State Department staffer resigns over White House policies on Gaza

President Joe Biden and his administration continue to take PR losses with regard to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war taking place in Gaza.

The bad news got even worse for the White House this week after a State Department human rights staffer made headlines after she announced her resignation from her job as a result of the administration's policies on Gaza.

According to The Hill, Annelle Sheline, who worked for a year as a foreign affairs officer at the Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, abruptly announced her exit because of the ongoing situation.

Sheline announced her resignation in a dramatic op-ed for CNN.

"For the past year, I worked for the office devoted to promoting human rights in the Middle East. I believe strongly in the mission and in the important work of that office," Sheline wrote.

She added, "However, as a representative of a government that is directly enabling what the International Court of Justice has said could plausibly be a genocide in Gaza, such work has become almost impossible."

"Unable to serve an administration that enables such atrocities, I have decided to resign from my position at the Department of State."

“People are shocked & appalled by what the US government is doing.” Annelle Sheline has resigned from the US State Department in protest over the administration’s ongoing support for Israel & the war in Gaza. “I know that I speak for many people” in the department, she tells me. pic.twitter.com/UTX30HWPme

— Christiane Amanpour (@amanpour) March 28, 2024

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller responded to Sheline's op-ed resignation, saying that "there is a broad diversity of views inside the State Department about our policy with respect to Gaza, just as there is a broad diversity within the State Department about our policy, in a number of important foreign policy issues, as there is a broad diversity of views and opinions throughout American society about this issue, and others."

Her announcement received mixed reactions across social media, with some pointing out her past employment with an Iranian regime-linked institute.

"The woman worked for Iran... of course, she supports the terrorists," one X user wrote.

Another X user wrote, "Good riddance to her. In her column she did not utter a single word of criticism for Hamas for the October 7 massacre or for the kidnapping and torture of Israeli children and Holocaust survivors. The State Department will be better off without her."

Sheline is not the first State Department staffer to leave over the situation in Gaza.

Josh Paul, who served as the director of congressional and public affairs in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs in the State Department, resigned for similar reasons.