This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: We begin today’s show in Gaza, where medics say an Israeli strike killed five journalists who worked for Al-Quds TV in the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza. They were reportedly sleeping in a van clearly marked with the word “press.”
Meanwhile, three Palestinian babies have died of hypothermia at the al-Mawasi refugee camp in southern Gaza as temperatures plummet and Israel’s deadly blockade on food, water and key winter supplies continues. The father of 3-week-old victim Sila, Mahmoud al-Faseeh, told Al Jazeera his family had been sleeping on cold sand in a tent exposed to bitter winds. Al-Mawasi is designated a safe zone, but Israel has repeatedly attacked it over the last 14 months as its forces continue to pound Gaza.
This comes as Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank raided Nablus to escort a group of settlers to Joseph’s Tomb, which has been a flashpoint between Palestinians and Israeli settlers.
AMY GOODMAN: A group of Palestinian Americans trapped in Gaza has sued the Biden administration, saying it abandoned them and their families in a war zone despite rescuing, quote, “similarly situated Americans of different national origins,” unquote.
For more, we’re joined by Michael Casey. He resigned from the State Department in July over U.S. policy on Gaza after a 15-year career in the Foreign Service. He served nine years before that in the U.S. Army. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before resigning. He’s joining us now from Michigan.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Mike Casey. So, you resigned in July. You’re making the reasons for your resignation public now. Explain what happened and why you’ve decided to leave your career.
MICHAEL CASEY: Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. I really appreciate it.
I’ve been trying to get the story out, honestly, since I left. I’ve talked to sort of multiple journalists who, you know, for various reasons, weren’t able to publish the story until recently. So, I’ve been trying to get the story out since that time.
And really, why I left was that after I covered Gaza almost every day for three years and just writing every day about what was happening there, even before October 7th, the humanitarian catastrophe that was there beforehand, and just getting no action from Washington on any of those issues. And we also, my office, wrote about Palestinian politics, settlements, human rights issues, prisoner abuses, different things like this, every day writing about them. And then, October 7th, everything was just amplified, you know, a hundred times worse than it was before. And just writing all this information, having it disregarded, taking no actions and no policies on it, and acting constantly in direct contravention of our own interests was eventually too much for me, and I decided I had done everything I could to help, there was nothing more I could do on the inside, and it was time for me to leave.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, you’ve said, in fact, that once you were posted in Jerusalem, everything you learned as a diplomat, you had to forget. If you could elaborate on what you mean by that?
MICHAEL CASEY: Sure. It’s just — and that’s the way it feels. You know, basic things as a diplomat, to be skeptical of your interlocutors. You know, when the government of the country you’re assigned to tells you something, you have to fact-check it a little bit. But with the Israeli government, we don’t do that. We just repeat what they tell us. We don’t even report on that information.
And, you know, having basic concerns for issues like human rights, that was a bedrock of our foreign policy in other places, and in Israel, we just completely disregard it. I mean, one issue I always highlight was administrative detention, which is where people are locked up without charges. You know, when I was in other countries, like Malaysia, there was maybe one person in admin detention, and the secretary of state would raise her case all the time, whereas in Israel, we were approaching 2,000 Palestinians were being held in admin detention, including minors, including American citizens, and we never said a word about it. And so, just these issues that you would normally push forward everywhere else, in this country we just pretend like it’s not a problem.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, in your reading, Mike — you worked at the State Department; before that, you were also in the military — what, in your view, explains this? Why do you think the U.S. is consistently blind to the suffering of Palestinians?
MICHAEL CASEY: It’s hard to get a concrete answer on that as to why that is, just seeing it happen every day and what we do with that and just the absolute disregard of reality that we have. And it’s good to see organizations like DAWN who are launching a lawsuit — it’s sad that it had to come to this point, but launching a lawsuit against the State Department for violating its own policies, you know, violating its own human rights reports, as they mentioned when they made the announcement, because my office wrote these reports and documented the human rights abuses there. It was the longest report in the world. It took the longest to finish. And then we come out and say things like “There are no human rights issues in Israel.” It just — it doesn’t make any sense. And as to why that is, I don’t know. Our policy is just completely backwards. We start from the point of we need to sell weapons to Israel, and then we backtrack and make the facts the way we need it to be in order to make that happen, which is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip from the Fault Lines documentary called Starving Gaza in Al Jazeera English that features Stacy Gilbert, who we also interviewed, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. She resigned after over 20 years in service after disagreements with a State Department report that she worked on concluding Israel was not obstructing U.S. humanitarian assistance to Gaza.
HIND HASSAN: In April, Stacy Gilbert was asked for her input on a Biden administration report on whether Israel was committing war crimes in Gaza.
STACY GILBERT: I was shocked to see that it said, in very clear terms, it is our determination that Israel is not blocking humanitarian assistance.
HIND HASSAN: You had advised that that wasn’t the case. Is that correct?
STACY GILBERT: Yes. The subject matter experts were removed, and the report was moved up to a higher level. We were told, “You will see the report when it is released publicly.”
