State Department sees unprecedented flood of internal dissent memos over Gaza war

State Department staff sent at least eight internal dissent memos to express disagreement with US policy on Israel and Gaza during the first two months of the war, The Independent can reveal.

A further memo was sent last month from the US embassy in Jordan, warning of increasing instability across the region due to Israel’s ongoing war, according to a person familiar with the matter, bringing the total number to at least nine.

Such a high number of internal dissent memorandums — a formal process by which staff can express concerns internally to a policy — highlights the widespread opposition within the department to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

By comparison, only one internal dissent memo was filed during the first three years of the Iraq War, widely considered to be one of the United States’ biggest foreign policy disasters.

Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in protest over US support for the war in October, said such a high number was unprecedented in recent memory.

“To the best of my knowledge, it is the most on any issue in such a timespan,” he told The Independent.

Dissent memorandums can be written and signed by any State Department staff member, at which point they are sent to the Secretary of State’s planning office, before being passed up the chain to senior department officials and secretary of state Antony Blinken. They are not made public or shared with the wider State Department staff.

The dissent channel was created during the Vietnam War for State Department staff to express criticism and disagreements without fear of retribution. The content of such cables is fiercely protected by the department, and they rarely leak. It is likely that many more dissent