Exposing Truth and Courage

Gaza Whistleblowers: U.S. Officials Who Resigned in Protest

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In a compelling webinar, the Ellsberg Initiative spotlighted three former U.S. officials who resigned to protest the country's support for Israel's actions in Gaza. Each shared their motives and the personal and professional repercussions they faced. The discussion illuminated the challenging intersection of ethics, government policy, and personal courage, ultimately underscoring the critical need for accountability and reform in foreign policy decisions.

Highlights

Harrison Mann, Anel Sheine, and Alexander Smith resign over ethical concerns regarding U.S. support for Israel. 🛑
The chilling effect on colleagues observing repercussions from speaking truth. 🥶
The role of media and its influence on public and political narratives. 📰
Personal and professional upheaval faced by the whistleblowers. 🚧
Global implications of the U.S.'s stance on international law and human rights. 🌐

Key Takeaways

Standing against injustice can have profound personal and professional costs.
Highlighting the need for greater accountability in foreign policy. 🤝
The unique power of collective action in influencing public opinion and policy changes. 🌍
The omnipresent struggle between maintaining career positions and moral integrity. ⚔️
The transformative impact of whistleblowing on political and public landscapes. 📢

Overview

The Ellsberg Initiative's recent webinar brought to light the stories of three courageous individuals who took a stand against what they saw as moral failings in U.S. foreign policy. Through their resignations, Harrison Mann, Anel Sheine, and Alexander Smith exposed the internal conflicts and struggles faced by officials caught between ethics and career aspirations. Their narratives serve as a chilling reminder of the cost of integrity in today's political climate.

The speakers delved into their experiences, highlighting the challenges of working within the U.S. government during tense geopolitical climates. They discussed their ethical dilemmas, the consequences of their decisions, and the broader implications for U.S. policy. Each faced significant personal and professional challenges after their resignations, reflecting the risks involved in upholding one's moral convictions.

Throughout the webinar, the importance of media transparency and the public's ability to influence policy came to the forefront. The dialogue also touched on broader issues of international solidarity and the role of collective voice in shaping the future of global relations. This event underscored the urgent need for more accountable governance and ethical leadership, especially in matters of international conflict and human rights.

Chapters

00:00 - 03:00: Introduction and Upcoming Events The chapter introduces a webinar focusing on U.S. officials who resigned in protest of the U.S. support for the Israeli war on Gaza. Chris Opy, director of the Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy, serves as the host, mentioning upcoming events such as the next week's Ellsberg activist gathering before introducing three guests who resigned from government positions.
03:00 - 06:00: Daniel Ellsberg and U.S. Whistleblowers The chapter highlights important upcoming events and webinars related to climate justice and historical legacies in the U.S. It mentions Vini Pros, a climate justice activist and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, who will speak at UMass. There are upcoming webinars addressing global threats such as nuclear war and climate change, as well as discussions on the history and impacts of the Vietnam War, marking its 50th anniversary.
06:00 - 09:00: Panel Introduction and Context The chapter introduces the panel and provides context for the upcoming events commemorating the anniversary of the end of a significant war. It highlights a key event scheduled for April 30th, a Capstone event featuring a reading and talk by the acclaimed Vietnamese novelist and poet Newnan Qu Ma at UMass. For detailed information, readers are directed to visit the EIP website. Furthermore, the chapter reflects on the inspiration drawn from Daniel Ellsburg, one of the most famous whistleblowers in US history.
09:00 - 16:00: Alexander Smith's Story The chapter tells the story of a government official named Alexander Smith who, in 1971, provided the New York Times and 18 other newspapers with a 7,000-page classified history of the Vietnam War. This history revealed over two decades of government deceptions concerning the causes and conduct of the war. These top-secret documents came to be known as the Pentagon Papers. Alexander Smith's actions, seen as a moral stand, led to his indictment on multiple felony charges, including some under the controversial Espionage Act of 1917, potentially facing up to 115 years in prison.
16:00 - 21:00: Anel Sheline's Experience at the State Department The chapter discusses Anel Sheline's experience at the State Department, focusing on the historical precedence set by Daniel Ellsberg, who was the first person to be tried under the Espionage Act for leaking classified documents to the American press. Ellsberg's trial was dismissed due to government misconduct, prompting him to spend the next five decades advocating for peace, nuclear disarmament, First Amendment rights, and a more restrained and democratic foreign policy.
21:00 - 28:00: Harrison Man's Resignation from the Army In this chapter, Harrison Man decides to resign from the army. The discussion opens with a reflection on the late Ellsburg, who passed away last June at 92. The speaker speculates that Ellsburg, known for supporting whistleblowers, would have appreciated the actions of Harrison Man, as he believed in the influential nature of truth-telling and how it inspires others. The chapter emphasizes the contagious nature of courage as quoted by Ellsburg.
28:00 - 32:00: Panelists Reflect on Impact and Strategy The chapter features a discussion moderated by Kelly Vos, a senior advisor at The Quinsey Institute for Responsible Statecraft. The institute aims to challenge the US's traditional focus on military dominance and war through responsible statecraft. Kelly Vos, who also serves as the editorial director of the institute's online magazine, leads the discussion.
32:00 - 36:00: Samantha Power and Accountability The chapter opens with an introduction of a panel discussion featuring prominent speakers in the realm of foreign policy. Acknowledgment is given to the Ellsburg Initiative for organizing the event and its dedication to continuing the legacy of Daniel Ellsburg, celebrated as a hero. Emphasis is placed on the influence and inspiration of the speakers gathered by the initiative.
36:00 - 41:00: Future Prospects and International Response The chapter discusses Israel's war on Gaza, highlighting the challenges it poses to humanitarians, civil rights advocates, and international law, especially those in the US government. Despite Israel's claims of a moral military effort against Hamas and attempts to minimize civilian harm, visual evidence such as photos, videos, and satellite images suggest a different reality.
41:00 - 45:00: Media's Role in Covering Gaza Conflict The chapter discusses media coverage of the Gaza conflict. President Trump described Gaza as uninhabitable, highlighting the severe conditions faced by its population. Statistics provided include over 48,000 deaths, potentially rising to 60,000 or more due to unrecovered bodies buried under rubble. The chapter emphasizes the dire shortage of food, medicine, and basic necessities, with more than 80% of buildings destroyed. Additionally, it underscores the absence of clean water, prevalent open sewage, and the impact of criminal gangs reportedly acting with tacit approval to terrorize the population.
45:00 - 50:00: Closing Remarks and Contact Information The final chapter addresses the grave humanitarian crisis faced by a population lacking basic necessities such as food, shelter, and medical supplies. It highlights significant incidents like the looting of aid trucks, deaths of orphaned children due to inadequate care, and appalling conditions in hospitals. The chapter raises a critical issue of U.S. taxpayers inadvertently subsidizing these conditions without adequate public discourse on the implications and benefits, challenging the narrative of decision-making in the public's interest.

