In 60 Minutes Interview, Ex-State Dept. Officials Spotlight US Complicity in Gaza Assault

In a Sunday interview with 60 Minutes, former State Department officials spoke with journalist Cecilia Vega and offered a window into how the United States has greased the wheels of carnage in Gaza.

Hala Rharrit, an American diplomat who spent 18 years working on human rights and counterterrorism in the Middle East and elsewhere, left her post last spring—becoming the first State Department diplomat to publicly resign over the Biden administration's policies backing Israel's siege on Gaza, according to Democracy Now!.

Rharrit would send daily reports to senior leadership in Washington containing "gruesome images and her warnings," according to 60 Minutes. "I would show the complicity that was indisputable. Fragments of U.S. bombs next to massacres of... mostly children," Rharrit recounted.

Here's what else Rharrit had to say:

Cecilia Vega: When you tried to speak out, vocalize what you saw.... like you were told to shut up?

Hala Rharrit: Yes. I would show images of children that were starved to death. In one incident, I was basically berated, "Don't put that image in there. We don't wanna see it. We don't wanna see that the children are starving to death."

Cecilia Vega: Who told you that?

Hala Rharrit: A colleague.

The United States has offered largely unchecked support for Israel since Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, prompting Israel to launch attacks on the Gaza Strip. The U.S. has provided Israel with at least $17.9 billion in military aid to its ally in the Middle East, and in early January the State Department informed Congress of a planned $8 billion arms sale. Local health officials in Gaza say the death toll in the enclave stands at over 46,000. However, a recently published peer-reviewed analysis estimates that Israel's assault on Gaza had actually killed 64,260 people between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2024—a figure significantly higher than the one reported by the enclave's health ministry.

Meanwhile, multiple human rights organizations have said that Israel's conduct in Gaza constitutes genocide or acts of genocide.

60 Minutes tallies that 13 officials in the White House, Army, and State Department have publicly resigned in protest.

"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," Josh Paul, a former director in the State Department's Bureau of Political - Military Affairs who resigned shortly after October 7, told 60 Minutes.

"After October 7th, there was no space for debate or discussion. I was part of email chains where there were very clear directions saying, 'Here are the latest requests from Israel. These need to be approved by 3:00 pm,'" said Paul, who was involved in signing off on U.S. security assistance to other countries.

Andrew Miller, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli-Palestinian affairs, resigned last June to spend more time with his family, but has since gone public with concerns about U.S.'s role in the war—the highest ranking official to do so thus far, according to 60 Minutes.

In reference to 2,000-pound bombs that the U.S. has supplied to Israel, Miller said that "the Israelis were using those bombs in some instances to target one or two individuals in densely packed areas. And in enough instances, we saw that was in question, how Israel was using it. And those weapons were suspended."

The U.S. suspended a shipment of 2,000 pound bombs to Israel in spring 2024, though in general weapons have continued to flow.

Reacting to Miller’s comments that Israel bombed densely packed areas, one observer wrote Sunday: “60 Minutes is finally exposing the supply chain of genocide.”