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In 60 Minutes Interview, Ex-State Dept. Officials Spotlight US Complicity in Gaza Assault
"There is a linkage between every single bomb that is dropped in Gaza and the U.S.," said one former official.
Jan 13, 2025
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.”
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A Comprehensive Deal for Peace in the Middle East
The sheer majority of people in the Middle East, and in the world, yearn for peace. Yet a violent extremist minority commits the region to endless war.
Jan 10, 2025
The key to peace in the Middle East is the security of all states and peoples in the region. The arrival of a new presidency in the United States brings the opportunity for a comprehensive peace deal.
The security of all states and peoples would mean the disarming of the militant non-state forces. It would mean the normalization of diplomatic relations among all nations in the region. It would mean that the people of Palestine have their own sovereign state alongside Israel. It would mean the protection of the territorial integrity and stability of neighboring countries Lebanon and Syria. It would mean the commitment of all countries to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the region. And it would mean that all economic sanctions would be lifted as part of the normalization of diplomatic relations, and as a great stimulus to economic development.
Many millions of people are simply terrified, believing that the other side is an implacable foe out to kill them. False narratives of hatred feed these fears.
Such a comprehensive deal would be in the national security interest of every nation. It would enable all parties to achieve their legitimate aims. Importantly, it would also be line with international law, therefore supported by the United Nations and all its member states.
The sheer majority of people in the Middle East, and in the world, yearn for peace. Yet a violent extremist minority, in Israel and the Arab world, opposes peace. Mercenary armies fight for the spoils of war, and some arms-makers stoke the conflicts. Some opponents of peace dream of restoring ancient empires in flagrant violation of today’s realities.
Many millions of people are simply terrified, believing that the other side is an implacable foe out to kill them. False narratives of hatred feed these fears. To those in great fear, let us recall the wisdom of President John F. Kennedy, who declared sixty years ago:
Indeed, across the gulfs and barriers that now divide us, we must remember that there are no permanent enemies. Hostility today is a fact, but it is not a ruling law. The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and our common vulnerability on this planet.
Kennedy’s confidence in peace enabled the U.S. and the Soviet Union to sign and implement the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Today, the “art of the deal” could avert a world war.
The Middle East is known as the cradle of civilization because of its vast and unique history and its gifts to world civilization. The three monotheistic faiths are all born in this region; and they all preach and yearn for peace. With the Middle East today at real risk of nuclear conflagration, the moment has arrived for a comprehensive peace deal. The world’s political leaders and religious leaders have peace within their reach.
A comprehensive peace deal in 2025 should include seven measures:
- An immediate UN-mandated ceasefire across all fronts of the conflict, including Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Iran, and the immediate release of hostages and prisoners of war across all entities;
- The admission of a sovereign State of Palestine as 194th UN Member State on the June 4, 1967 borders with its capital in East Jerusalem; the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in 1967, with the simultaneous introduction of UN-mandated international forces and security guarantees to protect all populations;
- The protection of the territorial integrity and stability of Lebanon and Syria, and the full demilitarization of all non-state forces, and withdrawal of all foreign armies from the respective countries;
- The adoption of an updated Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran, and the end of all economic and other sanctions on Iran;
- The termination, including defunding and disarmament of belligerent non-state entities, of all claims or states of belligerency, and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area, (without excluding the possibility of subsequent territorial adjustments, security arrangements, and cooperative forms of governance agreed by the sovereign parties);
- The establishment of regional peace and normalization of diplomatic relations by all Arab and Islamic states with Israel;
- The establishment of an Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East Sustainable Development Fund to support the reconstruction, economic recovery and sustainable development of the region.
Let us imagine the happiness and prosperity that will reverberate across this ancient, proud, and magnificent region, if the leaders and peoples rise to the challenge of peace.
Sybil Fares, Senior Advisor on the Middle East for UNSDSN, assisted centrally on this article.
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'I Left You for God, Daddy': Frozen Infants in Gaza and What Terrorism Really Means
Every week, every day, I have less of a sense of how to write about this...
Jan 10, 2025
“I left you for God, Daddy.”
Let those words resonate across the planet. The speaker is Yahya Al-Batran, a Palestinian man – a dad – imagining the words his newborn son would have said. The boy, Jumaa, froze to death in the family’s tent. The infant had a twin brother who was also lying still in their bed one morning recently. The parents rushed the boys to a functioning hospital, where Jumaa’s brother, at the time NBC’s story came out last week, was still fighting for his life.
Jumaa was one of half a dozen Palestinian babies (so far) who have frozen to death in their family’s tents since the onset of winter – just one more fragment of hell the Palestinians are enduring as Israel’s US-complicit genocide continues . . . one death at a time.