Gaza Whistleblowers: U.S. Officials Who Resigned in Protest Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 hello everyone Welcome to our webinar Gaza whistleblowers us officials who resigned in protest I'm Chris opy director of the ellsburg initiative for peace and democracy at the University of Massachusetts at ammer tonight's event features three extraordinary people who resigned from their government positions in protest of us support for the Israeli War on Gaza before we turn to them let me briefly mention some upcoming events next week this Year's ellsburg activist
00:30 - 01:00 in Residence Vini Pros will be um will be at UMass she is a climate uh justice activist who co-founded the sunrise movement and next Wednesday at 7 pm she will be speaking on campus in the old chapel on March 13th we'll host a webinar on the twin existential threats of nuclear war and climate change and in April we have a set of three webinars on the history and Legacies of the American war in vietn Nam to Mark the 50th
01:00 - 01:30 anniversary of that War's end as a Capstone event on April 30th we are delighted to sponsor in person at UMass a reading and talk by the acclaimed Vietnamese novelist and poet Newnan qu ma for more information uh please go to our website EIP a.org our work is inspired by perhaps the most famous whistleblower in US history Daniel ellsburg a former former
01:30 - 02:00 government government official who in 1971 gave to the New York Times and 18 other newspapers a 7,000 page classified history of the Vietnam war that exposed more than two decades of government lies about the causes and conduct of the war those top secret documents were soon dubbed the Pentagon papers for that act of moral courage ellsburg was indicted on a dozen felony charges some of them based on the deeply flawed Espionage Act of 1917 and he faced a Poss 115 years in
02:00 - 02:30 prison ellsburg was the first person criminally charged and tried under the Espionage Act for giving classified documents not to a foreign agent or foreign country but to the American Press and people and this Century there have been many more such prosecutions after ellsberg's trial was dismissed because of government crimes committed against him he devoted the next 50 years to non-violent activism on behalf of Peace nuclear disarmament First Amendment rights and a more democratic and restrained foreign policy
02:30 - 03:00 he died last June at the age of 92 if ellsburg were still alive I'm quite sure he would have reached out to our panelist uh to express his gratitude and to offer his support as he did with dozens of whistleblowers over the years he understood that truth tellers do not act in a vacuum but are greatly impacted by their times and are often inspired by other truth tellers as he was he often said that courage is contagious
03:00 - 03:30 tonight's discussion will be moderated by Kelly Vos she is a senior advisor at The quinsey Institute for responsible statecraft a think tank founded in 2019 to challenge the decades long Obsession of US foreign policy decisionmakers with global Military dominance and War Kelly Vos is the editorial director of the institute's online magazine responsible statecraft where many of her own articles often appear previously she served as executive editor managing
03:30 - 04:00 editor and frequent writer on foreign policy at the American conservative magazine she will introduce tonight's uh panelist Kelly thank you Christian uh thank you for that introduction and thank you to the ellsburg initiative for putting this talk together and for all the critical work you are doing to advance the spirit and inspiration of the late Daniel ellsburg who is a a Great Hero to all of us I'm especially inspired by the speakers the initiative has assembled
04:00 - 04:30 here today Israel's war on Gaza has been a true test to humanitarians and Advocates of civil rights and international law particularly those working in the US government while the Israelis have said their war on H is on Hamas and have boasted that they are the most moral military in the world having spent the last 18 months attempting to keep civilians out of harm the hellscape seen in photographs videos and satellite images tell a very different story even
04:30 - 05:00 president Trump has called Gaza in uninhabitable we have heard all the data more than 48,000 dead possibly 60,000 or more when you include the bodies that have not been yet found from underneath the rubble the sheer lack of food medicine supplies for basic necessities more than 80% of the buildings destroyed no clean water open sewage the criminal gangs that have had the tacit approval of the ID to terrorize the population
05:00 - 05:30 including looting the few Aid trucks that do get into the strip the tens of thousands of Orphan children babies freezing to death without nourishment in tents operations in hospitals without anesthesia or proper sterilization of equipment the list goes on the issue that I believe has come up time and again is that us taxpayers have been subsidizing all of this and have had little little say in whether it is in our best interest to continue doing so
05:30 - 06:00 from our diminished credibility on the world stage to our security in the region overall the answer seems clear Washington is playing with fire two of our guests here today said enough was enough and the third was squeezed out of his job for trying to make the points that the US has an obligation through its own laws to refrain from supplying Nations weapons of war when they are used to starve and kill civilians so I'd like to introduce them now let them tell you their stories and proceed to have a
06:00 - 06:30 a candid conversation about whistleblowing taking a stand asking whether their actions have helped and what challenges that people of principal May face as the Gaza War has not yet ended and a new Administration has taken the helm on the policy so I will start with Alexander Smith Smith who is both a lawyer and public health expert had worked for usaid for four years he had been selected to speak at the agency's
06:30 - 07:00 Global Gender equality conference and his paper intersectional gender lens in Gaza ethnicity religion geography legal status and Maternal Child Health outcomes was pre accepted for the small USA ID conference he was scheduled to present on May 22nd of the of last year usaid took issue with the slides in his presentation a slide regarding Israel and its adherence to international law raised hackles leading to the loss of
07:00 - 07:30 his position he was told to resign or face dismissal Smith was a contractor advising on gender and Mater in maternal Public Health on behalf of the highberry defense group and we're looking forward to hearing his story tonight Harrison man is a 13-year veteran of the US Army who in June and an executive officer at the
07:30 - 08:00 DIA Africa Regional Center that's a defense intelligence agency prior to his posting at the DIA man worked at the US Embassy in Tunis in in its office for security cooperation and led an army civil Affairs team combating Regional smuggling under US Naval forces Central Command in Bahrain he began his army career as an infantry officer and is now a military Affairs fellow at dawn and a senior fellow at win without
08:00 - 08:30 war and enel sheine in May 2024 enel resigned her position at the state department where she served for a year as a foreign affairs officer in the office of newor Eastern Affairs in the department of state's Bureau Bureau of democracy human rights and labor there she worked on promoting human rights in the Middle East and North North Africa she resigned stating at the time that quote I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office
08:30 - 09:00 however as a representative of the government that is directly enabling what the international court of justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza such work has become almost impossible unable to serve an Administration that enables such atrocities I've decided to resign from my position at the Department of State today enel Works full-time with me at the Quincy Institute as a middle e fellow she is also a non-resident fellow and also a non-resident at she is a
09:00 - 09:30 non-resident fellow at the Arab Center in Washington and a visiting scholar at Georgetown University so I mean I I am um in awe of my my three uh panelists here and I'm looking forward to hearing each of your stories and to get to know you a little bit better and and also kind of tease out uh what you're thinking about the current situation in Gaza the current Administration policies
09:30 - 10:00 and some thoughts on on whistleblowing and taking a stand in general and I just want to mention to the audience uh here if you have a question for one of our panelists or all of our panelists uh put please put it down in the uh Q&A and we will be sure to try to get to as many as possible uh in the hour and a half that we have so let me start with Alexander can you tell us I know I I did the broad you know brush of of your experience but can you tell us a little bit about what
10:00 - 10:30 happened uh to you and um you know basically just walk us through what you were doing for the government through the the the highberry contractor and what you think really triggered your dismissal and and H how did that all play out yeah great questions and thank you for doing a lot of the the heavy lifting with the explaining the the set of circumstances uh so so yeah as you said
10:30 - 11:00 I had been a contractor with usaid for four years uh contractors are are indistinguishable from uh direct hires we all sort of mix together and have usa.gov uh email addresses or had I should say past tense um the job the work that I was doing was on gender and social inclusion and maternal and child health and nutrition and infectious disease um and in that position I would go to developing countries where we had
11:00 - 11:30 programs and I would um review the effectiveness of the programs I would I went to Zambia and Nepal earlier in 2024 um and was really good at what I do um had found uh gaps in our programs and new ways to get TB drugs to pregnant women in Zambia for example and found better ways to make our programs efficient in Nepal um and generally speaking I'm a very big fan of what USA
11:30 - 12:00 does around the world um I also volunteered on the covid-19 uh vaccine distribution team getting a half billion doses of covid-19 vaccines out to the world and also worked on polio um and volunteered on the Ukraine rapid response team um the team that was set up to rebuild Ukraine's health systems that had been damaged or destroyed um during the war with Russia um and for those reasons I I had a good
12:00 - 12:30 sense of what USA could do and was supposed to do in times of emergencies and crises um and I found the US Aid was not doing those same things for Gaza uh we were sending food Aid um that which could get across the border uh but we were not talking about rebuilding their health system we didn't have the the rapid response team set up if we had I would have volunteered for it again um and I kept asking leadership why we weren't doing that I never got an answer
12:30 - 13:00 um and it it came to a head as you said in that conference where I attempted to give a presentation that was that was given the green light back in February um in May I was going to present to a conference on uh gender and and uh and program efficiency what I wanted to do with that presentation was to talk about um maternal and child health and the impacts of starvation of displacement what we know from other count icts that
