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annelle sheline
Biden Taps 'Literal Arms Dealer' Mira Resnick for Top Israel Policy Post
"Genocide Joe's swan song is to institutionally entrench our support for Israel and make it as difficult as possible to disentangle it," lamented one observer.
Aug 23, 2024
Peace advocates on Friday voiced alarm over the Biden administration's selection of a senior official who has worked to speed the shipment of U.S. arms to Israel as the State Department's point person on Israel-Palestine policy.
HuffPostreported that Mira Resnick, the deputy assistant secretary of state for regional security in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, has been tapped to oversee Washington's handling of issues related to Israel and Palestine. In her current role, Resnick's office supervises around $40 billion in annual U.S. arms transfers.
Using a critical nickname for U.S. President Joe Biden, journalist and podcast host Emma Vigelandsaid on social media Friday, "Genocide Joe's swan song is to institutionally entrench our support for Israel and make it as difficult as possible to disentangle it, which the old fool views as romantic and righteous."
Over the past 10-plus months, the Biden administration has approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel worth billions of dollars. Earlier this month, the administration greenlighted a new $20 billion arms package for Israel.
The announcement of the package—which includes dozens of F-15 fighter jets, tens of thousands of 120mm mortar shells, over 32,700 tank shells, and 30 advanced missiles—came just days after Israeli forces used at least one U.S. bomb in an airstrike on a Gaza school where forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing more than 100 people including women and children.
As criticism mounted over Israel's assault and siege on Gaza—which has left more than 144,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing and has flattened most of the coastal enclave while stoking deadly famine and the spread of preventable diseases including polio—Resnick helped expedite the flow of U.S. arms to the key Middle Eastern ally.
She also worked with the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan wants to arrest for alleged war crimes including "extermination," to allow private citizens to donate equipment to the Israel Defense Forces.
Annelle Sheline, a former State Department official who resigned earlier this year over Biden's support for Israel amid a war for which the key ally is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, told HuffPost that Resnick's appointment "reflects a doubling down on the administration's determination to continue to provide unconditional material support for Israel's genocidal campaign against civilians in Gaza."
American University of Beirut history professor Zeead Yaghi decried the Biden administration's appointment of "a literal arms dealer."
Last month, the Biden administration ended a two-month pause on the shipment of 500-pound bombs to Israel despite the frequent use of U.S.-supplied weapons by Israeli forces to commit alleged war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Biden has suspended transfers of 500- and 2,000-pound bombs manufactured by aerospace giant Boeing over fears the devastating munitions would be used in airstrikes on Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than a million Palestinians had sought refuge.
Israel has dropped at least hundreds of 2,000-pound bombs—which the U.S. military avoids using in civilian areas because they can destroy entire city blocks—on Gaza, including in an October 31 attack on the densely populated Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 120 civilians.
The U.S. is by far Israel's biggest arms supplier, providing around 70% of Israeli arms imports,
according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
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Another State Department Official Resigns Over Biden Gaza Policy
"I wasn't able to really do my job anymore," said Annelle Sheline. "Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."
Mar 27, 2024
Saying her job at a State Department office that advocates for human rights in the Middle East has become "impossible" as the Biden administration continues to back Israel's assault on civilians in Gaza, foreign affairs officer Annelle Sheline resigned from her position on Wednesday in protest of President Joe Biden's policy in the region.
Sheline noted in an interview with The Washington Post that quitting her job in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor was not something she took lightly, with "a daughter and a mortgage"—but said her day-to-day work on human rights had become ineffectual "as long as the U.S. continues to send a steady stream of weapons to Israel."
Despite the fact that U.S. law prohibits the government from arming countries that violate human rights—as Israel has long been accused by the United Nations of doing in its policy toward the occupied Palestinian territories—the Biden administration has approved the transfer of bombs and other weapons to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) since the military began its relentless bombardment of Gaza and blockade on nearly all humanitarian aid.
Sheline told the Post that as the news out of Gaza has grown more dire since October—with at least 32,490 Palestinians killed, at least 74,889 wounded, and parts of northern Gaza now facing famine conditions due to Israel's blocking of aid—some of her bureau's partners in the Middle East have stopped engaging with the State Department.
"If they are willing to engage, they mostly want to talk about Gaza rather than the fact that they are also dealing with extreme repression or threats of imprisonment," Sheline told the Post of the activists and civil society groups her office routinely worked with to further human rights in the region before Israel's assault began. "The first point they bring up is: How is this happening?"
"I wasn't able to really do my job anymore," Sheline added. "Trying to advocate for human rights just became impossible."
Sheline is just the latest official to resign in protest of Biden's approach to Israel and Gaza.
In October Josh Paul resigned from his position as director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, where he oversaw weapons transfers to U.S. allies.
Paul told the Post that Sheline's decision "speaks volumes about the Biden administration's disregard for the laws, policies and basic humanity of American foreign policy that the bureau exists to advance."
A policy adviser in the Education Department, Tariq Habash, also stepped down from his role in January, saying he could no longer be "quietly complicit" in the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
The State Department's internal dissent channel has also been used by numerous officials to voice outrage over the Biden administration's continued defense of Israel's actions.
Stephen Walt, professor of international affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, called Sheline's resignation "courageous."
Feds United for Peace, a group of government workers across nearly two dozen federal agencies which organized a daylong fast in January to protest the U.S.-backed slaughter of Palestinians, expressed solidarity with Sheline.
"That decision comes at a personal and real cost to her, and is a loss of a patriotic and deeply qualified employee for the Department of State," said the group in a statement. "Every arms shipment to Israel by the Biden administration and every one of the three vetoes of U.N. cease-fire resolutions has enabled Israeli impunity in its rampage across Gaza... Thousands of innocent lives are in President Biden's hands; the time has come to translate gentle requests for the protection of civilians into concrete action to stop the killing."
