In first, Jewish Biden appointee publicly resigns over US support of Israel amid Gaza war

WASHINGTON — A US Department of the Interior staffer has become the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of US support for Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, accuses US President Joe Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in the conflict.

Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and US Vice President Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government.

She is at least the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to make public their resignation in protest of the Biden administration’s military and diplomatic support of the now seven-month Israeli war against Hamas, which began with the October 7 terror assault in southern Israel.

She is the second political appointee to do so, after an Education Department official of Palestinian heritage resigned in January.

Her resignation letter describes her excitement at joining an administration that she believed shared much of her vision for the country. “However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration,” she writes.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Call points to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said, “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe,” and at an event at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the October 7 Hamas-led massacre was driven by an “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people.”

“He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” she says.