United States officials who had resigned from former President Joe Biden’s administration due to his policy on Gaza have called on potential Democratic candidates for the 2028 presidential race to denounce that policy.
In a joint statement titled “Gaza Resignees” published on Wednesday, 12 former officials who had quit between late 2023 and 2024 said they had resigned from their service to the US government over its “illegal and unconditional support for Israel’s actions in Gaza”.
“The most basic level of accountability, the most minimal level of consequences, is to ensure that those who have wreaked so much harm from within the highest levels of our Government cannot return to it,” the statement read.
“We call on candidates for the 2028 Presidential Nomination to commit to not hire any administration official directly responsible for enabling Israel’s military actions in Gaza,” it added.
Several rights groups, experts, scholars and United Nations inquiries have assessed that Israel’s devastating war on Gaza amounts to genocide.
Since October 2023, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed at least 74,564 Palestinians and injured at least 175,770, according to Palestinian health authorities.
The Biden administration, which governed from 2021-2024, has faced pushback and condemnation from progressive lawmakers and activist groups since the war began.
US Representative Rashida Tlaib and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani have opposed the US’s ongoing support for Israel, which has continued since President Donald Trump was re-elected last year.
In advance of the 2028 election, the former officials said several “architects” of Biden’s Gaza policy were now “whitewashing their own roles in enabling genocide”.
“When faced with the opportunity to stand up in defense of our laws, they not only stayed silent, but worked resolutely in pursuit of illegal and wrongful ends in violation of both US and international law,” they said, adding that many of those same officials were now pursuing a path back into policymaking.
The statement called on Democratic candidates for the 2028 presidential race to pledge to three oaths, including to uphold the Constitution and pursue the national interest of the US, and to acknowledge the US’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza through arms, funding and diplomatic backing.
The third oath urged the nominees to pledge to commit to building an administration that reflects US interests and creates “no space” for those who were an “architect, leader, defender, or key enabler, of the US policies of unconditional support to Israel that constitute complicity in a genocide”.
