The Joe Biden White House, led by
Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, and the US State Department, led by Secretary of
State Antony Blinken have been strong backers of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,
providing both weapons and funding needed to continue the slaughter of
Palestinians.
According to Stacy Gilbert, a former senior US official who resigned this week, the report initially made clear that Israel was blocking US-provided humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza, based on the consensus of State Department experts consulted to draft the report.
Gilbert was one of the department’s subject matter experts who drafted the report mandated under National Security Memorandum 20 (NSM-20) and published on May 10, 2024.
However, higher-ranking State Department officials edited the draft of the report, changing the conclusion to suggest that Israel was not blocking aid.
Gilbert resigned earlier this week from her post as senior civil-military adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration in response to the change.
The final version of the NSM-20 report said the State Department did not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of US humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
The change in the report’s conclusion assured that the US could continue to export weapons to Israel amid its ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed over 35,000 people. Hundreds of thousands more are at risk of starvation.
Under a clause in the Foreign Assistance Act, the US is obliged to cut arms sales and security assistance to any country that has blocked the delivery of US aid.
Since October 07, 2023 Israeli leaders have openly stated they wish to prevent food and other aid from entering Gaza, while the Israeli army has killed aid workers, police providing security to aid convoys, and Palestinian civilians seeking to collect food aid.
Gilbert, who worked for the State Department for twenty years, including in several war zones, said that the report’s conclusion contradicted the overwhelming consensus of State Department experts who were consulted on the report.
She said there was general agreement that Israel was playing a role in limiting the amount of food and medical supplies crossing the border into Gaza.
“There is consensus among the humanitarian community on that. It is absolutely the opinion of the humanitarian subject matter experts in the state department, and not just in my bureau – people who look at this from the intelligence community and from other bureaus. I would be very hard pressed to think of anyone who has said [Israeli obstruction] is not an issue,” Gilbert said. “That’s why I object to that report saying that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance. That is patently false.”
“Sometime at the end of April, the subject matter experts were taken off the report, and we were told it would be edited at a higher level. So I did not know what was in the report until it came out,” she said.
“But when the report came out, late on the Friday afternoon May 10, I read it and I had to reread it. I had to go back and print out that section and read it, because I could not believe it stated so starkly that we assess that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance.
“Two hours after it was released, I sent an email to my front office and the team that is working on this, saying I will resign as a result of this,” Gilbert said.
According to Democratic senator Chris Van Hollen, “Stacy Gilbert’s statements further corroborate the concerns I have expressed that the findings of the bureaus and experts most involved with the distribution of aid and compliance with international law were bypassed in favor of political convenience,” said Van Hollen.
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