Staffers Speaking Against US' Gaza Stance Shows How ‘Morally Bankrupt’ Biden Admin Has Grown
© AFP 2023 / KENT NISHIMURA
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On Thursday, the head of the US Agency for International Development, Samantha Power, who is a world-renowned scholar on genocide, was confronted during a public event over her complicity in the Biden administration’s support of Israel and its actions in Gaza.
"You wrote a book on genocide and you’re still working for the administration: You should resign and speak out,” Agnieszka Skyes told US media after recently leaving her job at the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Dr. Margaret Flowers, the co-editor of Popular Resistance, told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour that the disconnect between the Biden administration and its employees shows how “morally bankrupt” the administration’s stance on Gaza has become.
“You have congressional staffers, hundreds of them, that called upon their bosses to support a ceasefire. You have White House staffers, executive office staffers protesting outside of the White House, calling on President [Joe] Biden to demand, you know, to push for a ceasefire,” Flowers summarized. “The fact that people within the administration who are risking their jobs often to take these actions are speaking out, I think, is important and just shows a real shift in this country and just how morally bankrupt this administration is for supporting genocide.”
Co-host Garland Nixon noted that, particularly among the USAID employees, they have previously supported policies that “killed unmentionable thousands of people,” but this seems “too far” even for them.
“I think also [that] some of the people that go to work in these institutions don't fully have a good political analysis of what it is that they're actually working for,” Flowers responded. “We know that the the USAID, which has 'AID' in its name, is an institution that has really worked hand-in-hand with the CIA to undermine governments all around the world to, you know, put in place support for organizations, media, nonprofit groups within countries that are strictly there to destabilize the countries so that the United States can try to overthrow their governments."
“This is an overreach point. I think we're seeing that in so many different areas, though, right now, the kind of overreach of the United States and its Western allies and the whole world is seeing it but it's great that folks are seeing it here, too,” Flowers explained.
The shift, according to Flowers, comes because Israel’s actions in Gaza are on display for the entire world to see.
“We know that … all of these main, mainstream corporate media outlets are really in place to defend the status quo, and they've been doing that. But at a certain point, when you have the rest of the media world publishing the truth about what's happening and you have public opinion shifting, they can't continue on that same line as strongly as they were, because they can't save face by doing that when the rest of the world actually sees what's going on,” Flowers argued.
“This is a huge issue for people, whereas foreign policy has not typically been a strong factor that folks care about. Things have gone so far that people do now,” she added.
Flowers believes that if the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had failed to move forward in the genocide case against Israel, the Global South would have moved to replace it and other institutions with ones that would be able to.
“I think the Global South is ready to build alternative institutions and find alternative mechanisms,” she said. “We've reached a point now where people, either these institutions are going to have to do what they say they're doing or they're going to be replaced.”
Co-host Wilmer Leon asked about the US and Israeli government’s response to the ICJ and how they made clear that they have no plans to abide by it.
“This is not unusual. The United States typically says that things are illegitimate when they don't serve the interests of the United States, and then when they do, suddenly they are legitimate again,” Flowers explained.
“As Canada and the United States continue to say that these allegations are 'unfounded.' The rest of the world is looking at them and shaking their heads and saying, 'What do you mean? We're watching genocide happen before us.'"
Flowers pointed to the US and other Western countries’ decision to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which she described as “one of the last lifelines for Palestinians in Gaza.”
“So not only did they deny [Israel’s genocide], but they doubled down on the genocide of Palestinians,” she added.