13:00 - 13:30 have happened before um in case anybody wasn't aware of usaid I wanted very much for USA leadership to take note um that we know what happens to people especially to maternal and child health in in Conflict um you see uh deaths from bleeding infection hypertension the three main causes of maternal death Skyrocket and what Israel was doing the policies they were implementing were ensuring that women were more likely to die from those three causes but also
13:30 - 14:00 we're more like less likely to get screened for less likely to get treatment for those same three causes so what we were looking at was sort of a perfect storm of starvation infectious disease very preventable deaths from these um basic causes and it's not mysterious we we know exactly what to expect from these kinds of policies um so naively I I wanted to present on that thinking that perhaps people in USA just aren't aware of how
14:00 - 14:30 dangerous and and awful the situation is um and then on the day I was going to present I was told that I would not be presenting the day before I was going to present uh and I they were surprisingly Frank with me they said that blinkin had received reports on the famine on the isra Israel's creation of the famine and had decided not to act on that and so we therefore needed to take that same policy within USA of not talking about the famine they also said that um because then Yahoo had been indicted by
14:30 - 15:00 the ICC that very day that therefore it was a more sensitive issue that I shouldn't talk about that's why they took objection to the um International humanitarian law slide International humanitarian law the law of warfare and what can and can't be done to Health Systems um so yeah so I was told by the Contracting agency that there was a difference in personalities after four years of very uh starred and and positive uh feedback and reviews of my work I was suddenly told that I would be
15:00 - 15:30 leaving um I did talk to some of my um managers at USA they had no personality differences they actually wanted me to stay on uh reapply for my own job through a different contractor but at that point I thought I I don't want to do that and so I wrote my resignation letter which you're free to uh share if you like uh talking about the reasons why I couldn't work for USA and summed it up as I can't work for an agency where some people are considered people
15:30 - 16:00 some emergencies are considered worthy of our response based on the race of the people involved so that's my story in a nutshell I'm happy to answer more questions about it so you didn't criticize the government or usaid directly in your slideshow this was a matter of them not wanting you to say certain things or bringing attention to certain things but it's not like you blamed anybody for any of this like you didn't go that far did
16:00 - 16:30 no in my resignation letter I certainly do lay some blame at the feet of Samantha power who I knew from being a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School um I used to really big be a big fan of her and go go to her lectures she certainly knows what genocide is and had chosen has still chosen today not to to talk about the genocide um so but no you're you're correct in my presentation I was sticking only to Public Health Data to the facts I was presenting what the Baseline data was before the conflict
16:30 - 17:00 which was surprisingly positive Gaza actually had a slightly better um maternal mortality ratio than many neighboring countries and even the United States in 2023 2022 um so and then you know we can predict what what it'll be now it's going to be much much higher were your colleagues surprised at the reaction to your slideshow and the ultimatum that you were given yeah many colleagues were planning on
17:00 - 17:30 attending my my my uh presentation it probably would have had a an audience of maybe 30 or 40 people um and ironically by you know stopping me from giving that presentation I then went on to talk about it on CNN and El jaer so they probably didn't expect that yeah exactly so it went from an audience of 30 to a worldwide audience basically uh and I'm sure your your remarks were a lot more pointed when you were the the shackles
17:30 - 18:00 were off so to speak um on how how you were speaking about the data I was always very careful however not to to impune all of USA and I always said in my interviews that I think USA does great work um they do very valuable work and as we've seen over the last few days that work is sortly missed when it's gone um but I said on this one issue they really do need to acknowledge that the famine is happening that Israel is causing the famine that the deprivation of basic uh medical supplies oxytocics to prevent bleeding for
18:00 - 18:30 pregnant women that these were going to cause deaths and they needed to acknowledge that how much of a chill do you think your experience was is having or had had or still having on other people who are either working as a contractor or like enel who are actually employees of the state department I mean when they see somebody getting squeezed out of a job for a slideshow I mean wow I can imagine everybody's kind of buttoning up and
18:30 - 19:00 saying well you know I'm not going to go there in my slideshow or my report I'm going to stay right within the lines yeah there was a I was actually very proud about 150 I think it was 200 thean colleagues did sign a letter uh internally to Samantha power and the leadership saying that they objected to what happened to me um but you know they didn't take that public and I I don't think there was a lot of talk of Gaza after what happened to
19:00 - 19:30 me thank you I want to go right to anel because uh she has a somewhat of a parallel experience in terms of like working for a government agency that ostensibly is supposed to be focused on these human rights issues and you found that you too were um I want to say Shackled but there were limitations on what you could say and how um um concerns from people within your
19:30 - 20:00 department and others at the state department were not being listened to uh that were sort of like blowing in the wind can you talk a little bit about your experience and why you chose to resign sure so excuse me sorry um I I W the work that I was trying to do in advocating for human rights as I wrote in my uh the opet I published at the time I signed had become really impossible because
20:00 - 20:30 even though I wasn't directly covering Israel Palestine trying to advocate for human rights anywhere else in the Middle East like what what credibility did the United States have to do so and to be clear the United States already didn't have a lot of credibility as an advocate for human rights but in particular there were groups and individuals who had worked with the US government in the past um thinking in particular efforts to strengthen
20:30 - 21:00 judicial Independence for example that's under attack in places like Tunisia or trying to protect journalists in Morocco or Egypt um and so we meet with individuals that we had you know the office had a relationship with and we would want to talk to them about what they were facing their you know their own rights being abused how we could support them and they'd want to talk about Gaza and we couldn't really say anything Beyond just well that's that's not
21:00 - 21:30 really you know why why we're here despite you know I myself and many other people in my office fully agreeing with their position that that the that without talking about Gaza it was um fairly impossible in particular to put any pressure on any of these governments so when we had a meeting with a counterpart from a middle eastern government trying to make any argument about human rights they would just you know kind of smile knowingly at us and just be like
21:30 - 22:00 really H interesting um so it had just gotten to a place where it just it just was really impossible to try to do the work that i' been hired to do um and as I as I've said and said in my my resignation uh statement that you know I wasn't initially planning to go public with it I had not been at the state department for very long um and you Kelly you mention that I resigned in May it was even earlier so I
22:00 - 22:30 I resigned in March and for me you know as I mentioned in the the oped one of the things that had happened not long before I resigned was um the imulation of Aaron Bushnell which you know came at a time so you know if people can kind of remember a year ago you know the the uncommitted movement was starting to gain some momentum in terms of trying to push Biden to address you know Biden was still the candidate for one thing um trying to push the Democratic party to
22:30 - 23:00 take a different stance on Gaza um and you had an act of such horrific desperation as you know this this suicide outside the Israeli Embassy in DC um and I I think you know so it was it was his act of great sacrifice and courage um as well as um just being in touch with other folks inside the state department who were really horrified by what's happening um because I I had planned to resign privately I had let it
23:00 - 23:30 be known internally that I was going to resign privately uh over Gaza um but I wasn't going to go public and colleagues said please go public you know just just try um and then it did end up um I think getting more attention in part just because you know there was this sense at that time of just like what what is the United States government doing here and and no one seems to be speaking out about it um so that that um for me one thing that that
23:30 - 24:00 was particularly meaningful was the fact that after that I was able to connect with with Alex and Harrison and the other reses and it and it has been extremely meaningful to have them as a community um although things do look different now sort of under this new Administration you know one of the things that just struck me while you were talking was you were weren't and and and Alex and and Harrison as well you
24:00 - 24:30 weren't working for a government that was at war in Gaza you w you weren't working for the government that was holding the gun and doing all of these things and dropping the bombs you were working for a government that was funding uh that was had a longstanding spe special relationship with Israel we give them $4 billion a year for to build up their military industrial complex um but what did Andel did it strike you as
24:30 - 25:00 odd that there had to be this Chill on the speech at the state department about the human rights violations that were going on when it was happening by another government in another country it wasn't even you weren't even set out or or expected to protect your own government which still that would be difficult and maybe all three of you still would have done what you did but did it it strike you it's odd that there was these this sort of unspoken edict
25:00 - 25:30 for another country behavior um yes and no um I mean it is inherently odd the the nature of kind of the US Israel relationship and and as someone who has studied the Middle East for a long time it's one of the questions I would get most often from people in the Middle East of just what explains why the US continues to provide and this you know this was long before October 7th um
25:30 - 26:00 and and so seeing for example even things like my office at the state department which had been involved in trying for example to support human rights noos in Israel you know there have been extremely important work done done by by Israeli NGS documenting human you know abuses of Palestinians um but even something like that which is which is Central to what DRL does you know working supporting you know the various NOS across the region and and across the
26:00 - 26:30 whole world but but the fact that that even that was seen as too politically nuclear to to support a human rights NGO in Israel or that you know it would it would get blowb on the hill or it got some media attention uh such that it was walked back um just the the glaring exception of Israel whether it's whether it's the work that DRL does whether it's kind of the the military partnership whether it's the way that the US allows
