Ex-Biden Staffers Say People ‘Fed Up’ at White House

Former staffers in President Joe Biden‘s White House say they and others “working within the system” are “fed up” with the administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

During a Wednesday appearance on CNN, Lily Greenberg Call, a former special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, and Tariq Habash, a former staffer at the Department of Education, spoke about their frustrations with how the White House has responded to the conflict.

“We’re hearing that people are fed up, they are rightfully at their ends of what they feel like they are able to do,” Habash said.

Division over the U.S. response to the Israel-Hamas war has sparked protests nationwide. The war began after Hamas, a Palestinian militant group, launched a surprise attack against Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking an estimated 240 hostage. Israel subsequently launched heavy airstrikes in Gaza. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The rising death toll has led to international calls for a ceasefire.

On Sunday, an Israeli air strike in Rafah left dozens of Palestinians dead and was followed by a fire at a tent camp that killed at least 45 displaced people there and injured 249 others, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.

CNN reported that its analysis of video from the scene and a review by explosives experts found that U.S.-made munitions were used in the strike.

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the strike did not cross a red line, telling reporters that Israel said “this is a tragic mistake,” but he reiterated that the White House would not support a major ground operation in Rafah.

Greenberg Call and Habash appeared on CNN on Wednesday to discuss the tensions.

“There is so many people who have been working within the system trying to speak through the proper channels about what they are witnessing and what they are seeing and how horrific it is and that we are supplying these weapons and providing the financing for the ongoing violence against innocent Palestinians civilians, and I think people are realizing that no matter what they do or say that their voice isn’t being heard,” Habash said.

Habash continued: “We’re hearing that people are fed up, they are rightfully at their ends of what they feel like they are able to do. Unfortunately 250 pound bombs or two thousand pound bombs, they’re still killing dozens of children, no circumstance where that is acceptable.”

Newsweek has reached out to the White House via email for comment.

Call said that others within the administration feel the same way, adding that it’s a “huge problem” for them.

“Every single person that I know thinks the same way as us and whether or not they have felt empowered as Tariq said to make that public and to leave because of it is a different thing, but I think when the majority of the people in the inside feel like they are not being listened to and the majority of American people are not being listened to, I think that’s a huge problem for the administration,” Call said.

The comments come after Call submitted her resignation letter last week, writing that she could “no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration.”

She told the Associated Press that she felt that the president has been using Jewish people to justify his policies toward Israel. Call is the second political appointee to resign after Habash, a Palestinian American, who resigned from his job at the Department of Education in January over Biden turning “a blind eye to the atrocities committed against innocent Palestinian lives.”

Call, who is the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign is the latest in at least five other mid- or senior-level staffers within the Biden administration to publicly resign over the White House’s handling of the war.