Blinken's State Department Lies to Congress over Palestine

One More US State Department official resigns over Blinken's lies to Congress on Israel's barbarity

One after the other, state department officials under Anthony Blinken have been resigning over overt bias and lies that favor Israel's barbarity in Palestine.

How can anyone trust the "mediator" role that the US supposedly plays between racist hyper-militarized colonial Israel and its victim Palestine?

Below is but one example among hundreds of cases where Anthony Blinken's occasional expressions of sympathy (as pretend-neutrality) for the massacred and starved Palestinian population turn out to be nothing more than hypocritical crocodile tears that aim to stem his boss's declining chances at a second term, or lies to other countries who nevertheless see through the hypocrisy of the Biden administration. 

The whole world understands what is going on in Palestine, but the US chooses to ignore the truth.

Another U.S. State Department official quit her job this week and said her resignation was triggered by an administration report to Congress that she said was initially written by experts to state the fact that Israel was denying aid to the starving Palestinian population. But then senior officials re-wrote the report to falsely claim that Israel was not blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. This prompted her to resign in protest of President Joe Biden's Israel policy.

Stacy Gilbert, who served in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, was an expert working on the report. "There is so clearly a right and wrong, and what is in that report is wrong," Gilbert said in an interview.

The United Nations and aid groups have long complained of the obstacles placed by Israel to prevent the delivery of aid in Gaza. As the Palestinian death toll there has exceeded 36,000 and a humanitarian crisis has engulfed the enclave, human rights groups and other critics have faulted the U.S. for providing weapons to Israel and defending its criminal, unlawful and unethical conduct.

The State Department submitted the 46-page unclassified report earlier this month to Congress as required under a new National Security Memorandum that Biden issued in early February. 

Like dancing on a tightrope of treachery and lies, the report said that in the period after Oct. 7 Israel “did not fully cooperate” with U.S. and other efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza. BUT said this did not amount to a breach of a U.S law that blocks the provision of arms to countries that restrict U.S. humanitarian aid.

Gilbert, who worked for the State Department for over 20 years, said she notified her office the day the State Department report was released that she would resign. Her last day was Tuesday.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel, a sycophant of India's dictator Modi, told reporters on Thursday that he would not comment on personnel issues but that the department welcomes diverse points of view. He said the administration stood by the report and continued to press the government of Israel to avoid harming civilians and urgently expand humanitarian access to Gaza.

As if to confirm his own lies, Patel said, "We are not an administration that twists the facts, and allegations that we have are unfounded".

Gilbert’s bureau was one of the four that contributed to a classified memo that informed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Israel was violating international humanitarian law.

Gilbert said the State Department removed the experts from the team working on the report when the document was still a rough draft about 10 days before it was due. It seems that the veracity of the facts and conclusions of the report exposed Israel's barbarity, which Biden and Blinken seek to hide as they do everything they can to protect a rogue criminal state like Israel.  She said the report was then "edited" (to remove anything against Israel) by more senior officials. In contrast to the published version, the last draft she saw stated that Israel was blocking humanitarian assistance, Gilbert said.

Officials who resigned prior to Gilbert include Arabic language spokesperson Hala Rharrit and Annelle Sheline of the human rights bureau.