26:30 - 27:00 Israel to to not only as you mentioned build up their own military industrial base but but sort of to be like subsidized to do so such that they be they eventually will you know not only continue I mean they they receive so much from the US industry US military industry but also we're we're subsidizing them to sort of build up their own such that they become less dependent on the us in many ways at the expense of American companies who profit from contracts that that allow them to
27:00 - 27:30 to send materials to Israel I mean it is it is um in many ways just so directly contradictory to to the interests of not only the sort of broader questions of you know the morality of the United States or the leadership of the United States but just you know some of these very um just you know the the big companies that usually get to direct so much of US
27:30 - 28:00 foreign policy unfortunately even even Israel sort of Trumps those relationships um so so yes I I I would agree that it is it is odd yeah and I mean at a certain level you wonder okay we have this great relationship and we're giving them all this money we're helping them build this massive industrial base um at some point couldn't we have just stepped up and said you know we might not want do that you know this isn't in your best
28:00 - 28:30 interest to destroy Gaza and kill all these people uh it seems like that even at the that to me would not be out of the realm of what a friend might do you know maybe a little bit of tough L I know this all sounds very naive um given the circumstances but just because we have this special relationship didn't mean that we just turned a blind eye but I think we just chose the ladder turn turn The Blind Eye instead of the the
28:30 - 29:00 tough love so um Harrison I I remember when you resigned it I mean obviously um really broke through the headlines because you're a member of the US Military and of all of us on the screen right now I mean it it seemed as though um you know enel and Alexander coming from more of the human rights Public Health realm but the US military seemed to be um it you know it's expected to be a
29:00 - 29:30 political for one and not an ideological but also there there was this sense and there still is that there's this very close Cooperative relationship between the two militaries and you had uh military voices uh like retired General Millie who was out there actually um defending Israeli forces and their killing of civilians and basically saying well the US did it too in World
29:30 - 30:00 War II and you know kind of pursuing this line that the IDF is the most moral military in the world so you so I I got this sense that that the US military is pretty four square with uh Israel or at least there wasn't any descent uh that could be heard so when you came out it's a it was a big deal can you talk a bit what what your breaking point was yeah um thanks for that question Kelly
30:00 - 30:30 and thanks for for having us Chris and and everybody on the line I think I mean probably like anel and and Alexander I was living a lot of really uh difficult cognitive dissonance for a while um because I was seeing the same stuff that all of y'all did on Twitter or social media of all these really horrific images um and understanding all these innocent people were being killed and then going back into the office the next
30:30 - 31:00 day in you know I would say I don't know how many total US Agencies were were tasked with uh supporting the Israeli government or the Israeli military but we were probably in the the top four or five of them and our the primary mission of Dia per its director after October 7th was uh supporting Israel and I was in the Middle East Department of a so that was our primary focus um and after October
31:00 - 31:30 7th my job was basically the assistant to the head of the Middle East department at DIA in scs2 so in our in our world a relatively senior guy and so I'd see those images and understand that that was wrong the way you all did and then go into the office and you know people were working longer hours but we were treating it like business uh as usual and and you know just t Working harder to make sure that
31:30 - 32:00 we got files or or uh reports or assessments to Israeli counterparts and that we were working to coordinate the uh DOD and Intel support for the Israeli Ministry of defense and the IDF and the other IDF subordinate uh intelligence services and you know after October 7th I think me I think everybody who follows the region even who doesn't we knew exactly
32:00 - 32:30 it was going to happen we knew Israel was going to do something terrible to Gaza and most of us thought it was going to last like three or four weeks like it usually does that's what my colleagues expected who are more experienced in the region than me it's kind of what I thought it's like well this is going to be really ugly um they're going to do the same thing that they always do and you know after the first two or so weeks it was clear that this was on a whole different scale and and but the the real thing that was the the
32:30 - 33:00 difference that you know we could all sense from the outside was that uh there was no voice in the US telling them to stop and usually when something like this happens the reason ends is because eventually the president puts his foot down uh it's a a bipartisan tradition um and even you know Biden did it earlier in uh in 2021 um but because of my position I had I had more access than normal people to to seeing if anybody was even talking about putting their foot down you know from the level of the NSC down to the
33:00 - 33:30 dni the Director of National Intelligence down to the head of my own agency down to my own office and I was looking every day while I Was preparing you know the the brief book for my boss and and dealing with a lot of um assessments and correspondence that that would have told me if anybody was was even considering moderating the level of support we were giving either at the national level or within the Community or within our agency and I was also looking for a sign
33:30 - 34:00 okay that that wasn't coming up and I was waiting and looking every day for any any taste of that uh well okay we're not doing that are are we at least recognizing the scale of the killing and the civilian suffering and the answer to that was yes the answer to that was yes I can tell you you know the chairman of the of the joint chief staff got a Brea thing every day from his intelligence director who's
34:00 - 34:30 a three star general um who had the updated casualty count as accurate as as anybody could could get it um so we had that so everybody knew it was going on and nobody was putting into writing what was actually happening though which was that Israel was deliberately or at that time you know the most generous estimate we could say with sort of want and disregard for civilian life killing uh thousands and thousands of innocent people people and so it was
34:30 - 35:00 really um you know it was surreal it was surreal going between that and then going back into the real world when I got out of the skiff you know the the secret facility where we worked and went home and and seeing um the other side of what was happening and so after a few weeks of that I'd seen enough to know that that nothing was going to change and I I had confidence in that because um I'd seen
35:00 - 35:30 the initial discussions about initial discussions many echelons above me uh about concerns that we might be facilitating war crimes by sharing Intel with Israeli counterparts so people had those concerns now with with interviews and articles we've seen I I I think it's pretty safe to say that the the dni herself had those concerns and the resolution to those was guidance
35:30 - 36:00 that basically if your Israeli counterpart tells you they're not going to use it for uh gross violations of human rights they're not case closed and that we'll take their assurance and that's the same standard that for a long time we held for arms transfers and for other parts of the relationship so when I when I saw that I knew that things were not going to improve at least not in the short run and I knew you know I already knew what I was contributing to I was just hoping it was going to end that I wouldn't have to to
36:00 - 36:30 do anything about it to be honest um but I I kind of gave up on that and so not to to join anel in correcting dates here I did get out of the Army in June but it takes it takes six months to do it if you're if you're moving at break next speed that's the the beauty of uh military bureaucracy and so I I put in my paperwork in November um I didn't tell anybody why I was the real reason I was leaving because I was afraid and I was afraid of um you know both professional
36:30 - 37:00 repercussions but honest mostly social uh social repercussions I guess and being a pariah and being cast out by the people I worked with who I really liked and respected uh otherwise and I I waited and waited to waited to see if there was going to be a good reason for me to retract my resonation paperwork and of course it never came and we got one horrific event after another that showed us that no matter what happened uh we weren't going
37:00 - 37:30 to change course on this policy and as I was finally getting out I still it didn't really occur to me to to tell anybody about it or to to be public like I was um and I just I want I want to touch on something an El said about Erin Bushnell that happened I think on a weekend and I came back into the office the next day and we'd have big flat screens playing the news playing CNN or or NBC or whatever and that news story
37:30 - 38:00 was playing on the screen in our office where our main job collectively was uh assisting the Israeli military and like nobody nobody talked about it you feel crazy um so you know a succession of events happened including the the start of student protests in the spring uh RAF the Rafa red line that was broken the uh report from the state
38:00 - 38:30 department the nsm2 that basically said yeah Israel might be doing war crimes but we're not going to stop uh sending them weapons that I I felt like I if I had any tools left at my disposal I needed to use them because that's how hopeless the the situation was and so that led me to speak out I have to ask you um and maybe this is more of a clarification is the US
38:30 - 39:00 milit is the US military helping Israel Target on the ground in in Gaza and was is that common knowledge um I would say barely the so we you know our various intelligence Services were tried to help them identify tunnels and underground facilities and tried to help them identify where hostages were and where senior homos leadership was um by the
39:00 - 39:30 way that was under the theory that if we helped them find the hostages and help them kill sinard all the senior leaders that would bring the the war to an end yeah um so on on that strategic level yes kind of I I don't think any of that help was was super useful and the Israelis when the Israelis bombed things in Gaza they they did it generally without needing our help um I and and I'm asking you this because it does seem to be a big uh mystery of how much integration there
39:30 - 40:00 has been between US military and Israel since October 7th um can you shed any more I would say we should not call that a mystery uh so that the just to to to indicate how little of a mystery that is I think by this last summer we sent uh the sencom commander which that's the the general in charge of all of our forces in the Middle East to sit in Israel uh at at their Pentagon equivalent or at their one of their