Every week, every day, I have less of a sense of how to write about this or, indeed, how to think about it as I absorb the news of the day. Yes, there are wars and hellish suffering across the whole planet – there always have been – but in this current moment I feel less able to shrug and move on with my own life. I feel connected to it: a participant, you might say, simply as a citizen of the genocide’s largest enabler, as strike after strike after strike kills more Palestinians.
In a recent Common Dreams column, Abby Zimet writes: “America’s newest $8 billion contribution to an increasingly normalized genocide and its bloody, barbarous, macabre delusions will ensure more of the same. As Gazans plead for mercy and reason from an uncaring world, they in truth know and say they have ‘nothing but God.’”
An increasingly normalized genocide . . .
I think that’s what’s shredding my soul about this: the lack of any sort of mainstream awareness beyond the need for endless militarism – beyond the world’s brutally divided nature. Us vs. them is apparently the limit of our understanding, with no awareness of the effect that ongoing war against “them,” and the ensuing planetary dividedness, is having on our shared human home, not to mention our future.
Yes, there are wars and hellish suffering across the whole planet – there always have been – but in this current moment I feel less able to shrug and move on with my own life.
A recent New York Times mini-analysis of America’s current mass murder situation – particularly the horrific motor-vehicle murders in New Orleans on New Years Day – definitely seemed, as I read it, like the normalization of genocide, in its implication that only our enemies are bad. Watch out, the story warned us: Terrorism is back!
“The killing of 14 people on New Year’s Day in New Orleans was the latest sign of a resurgence in radical Islamist terrorism,” the Times story informs us. “Some of the attacks — like the one last week — seem to have been merely inspired by ISIS, the network of groups that are offshoots of Al Qaeda. In other cases, ISIS groups played an active role in the planning.”
The alleged killer, who drove his rented truck into a crowd of people in the French Quarter, had an ISIS flag in the truck. The Times then proceeds to catalog sixteen instances of violence over the last five years, in countries all over the world, that were either “inspired by” or directly plotted and carried out by ISIS.
And who the hell is ISIS, anyway? The story notes that the organization came into being during the US war in Iraq, but fails to mention . . . uh, the half a million or so Iraqis who died as a result of our bloody invasion. All that matters, apparently, is the emergence of the terrorist organization, not the US shock-and-awe bombings and brutal dismantling of Iraq’s national infrastructure. You know, the terrorists just popped up and started doing bad things. If this isn’t the normalization of genocide, it’s something worse: the utter denial of genocide.
A few paragraphs later, the Times story moves to Afghanistan, noting that President Biden’s withdrawal from the country in 2021 “reduced the pressure on an ISIS chapter there known as ISIS-K, and it has since expanded beyond Afghanistan. ISIS-K was behind the Iran bombing, the Moscow concert attack and the Taylor Swift plot.”
So, shame on Genocide Joe! His pullout allowed ISIS to expand. For some reason the story fails to note that, prior to its withdrawal, that US military presence in Afghanistan resulted in over 175,000 Afghani deaths.
We live in a disconnected planet at war with itself – and in possession of the means to kill itself.
As Brown University’s Costs of War project notes: “In Afghanistan, even after the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 2021, people continue to die due to the war-induced breakdown of the economy, public health, security, and infrastructure. The majority of the population faces impoverishment and food insecurity. The CIA armed Afghan militia groups to fight Islamist militants and these militias are responsible for serious human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings of civilians. Unexploded ordnance from this war and landmines from previous wars continue to kill, injure, and maim civilians. Fields, roads, and school buildings are contaminated by ordnance, which often harms children as they go about chores like gathering wood.”
Attention, New York Times: Terrorism doesn’t exist all by itself. While actions thought to be terrorist in nature can indeed be horrific, they cannot begin to compare to the horrors that result from heavily armed state terrorism – in particular, the terrorism committed by the “good states,” i.e., the United States and its allies. We live in a disconnected planet at war with itself – and in possession of the means to kill itself.
A year ago, on, good God, the 25th twenty-fifth anniversary of the Columbine shootings, I wrote: “What is power? Is it simply and sheerly us vs. them, good vs. evil? Every war on Planet Earth is sold with this advertising slogan. Perhaps this is why I find myself thinking about the Columbine shootings — and all the mass shootings since then. Define an enemy, then kill it. This is what we learn in history class — but would-be mass shooters, caged in their own isolation, cross a line. They take this lesson personally.”
All of which is to say that war begets violence of all sorts and at every level of devastation. “I left you for God, Daddy.” Perhaps these will be our last words as we exit the planet we have chosen to destroy.
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