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5 Things Biden Should Do to 'Re-evaluate' Saudi Relations
Failure to respond to the Kingdom's slights would reinforce the perception that Washington is a mere oil dependent, susceptible to demands.
Oct 13, 2022
The White House has stated that it will "re-evaluate" Washington's relationship with Saudi Arabia following the announcement that the Saudis and the rest of the OPEC+ oil cartel will cut oil production by two million barrels per day. The production cut will drive up the cost of fuel just weeks before next month's midterm elections, and critics have characterized the move as effectively constituting election interference.
The Biden administration has realized, however belatedly, that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is broken and that appeasing Riyadh will not fix it.
While Saudi Arabia is free to pursue its own interests in hiking oil prices, this sudden and drastic cut does not reflect the behavior the United States can reasonably expect from a partner, especially one that relies so heavily on the U.S. for security assistance and protection.
Yet Riyadh believes that it has the upper hand, as demonstrated by an op-ed published by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's media adviser, Turki Aldakhil. His piece details how Saudi Arabia could hurt the U.S., including by pricing oil in Chinese yuan rather than dollars and halting the purchase of U.S.-made weapons and other military equipment. The op-ed can be reasonably understood as reflecting MBS' position.
A re-evaluation of the U.S.-Saudi relationship is clearly in order, as President Biden appears to have finally recognized. Failure to respond would reinforce MBS' perception that America's dependence on Saudi oil renders Washington powerless to resist his demands and will thus fuel more reckless Saudi conduct.
How might the U.S. go about such a re-evaluation? Biden has several options at his disposal, all of which can help create a healthier balance in the bilateral relationship. None of these steps are designed to rupture the relationship. Saudi Arabia is an important country, and the U.S. can benefit from positive ties with the kingdom. But the current relationship is anything but positive, and it is inaction on Biden's part that makes a full breakdown of U.S.-Saudi ties more, rather than less, likely.
One: Freeze all U.S. security support to Saudi Arabia.
Freezing support would make clear to the Saudis that U.S. partnership is not unconditional, while also allowing cooperation to resume if Riyadh decided to again act as a partner.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez has already called for such a freeze, "including any arms sales and security cooperation." Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Richard Blumenthal have also proposed bipartisan legislation to pause all arms sales and military supplies. Such measures could be useful. However, merely pausing and then resuming security cooperation may prove inadequate to change Saudi behavior.
Two: Pass the Yemen War Powers Resolution in Congress.
Passage of the Yemen War Powers Resolution would achieve two objectives simultaneously: it would both signal U.S. discontent with the Saudi decision on reducing oil production and cripple the Saudis' ability to bomb and blockade Yemen, finally ending U.S. complicity in that devastating conflict, one of President Biden's earliest foreign policy commitments.
Members of Congress have introduced a bill that would end all U.S. military support for Riyadh's military intervention in Yemen; however it has not yet been brought up for a vote.
Three: Withdraw U.S. troops and military assets from the Kingdom and the region.
About 3,000 U.S. troops are based in Saudi Arabia, while the UAE hosts around 2,000 more.
Reps. Tom Malinowski, Sean Casten, and Susan Wild plan to introduce a bill to require the removal of U.S. troops and missile defense systems from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, another key OPEC+ member that also relies on Washington for national defense.
The bill is similar to one introduced by Republicans in 2020, when Trump also sought to pressure the Saudis to increase oil production. However, it was Trump who sent American servicemembers back to Saudi Arabia in 2019 after a 16-year absence: in response to concerns that the presence of U.S. soldiers was aiding terrorist recruitment across the region, the Pentagon withdrew them from the kingdom.
Clearly, the removal of U.S. troops from the Kingdom did not lead to the downfall of the House of Saud. Losing the security provided by the presence of U.S. troops and missile defenses would remind Saudi Arabia, as well as the UAE, that they remain dependent on Washington's good will. The Saudis and Emiratis are likely to turn to China or Russia, but, although Beijing and Moscow may sell them weapons, they will be unable to provide the same security. Preoccupied by its faltering invasion of Ukraine, Russia cannot do so, and China does not see such a move as in its interests.
Four: Enforce the Leahy Laws regarding the transfer of weapons to Saudi Arabia.
At present, the U.S. does not consider Saudi Arabia's human rights violations to constitute a violation of the Leahy laws that prohibit the transfer of military assistance to states that engage in gross human rights violations, including torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, and rape. However, credible allegations of such behavior by the Saudi state, including the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, would arguably justify the application of the Leahy Laws to Saudi Arabia. Enforcing U.S. law would pressure Saudi Arabia to address its worst human rights violations while also underlining the Kingdom's reliance on U.S. security cooperation.
Five: Increase investment in alternative energy to reduce U.S. dependence on oil.
Although oil will remain important to the global economy for the foreseeable future, the impact of the price of gasoline on American politics reflects a massive vulnerability. By investing more heavily in alternatives, like electric vehicles, public transportation, and less car-dependent communities, the outcomes of American elections could no longer be swayed by oil exporters. This would also help shield American elections from interference by foreign actors.
The Biden administration has realized, however belatedly, that the U.S.-Saudi relationship is broken and that appeasing Riyadh will not fix it. If the Saudis continue to insist on behaving in a manner that not only undermines U.S. objectives in Ukraine but also threatens to undermine the American democratic process, Washington must cease pretending that Riyadh is a friend. Only by taking strong action can the U.S. re-establish a functional relationship with Riyadh, one based on shared interests and mutual respect.
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