HIND HASSAN: And then the report comes out and just doesn’t include what you had to say?
STACY GILBERT: I wasn’t sure I read that correctly. I read it again, and I sent an email then that I would resign as a result of that.
HIND HASSAN: Do you remember what you wrote in your resignation email?
STACY GILBERT: I said that report will haunt us.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Stacy Gilbert, a State Department official, in the Al Jazeera documentary Starving Gaza. You can also go to Democracy Now! to see our extended interview with Stacy. So, Mike Casey, that was in the spring. You were there in Jerusalem. You were still working. Talk about the changing of the conclusions of this report, which Stacy Gilbert said is a report that will haunt us.
MICHAEL CASEY: And she’s absolutely correct, because it’s absurd to reach that conclusion based on all of the evidence that’s out there. I mean, it’s the absolute consensus of the international organizations, human rights organizations that are actually in Gaza and documenting this information, and the decision comes in complete contrast to that. And there is no one out there who is saying the situation is not — that Israel is allowing aid in. No one is saying that except for the Israeli government. So, when we reach these conclusions, we’re either using information provided by the Israelis or we’re simply making it up, because no credible organization is saying that they are not blocking humanitarian aid.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to go to the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh. She was killed by an Israeli sniper outside the Jenin refugee camp, one of the most well-known Al Jazeera reporters. She was killed May 11th, 2022. After she was killed, there was a funeral for Shireen. Can you describe, Mike Casey — you were in Jerusalem at the time. Is that right? Can you describe what happened at the funeral? She is, by the way, an American journalist, a Palestinian American journalist.
MICHAEL CASEY: Yes, I was there at the time, and it was one of the worst days in the office when she was killed and then when the funeral happened, because it was just such a — so emblematic of our policies there and our policy failures, that an American is going to be killed, we’re going to call for an investigation, we’re not going to be serious about it. Whatever they come out with, we’re going to accept, even if we know the facts are otherwise. And then it reaches the point where her funeral is attacked. The police are beating pallbearers. Her coffin falls on the ground.
And we don’t say anything about it, just at this level of brutality that’s happening, and we don’t say anything. And so, people in the office were just devastated emotionally, because many of them knew her personally, and then knowing that they’re working for the United States government, who has the most leverage and the most ability to make some changes and make some impact, and know that we’re not going to say anything about it. I mean, it was really crushing for morality in the office.
AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have senators, like Maryland Senator Van Hollen, who have called for the release of the report on Shireen Abu Akleh. That actually hasn’t happened. And if you can compare what took place there and what you felt should have been said by the United States and how the U.S. deals in other countries?
MICHAEL CASEY: Yeah, it’s interesting, when I was listening to the headlines at the beginning of your broadcast, just to hear the update on Gaza and the update on Ukraine and seeing, you know, two incidents, and we’re going to have very different responses to them, because we simply pick and choose our statements that we’re going to make depending on the situation. So, yeah, it’s just that we’re going to put red lines out there, we’re going to call for investigations, we’re going to do things like that in Israel, but we’re not serious about it, and we’re not concerned with the result that comes out from them.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, I want to go to some of the early work that you did shortly after October 7th, 2023. Just three weeks into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, nearly 7,000 Palestinians had already been killed. But on October 25th of 2023, President Biden cast doubt on Gaza’s official death toll. This is a clip of Biden.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed. I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Mike, if you could explain? What was your response when you heard Biden’s remarks?
MICHAEL CASEY: So, we fought within the system to clarify why we believe those numbers were the most accurate numbers we could find. You know, we wrote about — we had an official response, that we would talk about how the Ministry of Health in Gaza is the most connected to its parent ministry in Ramallah. Many of the employees there are from the PA. Analyses of past conflicts have never shown a significant difference between the reports. So we had an official way of dealing with it.
But, in general, it was — it sort of personally affected me because I was writing those numbers every day in our reports at the time. And when the president of the United States comes out and says, “I don’t believe your numbers,” that’s a little bit hard to deal with. But, in general, it was a common trend even before October 7th that we don’t believe Palestinian sources of information. We don’t believe what they say, whether it’s Palestinian government, whether it’s Palestinian contacts that we talk to. It’s just disregarded. And even the United Nations and others, we disregard sometimes. We will accept the Israeli narrative over all others, even if we know it’s not correct.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, can you explain, Mike — we just heard earlier from Stacy Gilbert — how many of your college, do you believe, whether they resigned or not — how many of your colleagues in the State Department agree with you and others in criticizing U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine, and in particular now —
MICHAEL CASEY: It’s a very strong sentiment —
NERMEEN SHAIKH: — in the wake of the war, the assault on Gaza?