40:00 - 40:30 operation centers uh to help them plan the retaliation strikes on Iran so that was very public oh yeah I would like to be clear that that is that's certainly indicative indicative of the level of close communication between the militaries and between the intelligence Services which of course predates October 7th um but was prioritized and expanded after October 7th that doesn't mean that there are are us Personnel telling the the Israelis
40:30 - 41:00 what to to bomb in Gaza but there's extensive intelligence sharing and there are a lot of other countries in the region where Israel does not have as much um collection intelligence collection right that they also are interested in bombing or attacking uh so you know we it's it's not just Gaza I know at the beginning that uh we were told that a number of I don't know
41:00 - 41:30 if they were Special Forces or some sort of personnel were actually headed to Israel to help find the hostages and then and then everybody stopped talking about it so I I never got a sense of how many um US troops or special forces or what have you were actually on the ground there but do we have Personnel on the ground there so there's no there's nobody there was never anybody in Gaza and the best the best I can tell and this is through uh friends who are
41:30 - 42:00 journalists is that there were maybe some Navy Seals who went to Israel to support in headquarters and and lied and said that they were in Gaza um but we we did send a lot of people to to operational headquarters there was of course the whole Pier uh debacle which I would say effectively brought US troops to Gaza or they were standing on a pier that touched Gaza uh and then of course we have still um 100 plus air defense soldiers who are in southern Israel um
42:00 - 42:30 Manning a a strategic air defense battery so after you resigned I really am curious about the reaction that you got from your uh uh fellow service members um to your bre designation because I know it must have been tough for anel and we talked a little bit about this offline um but that that space the state department where you had a lot of people who were really you know
42:30 - 43:00 struggling um because many of them had come from maybe a human rights background a regional analyst like U you know civil rights international law but they maybe a little tougher uh caliber of um of folk in the US military were they like what are you doing this is our job uh what's your problem like what kind of reaction did you get yeah so to start with that you know I want to go back to what I was saying
43:00 - 43:30 about feeling this this cognitive dissonance of like oh my gosh this this tragedy is happening and no one's talking about it and I I kind of thought maybe that's because everybody was okay with it I didn't really know was I was afraid to ask and once you know I I I published my resignation letter or I sent it around the office first and then about a month later I I put it a public and a lot of people got back to me with with really supportive responses and a lot of these were
43:30 - 44:00 civilians I worked in agency that was mostly civilians um but it wasn't only civilians and I you know I felt a little embarrassed that I hadn't trusted some of these people before because I thought they were good people or good despite the job we were doing to me they were they they were people I trusted um I had other army officers folks I hadn't seen in years um reach out you know I think it was a there's a little bit of self-
44:00 - 44:30 selection there and that the haters probably did not they didn't for the most part bother to get in touch with me but I can tell you there's people I know um from the Intel world and from uniformed arm Services who yeah who were quite quite supportive and yeah hearing it from people I knew from the Army uh meant a lot I mean me meant more no offense to my other my Pia friends but um that was something I was I was super scared about and like one of one of the reasons I stayed quiet at work is I was
44:30 - 45:00 really afraid of what especially some of the the colonels and other senior folks who I respect and looked up to we do wow um well I have I have a ton more questions but I'm also trying to be mindful of the time and any Q&A that comes in um and now you mentioned that uh you have gotten together with your fellow reses is that is that how you term it it's like resign right um which sounds
45:00 - 45:30 really awesome because it you're creating a support for each other but that you can actually Focus some of some of this positive energy can you talk a little bit about that group and kind of where you are now in terms of the evolution from hi I just I just resigned and and fresh office and a Biden Administration to you know where you go from here and how how you're harnessing some of that energy
45:30 - 46:00 together yeah so it's it's um like I said things do feel a little different now um and happy to to get into that as well in terms of you know usaid doesn't exist anymore and people are losing their jobs right and left um and um so while it has been really great to have the the support of of Harrison and
46:00 - 46:30 Alex and and others in the group um I do think things feel somewhat different now and I do expect that there will be more whistleblowers and people calling out ways that this Administration is breaking the law just as the Biden Administration was um but it won't be only about us policy towards Gaza it's that's a whole range of things um there
46:30 - 47:00 there had been I just wanted to address a question that had come up about the notion of the odd relationship um with Israel you know I my understanding of the to explain the nature of the relationship is the strength of the Israel Lobby is the power of very I I mean when this is something that Kelly our our colleague Eli has has written about and we'll be writing more about is sort of the shift within the American Jewish Community um to which the Israel Lobby used to be more closely tied um
47:00 - 47:30 and then in the aftermath of citizens united and the ability of very wealthy individuals and um actors to influence politics so much more that we've seen an Israel Lobby that is no longer really tied to sort of the Grassroots of the American Jewish Community many of whom were strong Advocates of civil rights you know many of whom have expressed discomfort espe young people um discomfort with what Israel is doing
47:30 - 48:00 has been doing but that that the Israel Lobby no longer is so beholden to that broader community and instead really tied to the interests of people like very wealthy donors like Miriam adelen for example um or just other extremely wealthy individuals who have such a grip not only on us Israel policy but things like the military-industrial complex or just so many other aspects of what drives our city here of Washington DC um
48:00 - 48:30 so just just to get to that answer you know I I do think that domestic politics and lobbying um is is really one of the core explanations for the nature of the US of of what we were terming this sort of odd us Israel relationship so Harrison and enel I know anel you work with me Harrison you're with Dawn and win without War Alex I mean what is what are your prospects so
48:30 - 49:00 you you get squeezed out of this job and now all of the funding for probably the contracts that you would normally be working for seems to have dried up too um can you talk a little bit about what your personal and professional next steps are because it sounds like you have a lot of um institutional experience and we would love to have you out in the field but like is there any place that'll have you right now or that is is there still jobs for the stuff
49:00 - 49:30 that you do it's a good question I was kind of hoping you wouldn't ask that because it's a bit embarrassing how yeah there's not a lot going right now um I'm doing some research here and there with Cambridge and with a few other groups um but yeah I'm not uh yet able to get into a high paid uh un job I think you know un is is somewhat immune from the kinds of issues that would bar me from working
49:30 - 50:00 in the US again and that suits me because I don't really have any desire to live in the US in the near term um one thing I'm considering is is doing a PhD even though I already have three postgraduate degrees uh because it would be something to do and it's something I'm I'm passionate about yeah so I submitted a research proposal to Oxford a few months ago um to research crimes of deprivation um international law um you know asking the question can
50:00 - 50:30 countries like Israel are they more likely to get away with genocide if it's done through infectious disease through starvation through deprivation and not through bombs and bullets as we know from other conflicts you can kill four times or higher with uh non-kinetic strikes things like starvation um so that's what I'd like to dedicate my time to so let's take if we can the the the the Trump moment out of the
50:30 - 51:00 equation um and this is kind of a tough question and I want to ask each of you do you feel like what you did had any impact whatsoever on the policies and I will just stay with the the Biden administration because that's where you made your stand um did it help uh were you left frustrated afterwards um were you expecting more people to do the same can you talk a little bit about that the the ups and downs I'll start
51:00 - 51:30 with a now um I mean I it it had zero impact on the policy um I have heard from people um you know people similar to kind of what Harrison was talking about of you know hearing from people who I respected or people who I hadn't heard from in years who reached out to say thank you um certainly there was there was some um
51:30 - 52:00 online hatred um but really less than I was expecting I really thought the that I was going to have to deal with like a deluge of you know online harassment and instead I I really had a lot of people Express their their appreciation um so I mean I have had people tell me it made a difference to the extent that that people in in the region even people
52:00 - 52:30 in Gaza knowing that someone at the state department had resigned I mean our colleague our our friend uh Josh Paul was the first person to resign publicly and he did so within weeks of October 7th um and you know I I just commend his courage for doing that at a moment when I think you know public opinion in the United States was really so much against that whereas by the time I resigned I think there was again this sense of just desperation of what what were we doing here um that was kind of manifested by
52:30 - 53:00 by Aaron Bushnell um so so I I don't think it had any impact on the policy um but I I hope that maybe in the long run it will have an impact on how all of this is remembered yeah inshallah Harrison yeah um and I'm I will first say you know we if we fought a campaign
53:00 - 53:30 and we we're on the losing side it doesn't mean we're on the wrong side and I I incredibly will always be proud uh of what side of this we we've been on and continued to be on and um yeah whether whether it changed the policy is an interesting question maybe maybe not the three of us or the dozen of us uh for For Better or Worse it's undeniable that the the large movement of Americans who opposed what we're
53:30 - 54:00 doing in Gaza uh which which we played our tiny role in uh did change the policy um it had a big role in determining who the president was great point and I I've have been I remain extremely skeptical uh about where the the current ceasefire deal uh which we can see in quotations given the the uh violations from day one where that deal is going to lead but Donald Trump did not decide
