews and attack Israel until the nation no longer exists. 

The State Department may welcome all points of view but the final policy decision rests with the president. Employees who find themselves unable to work within their job descriptions should leave and find employment elsewhere. Maybe Gilbert can find a position at the U.N.