US Gov’t Employees Stage Hunger Strike in Support of Gaza, Protesting Biden’s Support To “Israel”
By Staff, Agencies
Employees from over two dozen US government agencies are planning hunger strike on Thursday to protest against President Joe Biden’s policy toward the war-torn Gaza Strip and “Israel’s” use of starvation as a “weapon of war” in the besieged territory.
Feds United for Peace, representing employees from twenty-seven US government agencies and departments, said the “day of fasting for Gaza” aims to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Participating federal employees are set to show up to their offices dressed in black or wearing keffiyeh scarves or other symbols of Palestinian solidarity.
A federal employee speaking on behalf of the group cited a UN report that up to two million people in the territory are at risk of famine, saying the Day of Fasting is a response to “Israel’s” use of “starvation as a weapon of war by intentionally withholding food from entering Gaza.”
Feds United for Peace also organized an office walkout in solidarity with Palestinians earlier in the month, which drew reactions in Washington, with national security officials from both parties criticizing their protests as insubordination.
“They deserve to be fired,” the House speaker, Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said.
Feds United for Peace representatives say that their goal is to force a conversation in their offices, where many federal employees might support a ceasefire but fear retribution for speaking out, or are afraid to even casually discuss politics because doing so might hamper their efforts to work on policy effectively.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency has warned that a dire situation is unfolding in Gaza as half a million individuals are facing the threat of catastrophic hunger.
The people of Gaza account for a staggering 80 percent of the global population facing famine or catastrophic hunger, as reported by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
United States federal workers will walk off the job on Tuesday to protest the Joe Biden administration’s handling of the “Israeli” war on the Gaza Strip as the carnage reaches the 100-day mark.
Last week, Staffers for Ceasefire published a statement in opposition to the efforts of senior White House officials to boost morale that has flagged as a result of opposition to the US’s support of “Israel”.
“While White House chief of staff Jeff Zients throws a morale-booster party for staff tonight, a child in Gaza is killed every 8 minutes,” Staffers for Ceasefire said in a statement. “We are disgusted by this display of complete apathy towards the lives that have been taken in the region over the last three months.”
At Biden’s 2024 re-election headquarters, campaigners have also anonymously signed petitions.
More than a thousand officials from the development agency USAid signed a letter in support of a ceasefire.
Government employees say that even though their substantive criticisms of the administration’s policy do not seem to be changing policy, the barrage of dissenting actions have reached the Oval Office.
Van Jackson, a political scientist who worked in the Pentagon during the Barack Obama administration, said the recent protests from US public servants were unprecedented.
“We are in uncharted territory, and no presidential administration in the past 40 years has been denounced by its own staff like this – not collectively, not so publicly, and not with this regularity,” Jackson wrote in his newsletter Un-Diplomatic.