54:00 - 54:30 that he even want you know he he thought at least it needed to look like he was making a peace deal on Gaza that didn't come out of nowhere that came from domestic political pressure do not mean that I support his plans right now it doesn't mean I have a lot of confidence in them um but we were we were part of a change um I don't know what the future of American politics is look like but our Viewpoint is one that's that's never
54:30 - 55:00 going to be ignored again and I uh I'm I'm proud of that and what it's also just a very small consolation to know we were right yeah and I'll I'll say I at least maybe the group collectively has been has been a little bit quieter in some of our public activism since the election um but it was because we were desperately hoping that you know Biden and the Harris campaign would change Tac on this issue
55:00 - 55:30 so that they could win it's not I'm not going to speak for all 12 of us here but that's at least where I was coming from from it yeah yeah Alex you were squeezed out of your job you could have just kind of like you said you could have reapplied you know into another position uh at another for another contractor um but you chose to go out and talk about it on the media which brought a lot more attention to to uh the cause that you um
55:30 - 56:00 were trying to highlight in your in your report and in your slideshow do you think that made any difference by you know um taking this to the taking this to the to a national audience uh yes and no as anel and and Harrison have already said you know I don't think that me alone really makes much of a difference but collectively the 12 or 13 of us uh Plus as Harrison said all all the people the non-committed vote the activists the
56:00 - 56:30 student protesters out on the campuses raising their voices um all of us collectively will have an impact on the next cycle um I'd like to think that the next Democratic presidential candidate will will hopefully understand that they can't support genocide and get elected that that's the deal breaker for most people and you see that in the polling uh 77% of Democrats who oppose shipments to Israel and that's an old poll I'm sure it's much higher than that now um and
56:30 - 57:00 then the IMU poll that came out just recently about the people who voted for Biden and then not for Harris the number one reason was the genocide in Gaza um even even higher than the economy and the inflation problems uh so I would hope that yeah all of us collectively can have an impact and maybe who knows someday maybe the 12 of us will be involved in informing Jamal Bowman's presidential campaign on how to talk about gasa and Healthcare and human
57:00 - 57:30 rights and defense um I don't really want to get into personalities but I am going to because offline we started to talk a little bit about Samantha power and as you know you know she made her name as a journalist uh covering war in Bosnia uh she wrote a book about the problem from Hell uh about Rwanda and the entire book was we need to take
57:30 - 58:00 this on board what happened in Rwanda make sure it never happens again we we should have intervened earlier and um prevented that genocide then fast forward to 2024 and as anel had pointed out in her resignation letter the international criminal court has said that there's plausible evidence that genocide is happening in Israel and now Samantha power is the leader of us Aid and a very
58:00 - 58:30 powerful member of the Biden Administration has a seat on the National Security Council um I don't know who wants to speak first on this but I mean if Samantha power was unable to stand up for what was right here given her background um and all of her credibility that she had stored up on on this issue issue like what's going on here I mean could anybody have stood up
58:30 - 59:00 I mean if not her and what do you think that says I guess for The credibility of all of our other leaders who stand up and talk about human rights and international law and genocide and preventing I mean this it it this is this seems to have been quite a turning point moment in in terms of the faith and the trust that we've had in leadership um anybody want to jump in on
59:00 - 59:30 that one uh I'll just yeah just really quickly so I want to correct that Samantha power isn't uh the head anymore she was a political appoin so her last day was right the day before Trump's inauguration yeah um but yeah but I liked to give her the benefit benefit of the doubt that she thought that she was doing work to protect USA's budget by not talking about the genocide because she certainly knows that it's a genocide
59:30 - 60:00 um that was the best case scenario but the fact that she still hasn't said anything now um Le me to think that she's simply a careerist who decided it was not in her best interest to talk about the genocide H but yeah it's been a really revealing era and I've certainly had my eyes open uh I used to think that Joe Biden was a good man essentially and and kamla Harris and a lot of the Democrats who have completely capitulated decided that their power or perhaps they really believe that Israel
60:00 - 60:30 is defending itself still um but I think most of them just understand that uh you know going against Israel is not in their personal interest and have decided to to take the cowards half but that's been revelatory to me so I would hope that many Americans have had the same Awakening that not just on Gaza but on many issues the Democratic party simply doesn't represent our interests um Andel can you imagine a
60:30 - 61:00 time when you go to the bookstore and you see the the brand new book by Samantha power about you know uh retelling her her time in the in the in the B Administration I mean is is that even a prospect I mean or does she sort of disappear into the midst of time I mean does she recover from this in terms of her credibility on this issue I mean you know another figure to highlight is Brett mcer who just started
61:00 - 61:30 a a not only a a gig at the Harvard's belfer Center but also you know what I'm sure is very lucrative job um in in as like a um like a as a contractor um I'd have to look up specifically but you know and he and you know Anthony blinkin Jake Sullivan you know all of these these people um I think it's really up to to us and to
61:30 - 62:00 the American people to determine to what extent these people are allowed to sort of move through the world and face zero accountability um you know thinking about the ways that the architects of the Iraq War were allowed to proceed and continue and end the war in Afghanistan and the many other uh horrific military interventions the US has been involved in um you know thinking about people like Daniel ellberg in whose honor we
62:00 - 62:30 are gathered here today and how you know he suffered as a result but very few of the The Architects of the Vietnam War were ever held accountable for for what what was done um and I you know I also think of like the decision by the Obama Administration not to pursue some kind of accountability or Reckoning for what the Bush Administration did even to roll back things like the authorization for the use of military force which we continue to operate under and which
62:30 - 63:00 Trump is now using to as a justification for potentially bombing cartels in Mexico somehow that's related to 911 um so so knowing that the the um centers of Power are unlikely to hold their sort of other members of their Circle accountable it is up to to people and I do think that in an era of of social media where people do have the
63:00 - 63:30 ability to share and spread information much more easily than was possible during the Vietnam era um or even you know at the time of 911 uh it is it is more possible to maybe hold some of these people accountable or at least to not allow them to um you know kind of be able to you know mger show up at a at a Harvard event and and not face protesters I mean I very much hope that he does face a lot of
63:30 - 64:00 protesters yeah um Harrison I'm just thinking you know ahead you know have been having been in DC for a long time and I share the frustration with enel that a lot of these architects of the of our uh 20 years of war are running around and um still sitting in front of a camera and getting accolades and invited to all sorts of panels and writing books do you think it might be different in this case now okay Iraq war
64:00 - 64:30 failure Afghanistan failure but this um short period uh of the the Gaza conflict nothing was resolved before these people were all tossed out after the election so they can't even go back and say well I we we kept our head down uh we voiced our concerns privately with the Netanyahu government because you know we were able to achieve a b or c they
64:30 - 65:00 didn't achieve anything it was the Trump Administration that came in and got the ceasefire agreement so do you think that will they be able to rehabilitate themselves or are we are are we really going to see a situation where they won't be able to we will hold them accountable and the fact that they didn't achieve anything by being so silent and by being um so quietly implicit in in in the tragedy that we've seen unfold um that it's going to sort
65:00 - 65:30 of I don't know uh prevent them uh from from moving ahead without checks um you know I morally I don't think these people deserve peace for the rest of their their lives and I you know even the past year I always hoped I'd run into them uh in DC somewhere so I could yell at them it hasn't happened yet I maybe need to go to the at more often but I I mean like like anel said
65:30 - 66:00 right uh mcgurk and for those you don't know he was basically the number three man uh for the Biden's Gaza um Administration um already at at Harvard Kennedy School which I and I'm just gonna point this I I did my grad degree at the place that's hosting gr Brett mcgurk and while I was there we had uh 96-year-old Henry Kissinger call in on Zoom to one of my classes yeah is this time going to be different um I honestly
66:00 - 66:30 think it is I you know I was I was quite young during the invasion of Iraq I I didn't have you know we didn't have Tik Tok we the the students on here are going to think that I'm ancient there was not YouTube back then we we were probably bombing Baghdad in ways that are comparable to what Israel's done to Gaza there was no footage of that there was no there was no no way for a normal person even a normal concerned person who opposed the war to to have an idea a
66:30 - 67:00 visceral idea of kind of the level of Carnage uh that was happening from that war that's different now everybody who's interested even people who aren't interested are are deeply affected by this um I think also maybe maybe different from Iraq is the uh you know there there was not even really a strong case from this Administration that any of this was a good idea which at least not I don't say give them credit the Bush Administration
67:00 - 67:30 tried very hard to make a case that invading Iraq was a good idea and there were a lot of supposedly reasonable people uh who were quite excited about that Prospect in 2002 2003 and I don't think that that was replicated this time at all and that even you know the position that this was even a good idea um I won't I don't know if it was the minority but you you even in a media that was quite sympathetic to Israel you didn't see uh
67:30 - 68:00 I'd say that that level of support so I think yeah clearly they're going to get hired I think they know they need to keep their heads down in a way that perhaps some of the architects of the Iraq war did not feel they needed to yeah so let me ask you what it's next I'd love to hear uh what each of you um would hope to to be doing uh in the next chat um whether it's um you know
