A Jewish-American army major has resigned from his position in protest of US support for Israel’s “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, which has starved and killed “tens of thousands of civilians.”
Maj. Harrison Mann told CBS that Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 attack “has turned the entire world against it” and has endangered the security of both Jews and Israel.
The Defense Intelligence Agency analyst offered his resignation in November as casualties mounted in Gaza following Israel’s invasion, and spoke out Tuesday as he formally resigned after 13 years.
“I’m sure this is some measure of ethnic cleansing,” said Mann, whose grandparents fled the anti-Semitism of Eastern Europe.
“I don’t know how you kill 35,000 civilians by accident.”
Major Harrison Mann of the Defense Intelligence Agency has become the first US military officer to resign over President Biden’s support for Israel.
“At some point, whatever the justification, you are either pushing a policy that allows mass starvation of children, or you are not,” he wrote.
Mann, who worked in the DIA’s Middle East office, criticized Joe Biden’s “almost unconditional support for the government of Israel” and said his own contribution had caused him “incredible shame and guilt.”
“At some point, whatever the justification, you are either pushing a policy that allows mass starvation of children, or you are not,” he wrote in his resignation letter.
“And I want to clarify that, as a descendant of European Jews, I grew up in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the issue of taking responsibility for ethnic cleansing.”
Six U.S. government officials are known to have resigned in protest over U.S. support for the war, but dozens of State Department officials have signed “dissenting cables” indicating their anger with U.S. policy.
Figures on the death toll in Gaza are provided by the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health and have not been independently verified.
But Israel has refused to give a figure for the number of civilians killed, stating that 15,000 of those killed were Hamas fighters.
The House voted on Tuesday to approve a bill that would institute sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) after it threatened arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leaders for war crimes.
The intelligence analyst spent 13 years in the military before resigning in November.
He criticized Joe Biden’s ‘almost unconditional support for the government of Israel’
The Jewish official warned that Israel and the United States “are not responding in a way that is productive for the security of the State of Israel or of Jews around the world.”
Thousands of children are believed to be among the 36,000 currently estimated to have died during Israel’s eight-month attack on Gaza.
Neither Israel nor the United States are among the 122 countries that recognize the ICC, and Biden denounced the court’s move as “scandalous” and insisted that “there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”
More than a million people have fled the southern Gaza city of Rafah, the UN said on Monday as Israeli forces advance on Hamas’s last stronghold.
Biden warned Israel last month that an all-out attack on the city was a red line for the White House and could halt the supply of offensive weapons.
“If they enter Rafah, I will not provide them with weapons,” the president told CNN on May 9.
Israel insists it is carrying out a limited operation in the city, as both Netanyahu and Hamas rejected the latest US proposal for a ceasefire and the release of Israeli hostages.
The White House said Tuesday that Biden’s Middle East envoy, Brett McGurk, will travel to the region this week in a bid to revive the plan.
Mann released his resignation letter last month after the White House pledged that the United States would continue to arm Israel, despite a State Department report concluding that the country had violated international humanitarian law.
“The past few months have presented us with the most horrific and heartbreaking images imaginable,” he wrote.
And I have not been able to ignore the connection between those images and my duties here.
“This unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks a broader war.”
“I was struck by the weakness of that justification,” he said Tuesday.
“I’m sure this is definitely some measure of ethnic cleansing,” Mann told CBS.
‘They are not responding in a way that is productive for the security of the State of Israel or of Jews around the world.
‘I don’t think it’s in the spirit of ‘never again.’
‘If you are someone who is truly motivated by concern to protect Jewish life, you should fight for (Israel) to end the war, to carry it out in a way that doesn’t basically turn the entire world against it.
“That is not good for Israel’s security in the short or long term.”
The DIA said in a statement: “Employee resignations are a routine occurrence at DIA as they are at other employers, and employees resign from their positions for a variety of reasons and motivations.”
Major Harrison expressed his thoughts to his colleagues in a letter of resignation.