State Department Official Resigns Over Arms Transfers to Israel

From <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/19/us/state-department-official-resigns-israel-arms.html>

This is just a portion of the ny times article by John Ismay about Josh Paul’s State Department resignation:

Mr. Paul, whose resignation was reported earlier by HuffPost, said that he had seen the U.S. government approve numerous sales or shipments of matériel to other Middle Eastern countries, even when he believed federal law should have prevented them from going forward.

“On all of them there’s a moment where you can say, OK, well, you know, it’s out of my hands, but I know Congress is going to push back,” he said, by issuing a hold on the transfer or grilling officials in hearings at the Capitol. “But in this instance, there isn’t any significant pushback likely from Congress, there isn’t any other oversight mechanism, there isn’t any other forum for debate, and that’s part of what got into my decision making.”

Continuing to give Israel what he described as carte blanche to kill a generation of enemies, only to create a new one, does not ultimately serve the United States’ interests, Mr. Paul said.

“What it leads to is this desire to sort of impose security at any cost, including in cost to the Palestinian civilian population,” he said. “And that doesn’t ultimately lead to security.”

“This administration, I think, knows better and understands some of the complexity but brought very little of that nuance to the policy decisions that are being made.”