68:00 - 68:30 writing advocating I know what Nell does because I work with her um but what where do you see you that you can be of assistance now that you're out there um you you've gotten followings people are listening to what you have to say um can you talk a little bit and maybe I'll start with you Harrison because I'm I'm really curious you know as a former military like where do you see that you're most needed right now like what will you be doing in this
68:30 - 69:00 space yeah I mean I would say the the Gaza conflict has clearly followed us home I don't mean me personally though it has but as a as a country and you know I I it is one of the causes of the the changes the awful changes that are happening domestically right now and I think it's going to be very hard to to find any of the solutions that we
69:00 - 69:30 hope for uh in the Middle East or anywhere abroad until um we come to some kind of resolution I don't know what it's going to be but of of the the dismantling of the government that's happening right now and so I I I think anel and and Alexander and everybody else who resigned shares this with me is that we felt like we needed something was wrong and and we needed to use the limited tools at our disposal to
69:30 - 70:00 do something even if it was it was just talking about it which was all we felt we could do um I'm still I'm still looking for what that solution is for the the series of crises that we're in now uh in my my current job at wom without War my big project that I'm doing next week is an event that's meant to convince Congress to understand why it's a bad idea if we bomb cartels in Mexico because that's uh
70:00 - 70:30 something that's on the table now and I feel even that is the least of our worries um so I think you know there the people who are on this call are probably people of conscience and people who care deeply what what happens around the world and what the United States does uh around the world and I don't think we should stop caring about that and as anel mentioned earlier I'm still very mad about Brett mcgurk and I'm I will do what I can to hold these people accountable I'm not losing sight of that
70:30 - 71:00 amidst everything else that's happening but uh I think um you know I personally am going to have to look closer to home and about what I can do in my in my community if if the other levers of power that are meant to protect me are not working Alex I mean we have a a president who declared a few weeks ago that he wants to clear out Gaza rebuild Gaza Palestinians may be able to come
71:00 - 71:30 back or not given on what day he's talking about it um some people believe he was just pressuring the Arab Nations and the neighborhood to rebuild it themselves and he's basically threatening them um but okay let's just say let's just say that he helps Israel initiate the ethnic cleansing of of Gaza as a policy what are your thoughts about whether or not there is a um um an architecture of
71:30 - 72:00 opposition that would be capable of jumping in at this time I mean we spent a year trying to stop what was going on in or more than a year in Gaza um people had to quit you were squeezed out of your job um now everybody's out of a job who are working in in this in this realm do we have what it takes to to to put pressure on the Trump Administration to
72:00 - 72:30 not engage in um a disastrous policy of that kind I mean wow did did did he just wipe out all the people that could be you know properly opposing such policies yeah um and to be clear you know the the policy that he's proposing it's been really disappointing to see it described in the media as like a bold plan or you know describing Trump's plan to to get all the people out of Gaza
72:30 - 73:00 these These are crimes in international law right when I was in law school I took courses in IHL and then briefly worked at the ICC so um forcible transfer uh is a crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention and also the IC uh statute um my I have a slightly more optimistic point of view and it's probably because of my geography I'm not in the US and so I I don't think of the us as the the Alpha and Omega the be all
73:00 - 73:30 and end all of everything and we have seen slow moving but positive signs from Europe in the sense that when the IJ in July of last year um not the the genocide case but the the occupation case said that Israel's occupation is illegal that it needs to be dismantled reparations need to be paid and that any third country has a duty to not support the occupation in any way um that was a
73:30 - 74:00 very bold decision from the icj and when it came up at the general assembly a surprising number of countries voted for it Australia for the first time that's never recognized Palestinian statehood before voted for that resolution um every EU country except for czechia and Hungary either voted for it or abstained from including Germany which is quite remarkable they obained um so we are seeing some steps
74:00 - 74:30 towards real pressure not from the US but from other countries that could have an impact I mean if the EU changes its if they end their trade with Israel that's a third of Israel's economy um so that could actually Force an end to not just the the genocide in Gaza but the the occupation as well um maybe I'm being a bit naive and optimistic but I also take some consolation from the fact that you know from the first bill in the
74:30 - 75:00 US Congress to um isolate South Africa during apartheid it took something like 14 15 years for that to actually take effect um so you know if you think of Bernie Sanders Bill to stop funing Israel as a similar thing we might be in for a very long very long and frustrating Journey but I think eventually things will turn and and based on the politics of young people today I think it's inevitable that it will eventually turn in favor of
75:00 - 75:30 Justice Nel what do you think about the international response and particularly the un uh you know in in in my mind I felt like very I don't know just a bit disappointed um I realize that all the levers are there to try to enforce inter international law but without the buyin from the United States um and with
75:30 - 76:00 Israel just saying well we're not a party to this and we're not doing anything wrong so just shove it I mean have you how do you feel today about um the powers of the United Nations the International Community in creating some sort of like Norms shared norms and enforcing them when we have what we have going on in Gaza and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it I know there's some hope like Alex has said
76:00 - 76:30 that at some point those pressures will come to Bear but in terms of the immediacy you know the UN passed few was it two major resolutions and and there's been no change yeah and this speaks to something a lot of people have been asking in in the Q&A um and one one of which I tried to answer um uh I mean essentially the UN is functioning as it was designed to do which is to prevent World War II so
76:30 - 77:00 it's it's supposed to make sure that a major power is not going to turn to war in order to pursue its objectives and thus far we have not had World War III luckily but I do think that the war on Gaza has demonstrated the a global hunger to reform these institutions to rethink things like the power of the UN Security Council in particular the V the very limited membership of you know countries and and just thinking more broadly you know the demographic Trends
77:00 - 77:30 you know the the the the membership of who has this veto power on on the UN Security Council no longer reflects sort of the the reality of of humanity and so I do think that there's pressure building for reform of that but it will it will continue to have this this inherent um tension between wanting to prevent another conflict on the scale of something like World War II or what would be worse because it would be a nuclear confrontation and and achieving
77:30 - 78:00 Justice and accountability which the UN was not designed to do um I do think that you know before before all of this like I was aware of the ICC I was aware of the icj I couldn't have told you much about them I couldn't have told you much about human rights law and I do think that it has really made it so much more Salient people are are looking this up they're you know they have a much better better understanding of what these institutions are at least they've heard of them um and I think it has contributed to this demand for for
78:00 - 78:30 rethinking you know the fact that this this Rogue State empowered by a superpower could could carry out genocide in full view of the entire world um documented by its own soldiers um so you know I I certainly don't think that would happen under this Administration but I do think that you know whether whether the US wants to be wants to Le on that process or whether the US will be sort of dragged Kicking and Screaming um or if we'll end up in
78:30 - 79:00 such a bifurcated system where you do have countries like China Russia you know other countries that decide they don't actually want to be part of any sort of global system anymore and you have you know Europe and maybe the Us and other um you know maybe Israel you know continuing to sort of play by by these other rules I mean my hope is moving forward that there would continue to be some kind of international governance structure that that all countries would view as as sufficiently legitimate that
79:00 - 79:30 they would want to be part of it and your point about you know how do we strengthen these Norms of Human Rights I mean Norms Norms you know they're I think in many ways like the the norm of Human Rights protection remains strong because people keep talking about it you know people are outraged by what's been done and so I I do think that although it is it is horrifying to observe the ways in which it has not been protected I do think that it it has it has reified for many people the the horrors of of
79:30 - 80:00 when a population is is sort of treated as as subhuman in such a public way yeah I guess the other fear is that other other countries or other nations um will not feel inhibited of just doing whatever they want because they look at Israel and the United States and and and others and well there there really wasn't any um accountability like the UN
80:00 - 80:30 couldn't actually enforce um these laws and um you could have an era where you know it's it's everybody's it's to each his own so to speak and they follow the rules when they want and they break them when it's convenient uh to them so it's it's it's very difficult and I think that's where a lot of this the disappointment with our government comes in because we had always held ourselves up to a standard uh that we were um the in indispensable
80:30 - 81:00 Nation the beacon of light whatever cliche you want to throw in there but it seemed you know that was the one thing that had sort of United Americans in thinking that particular after World War II uh that we uh were a for a Force for good and then in creating the United Nations were able to sort of like build this community of like-minded um countries and when we saw
81:00 - 81:30 the weakest and the meekest being exploited um and um and civilians um succumbing you know uh in in times in in wars and being victimized that there would be somebody stand up for them and that's clearly um not happening in this case because of this relationship and um you know our choos I I would jump in
81:30 - 82:00 just to say I mean the United States has committed atrocities you know you think about Vietnam oh yeah absolutely we we've kept up the facade though for as long as we possibly could and I I personally think that what's happened in the last two and a half years has just blown it all through in blown it out of the water for good you know like I feel like we have M maintained the fiction for as long as we possibly could and now it's just like there's just no going
