The appeal of conversion stories is timeless because of their rarity and honesty. “Talk is cheap”, “show me your scars” and so on. Self-harmful behavior motivated by sincere beliefs cuts through all the bullshit. Especially in a context of brazen dishonesty.
All is not well in the managerial state of Fedgov.
We know that USA is a client state of Israel. Managerials do too, but the safe thing to do is… WAS, to deny it.
As I previously blogged, the current Israeli-Hamas conflict is primarily a civil war between secular and Orthodox factions of the Israeli government. Although I suspect the Neocons will soon appropriate the conflict for their own purposes.
In classic proxy-way style, this Jew vs Jew conflict is being waged in the halls of Fedgov. Harvard has been especially hilarious, with doxxing attacks literally the size of flatbed trucks and previously secret donors calling out disloyal bribe-takers.
That glitched their Matrix. There is no longer a safe Narrative for the managerials to parrot. For possibly the first time in their lives, they must make decisions without a safety net. No matter what they decide, a Jew will punish them for it. Answering the JQ just became mandatory!
One of them found the courage to eject.
‘I Couldn’t Shift Anything’: Senior State Department Official Resigns Over Biden’s Gaza Policy
h ttps://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-resignation-gaza_n_65306079e4b00565b622b1fb
By Akbar Shahid Ahmed, 18 October 2023
Veteran State Department official Josh Paul resigned from the agency on Tuesday over President Joe Biden’s approach to Israel-Palestine, telling HuffPost he felt he had to do so because he knew he could not push for a more humane policy within the U.S. government.
“I have had my fair share of debates and discussions and efforts to shift policy on controversial arms sales,” said Paul, who spent more than 11 years at State’s bureau of political-military affairs, which handles weapons deals. He most recently served as the bureau’s director of congressional and public affairs.
“It was clear that there’s no arguing with this one. Given that I couldn’t shift anything, I resigned,” he told HuffPost on Wednesday evening in his first media interview since he revealed his decision, which he also described in a LinkedIn post.
Textbook managerialism. He publicly toed the line so he could privately have power beyond his station. I have little respect for who he… was.
Multiple officials within the Biden administration who want the U.S. to encourage Israeli restraint and concern for civilians as the country seeks to exact vengeance against Hamas have told HuffPost they are experiencing a chilling effect.
Paul’s public announcement of his resignation sent shockwaves through the State Department on Wednesday. He said he was struck by how colleagues across the government and in Congress received his internal message: “I’ve been surprised by how many have said, ‘We absolutely understand where you’re coming from, we feel similarly and understand.’”
It’s not that they didn’t know Fedgov was an Israeli satrapy. It’s that the Narrative protecting them from cooperating with Israel popped. The Mideast is a powder keg that USA’s owners actively want to go nuclear, and USA’s continued existence is not a priority even for the Yankee Elites, and so reality is biting the managerials in their comfy little fiefs.
The natural human response to suddenly changing circumstances is denial. The other human response, one that strikes fear in the hearts of all diabolists, is the response of taking ownership of one’s fate and FREELY CHOOSING to suffer today in order to not suffer tomorrow. That is dangerously close to the Christian Cross.
Paul told HuffPost he had been on leave last week, adding: “It was pretty fortunate because I think if I hadn’t been I would have been fired rather than have the time to think it over and resign.”
It’s all fun and games until it’s YOUR signature on that cluster munitions requisition form.
Josh is still in the Matrix, deeply enough to speak with Huffpo and Time, so this moment of clarity might easily not last; but he’s taken a big step towards confronting not just his external choices, but his internal choices too. Suddenly losing his career, and possibly his security clearance too, has significantly dropped the opportunity cost of reexamining his loyalties.
Josh Paul on Why He Resigned From the State Department Over Arms to Israel
By Mathias Hammer for Time Magazine, 20 October 2023
His departure is a rare sign of internal dissent over the administration’s strong support for Israel as it continues airstrikes in Gaza following Hamas’s deadly attacks on Oct. 7. The official, Josh Paul, was the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which handles arms transfers.
In an open letter posted to LinkedIn, Paul wrote that the U.S.’s decision to rush “more arms to one side of the conflict” is “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”
It’s trendy to claim that Fedgov supplied both sides of the conflict, but this observably isn’t true. When the conflict first broke out, I had wondered how Hamas could fire 5,000 military rockets at a huge, urban target, to cause only a couple hundred deaths. Turns out, most of Hamas’ munitions are homebuilt. Which explains why the only description of those rockets is “rockets”.
Which is also why I’m certain it was Israel who bombed the Christian hospital. Hamas has nothing comparable to a JDAM’s destructive power. If they did then they would have used them by now. But I digress.
