Military leader quits due to ongoing US backing of Israel

An Army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency has resigned in protest over the United States’s continued military support for Israel.

Maj. Harrison Mann said he resigned from the DIA over the “nearly unqualified [U.S.] support” for Israel, “which has enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians [in Gaza].”

“The past months have presented us with the most horrific and heartbreaking images imaginable — sometimes playing on the news in our own space — and I have been unable to ignore the connection between those images and my duties here,” he said in a slightly edited version of his resignation letter, which he posted on LinkedIn. “This caused me incredible shame and guilt.”

Mann referenced his European Jewish ancestry, noting he was “haunted” by what he believed was his failure to live up to the “unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing.”

Mann is the latest in a series of administration officials employed by various government agencies who have resigned in protest of the U.S.’s continued support for Israel.

Senior State Department official Josh Paul resigned last October from his role as Bureau of Political-Military Affairs director over the U.S. sending “blind” “continued lethal assistance” to Israel, while Hala Rharrit, the Arabic language spokeswoman for the department, resigned in late April. Annelle Sheline, a foreign affairs officer on a two-year contract with the State Department, also resigned in March.

While it has not appeared that any active-duty defense officials have resigned over U.S. policy toward the war, one self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

In February, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old Air Force serviceman, self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., as he screamed: “Free Palestine.” Bushnell later died from his injuries.

The U.S. has largely supported Israel’s military response and its fight against Hamas and has provided them with billions of dollars of aid since then. President Joe Biden’s administration did recently decide to pause one military aid package that included thousands of large bombs due to the concerns it had if Israel attempted to use them in Rafah.

More than a million Palestinians have fled to Rafah during the war, a city along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, but it’s also Hamas’s last remaining stronghold in Gaza. The U.S. does not support full-scale Israeli operations in Rafah, but Israeli leaders have repeatedly said they have to go into Rafah in full force to accomplish their objectives.

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Israel has conducted limited operations in portions of Rafah over the last week, while the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East has said that nearly 360,000 people have fled Rafah in the last week or so since Israel urged people to leave.

More than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed during the war, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. The figure does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last week that Israeli forces have killed 14,000 terrorists and roughly 16,000 civilians.