82:00 - 82:30 back I don't think I don't think anybody um believes um how and I'm a big critic of the mainstream media how do each of you feel the the media the major media and its coverage of of Gaza and the um the war crimes the atrocities the starvation everything has has contributed to um the inac accountability of of Israel uh on
82:30 - 83:00 this front like what role did they play in allowing the US government to turn a blind eye and um for as long as it's it did I I realize the election sort of what was a like a check but it it certainly wasn't the media do you think I mean I think they were allowed this to prolong Harrison okay Alex looked like he wanted to say something yeah I wantan to I mean it's a very important question and I
83:00 - 83:30 want to preface this by saying that from the start there have been journalists who've been trying to do the right thing and I I know some of them in the same kind of fight that Alex was having USA ID they were having inside their their newsrooms to get to try and get the headline on the article they wrote changed from you know uh five five 14-year-old gazen women die mysteriously to Israeli airstrike kills
83:30 - 84:00 four children you know um that being said the the editors the people running these papers yeah overwhelmingly um misled and and kind of obfuscated the extent of the war the causes of the War uh the level of of Devastation was very frustrating to see and the I I think it matters matters very much because the people who depend on the New York Times um or like the
84:00 - 84:30 Atlantic or something or or some of these Publications for their news are sometimes important people the sort of people who can influence their representatives or or influence um some of our elected leaders and yeah I mean I will see if if anel or Alex if you have friends who are in the journalism business but uh people have been quite explicit to me about them having to fight to to spit out an article um that that bears a
84:30 - 85:00 semblance to the the actual sequence of events that happened when the Israeli military killed a lot of uh civilians um and I I will just mention one yeah so it it's had a very um it was very complicit collectively unfortunately in what's happened Alex were you going to say something and I cut you off no I was just reflecting on on the question uh
85:00 - 85:30 I've never seen anything like what we're seeing today in terms of just complete irresponsibility on the on the part of mainstream media and sources that I used to trust like uh BBC and NPR used to be my bastions for truth um but yeah to see to see them dropping the ball dehumanizing Palestinians paring uh you know IDF talking points without any critical thought whatsoever uh the human Shields thing for example I mean we've been hearing this excuse from Israel for
85:30 - 86:00 decades uh Human Rights Watch did a very good report in 2006 on the claim of human shields in Lebanon and found that there was Zero evidence for that so if a journalist ever heard that term and decided to interrogate it they might find that it's it's a lie today as well but that those claims are never interrogated they just say it's true or they say Israel says this and and Palestinians say this um and it was very
86:00 - 86:30 disappointing to see the many Palestinian journalists who are on the ground reporting on what's Happening to them firsthand uh being ignored and you would see people say there are no journalists in in Gaza they mean there are no for foreign journalists but there are journalists um but as Harrison said you can see that battle taking place in some institutions like the New York Times that is famous above all others for dehumanizing headlines where they will say some Palestinians died when
86:30 - 87:00 they have been you know intentionally targeted and killed uh and yet the New York Times came out with I think the best article I've seen in the last year um which was 65 Physicians just talking about going to Gaza and what they saw firsthand and you know how many of them saw children shot in the head how many of them saw people being starved to death um so so yeah there certainly is a battle going on I wish there was more bravery within media organizations but
87:00 - 87:30 we haven't really seen that in mess especially when you consider how many journalists have been killed um and that's completely ignored I mean you'll see a throw away line here and there um in the mainstream press quoting the number um but there doesn't seem to be the outrage you would think from the the fourth estate here um which is is usually pretty FOC used on itself and that's been ignored as as well as the Banning of Al jazer from both Gaza
87:30 - 88:00 and West Bank so an entire news organization the best news organization on the ground there has been banned and you you hear you barely hear a word about that here in the United States and now what do you think about um the media coverage um do you have some mixed feelings too about um how well they've been doing or so much I mean I think the the mainstream media has been a crucial factor factor in the manufacturer of consent and it's part of
88:00 - 88:30 you know they've recognized that the the move to ban Tik Tok reflected the fact that it was radicalizing young people against Israel and in favor of of ending the genocide um that being said you know a a friend of mine was lost his job at the Wall Street Journal because he refused to continue to to sort of tow the line that was required I know that's been the case for many journalists um and in general the fact that you know I I I noticed in my opad at the time um
88:30 - 89:00 I think 90 journalists had been killed as of last March and now I think it's 194 and at the time when I when I noted that it was more than had been killed in any other conflict since records of journalist deaths you know it's more than doubled since then um and so I I do think it's it's fairly atrocious the fact that mainstream media have not been calling out the way that that journalists have been targeted um similarly you know healthcare workers
89:00 - 89:30 being targeted or humanitarian workers being directly targeted by by Israel um that being said I did just see that I was unaware of this but there was uh doctors against genocide just staged a big protest today in Congress um demanding you know this Administration change its policies on Gaza um so you know I I do think that um it's
89:30 - 90:00 it's this and other issues that are contributing to undermining of Trust in Media I mean this certainly didn't start with Gaza but um it did not help that issue um and you know as someone mentioned in the chat you know now this Administration is is trying to go after media organization simply for for doing their job not in any way drawing attention to to what's happening to Palestinians um I know we're I think we're running out of out of time here um
90:00 - 90:30 but there I I appreciate all the the questions that people have been asking and I've been trying to get to some of them well I know there was a question about how we can mag magnify the voices of the reses I think that's fair important because I know this is an ongoing conversation and are there places I mean I know Harrison you're on X and L you're on x you have a great following where can people follow you um you know and
90:30 - 91:00 then amplifier your work if you're publishing you know know when you're going to be on a a media hit or whatever can you each just maybe a final word on like where where we can keep up with you I'm rapidly looking up what my Twitter handle is uh for somebody who asked that Arison uncore Jore man yes one of you has the opportunity to become my 342nd follower so let's get
91:00 - 91:30 him 34,000 [Laughter] tonight I'm so not texy and I never join Twitter I'm happy to say um but I am on Instagram I just put my handle in the chat it's Alex and Wonderland one two3 and a now yeah saying people have saying they they've activated or they've deactivated their ex accounts I'm not yet on Blue
91:30 - 92:00 Sky um but you know you can also follow my work just at the Quincy Institute um uh you know in particular so this is not something that um Harrison and Alex and I are directly involved in but our colleagues um Josh and T have launched an organization called a new policy to try to push for a new approach to Israel that is grounded in actual us interests and not in simply uh pursuing the interests of of Netanyahu um so certainly look up their
92:00 - 92:30 work um they're doing really really exciting stuff and um yeah appreciate the the work that all of you are doing hopefully in your own communities to talk to people to talk uh about these issues you know sharing on social media is part of how this issue got so much more attention than it had initially so you know your social media shares might feel small but they they do have an impact you know I feel bad CU I saw a couple um questions that I hadn't seen
92:30 - 93:00 before and one of them seems there's a couple that kind of get to the same theme and maybe if I can be indulge and just have one extra minute here like in a lightning run but how do you know when to stay and fight and when it's time to resign that's a great question like some people like well why didn't you just stay and try to you know try to change things from within I I want to ask that question I know you've thought about it some someone asked this about The Descent cables you know so I I
93:00 - 93:30 co-authored a descent cable I signed to others there's not a lot of transparency so if I'd been aware of more I would have been happy to sign all the cables but I mean Lincoln himself acknowledged that he's received dozens of cables about Gaza which is to my knowledge more than about any other issue in such a short time frame um so there are certainly channels for internal descent at least at State um but you know having been involved in those efforts after about six months it was just clear that nothing was changing um so you know I
93:30 - 94:00 think personally it it it seemed that the only way to to try to effeti any kind of change was to to renounce it renounce the policy publicly eriston yeah I'm and I'm glad you brought up that question because I said out in the chat and I I think about that a lot too I mean I think you you have to be honest with yourself are you are you implementing the policy that you disagree with or not and if you you might be in a position where you're genuinely putting sand in
94:00 - 94:30 the gears or pushing against it um but I you know other friends or colleagues I confronted always kind of gave this answerers like well if I if I leave somebody worse is going to be in my job and I was like but you're in your job right now and you're still doing you're still doing the Israel support so I think you you know and you've made a good faith effort or if a good faith effort is even possible I kind of did less than know than Alex I I was totally hopeless that I could even do anything and um if you're if you're waiting for
94:30 - 95:00 that moment to come where somebody tells you to stop somebody else tells you to stop it's not it's not GNA happen yeah that's a good point and I like the analogy with the sand in the gears so if you're not able and you're not putting sand in the gears like what are you doing then but enabling whatever is happening well I I guess I'll leave it on that and I'll leave it at a note from the anonymous attendee who said that Daniel ellsburg partly caused the end of
95:00 - 95:30 the Vietnam War all three of you have played a role in the eventual end of the Israel Hamas War thank you um and I thank you very much for all of your candid responses tonight and for being who you are and I hope to see your faces again at some point and to work with all of you I know I work with anel and I see her lovely face every day so but hey too y