Three former U.S. State Department officials told CBS News that they disagree sharply with the Biden administration’s policy toward Gaza, according to an episode of “60 Minutes” that aired on Jan 12.
Josh Paul, a former director of the department’s political and military affairs bureau, and Hala Rharrit, a former Arabic spokeswoman for the department in Dubai, told “60 Minutes” that they quit their jobs over U.S. policy toward Israel, while Andrew Miller said that he resigned as deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs for personal reasons.
Since leaving the department, Miller has become a vocal critic of U.S. Israel policy, and he and the other two guests accused Washington of being complicit in violations of international law.
Miller told “60 Minutes” that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received the message from Washington “that he was the one in the driver’s seat and he was controlling this, and U.S. support was going to be there, and he could take it for granted.”
Asked during the “60 Minutes” program when the war will end, Miller replied: “When Israel says it’s over.”
“There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S. because every single bomb that is dropped is dropped from an American-made plane,” Paul said in the interview.
“What is happening in Gaza would not be able to happen without U.S. arms,” Rharrit said. “That’s without a doubt.” She added that there is “palpable” anger throughout the Arab world.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) wrote that “60 Minutes,” which “recently hid Kamala’s transcript and doctored her interview to help her, runs a disgraceful hit job against Israel.”
“‘60 Minutes’ forgot that Hamas started the war, Hamas still holds American hostages and any damage in Gaza is the sole fault of Hamas,” he added.
The American Jewish Committee stated that it is “deeply disturbed” about the “60 Minutes” episode.
The segment is “the latest example of major news outlets recklessly reporting on Israel’s defensive war against Hamas, was shockingly one-sided, lacked factual accuracy and relied heavily on misguided information.”
“Perhaps most egregiously, the segment made almost no mention of Hamas’s actions that started this war, placing Palestinian civilians in Gaza in harm’s way for years by embedding weapons and other terrorist infrastructure in civilian areas,” the AJC stated.
“The segment only briefly referred to Hamas’s massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, described their fighters as ‘militants’ rather than terrorists, and even went so far as to elevate the outlandish notion that, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, Israel should have sought to make peace with Hamas terrorists rather than act in self-defense,” it added.
In response to a “60 Minutes” post on social media stating “U.S. support for the war in Gaza has put a target on America’s back, says Hala Rharrit, a former State Department official,” the conservative columnist Karol Markowicz wrote that “if we just do what the Islamists say, they wouldn’t have to hurt anyone.”
“So we should support the people who kidnap Americans and chant ‘death to America’?” wrote Philip Klein, editor of National Review Online. “If you ever needed more evidence that the State Department needs to be gutted by Marco Rubio.”