Email Leaked To HuffPost Shows State Department Anxiety About Leaks To HuffPost

A top State Department official privately said the Biden administration should have demonstrated greater concern for Palestinians at the start of Israel’s ongoing U.S.-backed offensive in the Gaza Strip and suggested that frustration among diplomats over the policy should be measured by their leaks to HuffPost.

A Nov. 7, 2023, email, which was subsequently leaked to HuffPost, depicts tense early conversations within the government over President Joe Biden’s embrace of the Israeli military campaign. It also shows officials struggling to use the influence of the U.S. ― Israel’s chief military and diplomatic backer ― for purposes like Biden’s stated goals of minimizing civilian casualties and securing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the email, Ned Price ― then a senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken ― described a discussion between State Department leaders and agency officials. The skeptics highlighted global criticism of Israel’s gruesome U.S.-backed airstrikes and invasion of Gaza and argued “we made ourselves complicit in their excesses,” Price wrote.

Price sent the message, marked sensitive but unclassified, to fellow high-ranking officials amid a wave of internal State Department listening sessions and town halls organized as outrage grew among the agency’s staff. He began the email by sharing his view of whether those “workforce discussions” were adequately addressing State Department officials’ concerns.

“The proof will be in the pudding ― or the Huffington Post,” he wrote, using the former name for HuffPost and adding that a session he ran that day “seemed to go fairly smoothly.”

investigations of federal employees who signed a letter seeking a cease-fire in Gaza. His choice for ambassador to the United Nations, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), has sought to clamp down on anti-war protests on college campuses.

“There is concern that expressing dissent on this issue at this time will put people at the top of the list for dismissal under Schedule F,” Paul told HuffPost, referring to a policy Trump plans to institute to make it easier to fire bureaucrats.

The Hamas-led attack that sparked the current Israeli-Palestinian fighting killed 1,200 Israelis, the majority of them civilians, and led to 250 people being taken hostage, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli campaign in Gaza since then has killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, health officials there report, and has reduced the strip to a wasteland.

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