Fedgov does supply Iran, at least with money… $16b this year alone, I heard… but I’m not yet sure why. War profiteering is insufficient because Israel surely didn’t approve that.
In an interview with TIME, Paul speaks about his decision to resign, why the administration may be violating the law in providing weapons to Israel, and the response he has received from his colleagues.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You’ve worked in the State Department for more than 10 years and write in an open letter that you knew the job was not “without moral complexity or moral compromise.” What led you to resign now?
First of all, the scale and scope of the crisis that is unfolding before us. Even in the worst days of the Yemen conflict, it was nothing of this scale. Second, as we deal with controversial, complex, sensitive arms transfers, in my experience, there has always been room for debate. Sometimes that debate can range for months or even years, while different stakeholders within government hammer out different approaches and ways to tackle these human rights concerns. In this instance, there has been no debate, or when there has been debate it’s been ignored. It’s just been, “here are your marching orders, move as quickly as you can.” That’s unique to this.
This could be Social Justice butthurt, except Smeagols rarely rise as high as Josh in the org chart. He’s also phrasing words carefully, probably to avoid nondisclosure violations, so reading between the lines, it wasn’t that Josh was ordered to do this; he was ordered to be responsible for this.
You don’t need much of a self-preservation instinct to know that when the boss wants somebody else’s signature on his orders, you don’t want to be that “somebody else”. Especially if he didn’t want to even hear your concerns.
How are U.S. arms transfers to Israel shaping the conflict?
The theory has always been that if Israel feels secure, it will be able to move towards peace with the Palestinians. But in practice the steps that Israel has taken to achieve security have all been at the expense of Palestinian good faith in the peace process—not to mention at the expense of Palestinian suffering. For that reason they have also not led to the two-state solution, which was the whole goal of the Oslo Accords. So in the end, our arming of Israel, which was sort of “take whatever you need, we want you to be secure,” has actually not led to security for Israel. I think that’s more apparent in the last couple of weeks than ever.
Josh was careful to not take the Palestinian side either, which is a second indication of not being a Social Justice Warrior. FWIW, he once did a residency in Ramallah.
Where does the line go between Israel’s right to self defense and what you describe in your letter as “collective punishment?”
I think there are clear guidelines in international law as to what is permissible in war and what is not. And just let’s be clear, Hamas violates those every single day. But when it comes to collective punishment such as the siege laid on Gaza, what possible military benefit does it give Israel to cut off electricity and water to 2.3 million people when you’re trying to target a small number comparatively of Hamas fighters? It’s clearly collective punishment.
Exactly, Josh. Retaliate against Hamas? Sure. Retaliate against the entire population of Gaza? War crime.
There are a number of legal and policy measures in place to prevent arms transfers that will lead to human rights violations. Are these being implemented with regards to Israel?
Earlier this year, the Biden administration issued a new Conventional Arms Transfer policy. One of the most significant adjustments in this version of the policy was the inclusion of this “more likely than not language”—that no arms transfer will be authorized where the United States assesses that it is more likely than not that the arms to be transferred will be used by the recipient to commit human rights violations. That is a policy I believe that they are not adhering to or not even considering properly in their pending arms transfers to Israel.
A policy, coincidentally, that Josh would not be adhering to either, except he quickly resigned.
Smart move, Josh!
Because Israel receives foreign military financing it is subject to the Leahy laws, which require the vetting of units that receive that assistance to ensure they’re not engaged in gross violations of human rights. I think the process to do that for Israel specifically, within the department, is broken and politicized and has not been able to meet the requirements of the law.
You answered the JQ, Josh!
What kind of signal do you think your resignation will send to your colleagues in the administration?
I would like to think that it sends a signal that some things are worth fighting for internally. And worth giving up a significant amount for. I am hopeful that it will bring others out of the woodwork, but I don’t know if it will. I certainly am encouraged by the responses that I’ve seen.
What have you heard from your colleagues following your resignation?
That a lot of people are wrestling with these moral dilemmas. A lot of people are deeply uncomfortable, finding this a very difficult time and faced with a lot of tough decisions. People have shared a lot of words of encouragement and support and expressions of shared feelings of how difficult the situation is.
Nobody sane wants this war. Everybody who pays attention, sees the global Elites preparing to abandon North America to the economic, demographic and military controlled demolition that they plotted and enacted over decades of treachery.
Everybody is going to choose a side whether they want to or not. Josh chose early. It cost him much, but not as much as Nuremburg Two would have.
It is refreshing to see that someone out there sees this the way I do and isn’t just uncritically “pro-Israel” or “pro-Hamas”. And Gunner, your comment about the hospital bombing is very astute. If they had munitions like that they would have used them by now.