Re: Israel vs Palestine/Lebanon/Iran/Yemen/Syria: a New Middle East War
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🇵🇸🇺🇸🪖⚔️ 🇺🇸🇮🇱Army Officer Resigns in Protest of ‘Unqualified’ U.S. Support to Israel
While assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency, Maj. Harrison Mann said he was enabling policies that violated his conscience.
An Army officer assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency has resigned in protest over the United States’ support for Israel, which he said had “enabled and empowered” the killing of Palestinian civilians.
The officer, Maj. Harrison Mann, announced his resignation and explained his reasons for leaving the service in a post on the social media site LinkedIn on Monday. According to his biography on the site, he has specialized in the Middle East and Africa for about half of his 13-year career and previously served at the U.S. Embassy in Tunis.
“The policy that has never been far from my mind for the past six months is the nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel, which has enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians,” Major Mann wrote in the post, which noted that he had previously emailed his comments to co-workers on April 16. “This unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks wider war.”
Reached by phone on Monday, Major Mann confirmed that he was the author of the post but declined to comment further, referring questions to the D.I.A.’s office of corporate communications.
It is unclear whether other military officers have resigned in protest of U.S. foreign policy since the deadly Hamas-led attacks in Israel in October ignited the war, but the resignation of an active-duty officer in protest of U.S. foreign policy is likely uncommon — especially one in which the officer makes public the reasons for doing so.
A spokeswoman for the Army was not immediately able to confirm whether other officers had resigned for similar reasons since the war began.
As the death toll in Gaza has risen, the Biden administration has faced waves of internal dissent for supporting Israel in the war. In October, Josh Paul, a State Department official in the bureau that oversees arms transfers, resigned in protest of the administration’s decision to continue sending weapons to Israel.
Major Mann said he had planned to leave the Army “at some point” but that the Gaza war led him to submit his resignation on Nov. 1 and leave his assignment at the D.I.A. early.
https://nytimes.com/2024/05/13/us/ar...za-israel.html
https://x.com/dana916/status/1790087389513175483
https://x.com/anadoluagency/status/1790152265958826162
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east...israel/3218621
US Army officer resigns over Washington's support for Israel
A US Army officer announced Monday that he had resigned in protest over Washington’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Harrison Mann, an officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in his letter of resignation which he published on LinkedIn that the US's "nearly unqualified support" for Israel "enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.”
Stating that his work "unquestionably contributed to that support," Mann said: "This has caused me incredible shame and guilt.”
"This unconditional support also encourages reckless escalation that risks wider war,” he added.
Last month, Hala Rharrit, the US State Department's spokeswoman for the Middle East and North Africa, resigned in protest of the Biden administration's policy on the Gaza Strip.
Rharrit has worked in various roles at the State Department since 2005 and was a spokesperson for the Middle East and North Africa since August 2022, according to her LinkedIn page.
She is the third State Department official who has resigned publicly since Oct. 7 after Annelle Sheline, a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, announced her resignation last month and Josh Paul, former director of the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, publicly announced his resignation on Oct. 19.
Israel has waged a military offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas which killed around 1,200 people.
More than 35,000 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 78,700 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.
Over seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.
Israel is accused of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice, which has ordered Tel Aviv to ensure that its forces do not commit acts of genocide and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
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