MICHAEL CASEY: It’s a very strong sentiment within the department. I’ve had many people reach out to me saying they support what I did, they’re glad I’m speaking out, essentially giving them a voice to their concerns that they have, and a lot of people who have told me they would be right behind me if it weren’t for their own personal circumstances that they can’t resign, which I fully respect in that. So, it’s definitely a common sentiment, especially at the lower levels within the department. It was always surprising. Everyone that I talked to, everyone I interacted with, it seemed like everyone felt the same. Yet, somehow, like Stacy mentioned, when the information goes up to a higher level, the decision that comes back down is completely the opposite of what everyone has put forward.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about Tony Blinken, you’re talking about the secretary of state, when you say when it goes up to a higher level, or the people around him. How much contact did you have, or was there any discussion that you had or others you know had, with him? For example, Gilbert’s saying they changed the results of their report, when saying everyone knew Israel was stopping humanitarian aid from getting in, and yet that was changed.
MICHAEL CASEY: That’s never been fully clear. Where does that decision happen in the department once it goes above maybe the assistant secretary level? Where are those changes made? Who makes those final decisions? That, I don’t know. I don’t have full clarity on that.
I did have interactions with Secretary Blinken when he would come to visit. You know, I arranged some of his meetings. I sat in some of his meetings as a notetaker when he met with President Abbas and others. And out of all the decision-makers at the top, the secretary of state was one of the most disappointing ones, because he seemed to be an individual who’s very smart, understood the conflict, had a level of empathy. You know, when we got our local staff out of Gaza, he called each of them to check in on them. So, he seemed to have a level of empathy and understanding of the situation, yet he’s backing these decisions at the higher level. So, out of all the people at the top that are involved in this, he was one of the most disappointing to me personally.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, could you talk about what — within the State Department, what the response has been to these protests? After you resigned, you and three others got an award for constructive dissent from the American Foreign Service Association for a cable you wrote about Gaza. Could you explain what was in that cable? What is a dissent cable?
MICHAEL CASEY: So, a dissent cable is a special channel where you can write a report saying “I disagree” with whatever policy we’re working on. You can’t put that sort of information in standard reporting, but you can put it in the dissent channel, which stays very protected. It goes up to the higher levels of the State Department. They do read and they do respond to it and address those issues.
When we won the award, we actually had to look back at our dissent cables, because we wrote more than one, to figure out which one they were talking about in particular. A lot of the details, I don’t want to get into, for sort of reasons of classification. The overall question was that we need to do more to evacuate people from Gaza. You know, we evacuated American citizens out of Gaza, but then we just stopped. And we were not evacuating people who we had worked with over the years, people that had been contacts of ours, people we’d sent on exchange programs, people we had invested in, people who were the future of Gaza, that really need to be helped and protected, not just for humanitarian reasons, but really for what’s going to happen in Gaza in the future. And so, we basically wrote a dissent cable about that, which obviously didn’t change the policies there, particularly after Rafah was shut down.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Mike Casey, can you talk about the last straw for you? You were in Jerusalem, one of the top State Department officials there, when the National Security Council said they should just back what Israelis want for post-conflict Gaza. Explain what you understand that is and why you left.
MICHAEL CASEY: So, that was one area, as things were moving forward in Gaza, that I stayed a little bit longer, thinking this is one area where maybe we can make a positive impact, is really laying out what needs to happen in the future in Gaza. And we laid out a plan that involved the humanitarian aspects of it, security aspects of it, governance aspects of it, what needs to happen in terms of connecting Gaza with the rest of Palestine, you know, inserting a credible Palestinian government at the governor, ministerial and local level, and integrating it, creating a second state, two-state solution — everything like that that would fit within our goals and what’s best for Gaza. And the response was, “Well, the Israelis have a different plan, and we’re just going to go with that.” And the current plan is —
AMY GOODMAN: And that plan is?
MICHAEL CASEY: — the idea of — the current plan, as I understand it, was having local families — they use the term “clans” — to run things in Gaza. And we wrote reports about why that’s not feasible, it’s not going to work, and that the reason the Israelis support that plan is because it will lead to chaos and conflict in Gaza, which is their goal in what is happening there. It’s not our goal. It shouldn’t be. And it’s not a feasible plan. And I’ve talked to contacts of mine in Cairo who’ve said, even just a couple weeks ago, people from Washington were still reaching out to them and asking about this plan. So, it seems we’re still pursuing it, even though we know it’s not feasible and it’s not right.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Mike, finally, as we end, if you could talk about what your concerns are about the incoming Trump administration with respect to U.S. policy on Palestine? He said earlier this month that if the Israeli hostages are not returned by Inauguration Day — that is, January 20th — quote, “all hell is going to break out.”
MICHAEL CASEY: And unfortunately, I’m not optimistic about an incoming administration. I fear they’re going to basically pick up where they left off in terms of where the Israeli government was planning to formally announce or annex settlements in the West Bank and other destructive policies which are not only terrible for Palestinians, but also very difficult to reverse in a future administration. And so, I fear they’re going to pick up where they left off. I feel Israel is going to be given even more of a blank check than they have under the Biden administration, and that there will be steps taken, like annexation of certain areas, that the Trump administration doesn’t understand the impact of those, because they don’t analyze them very carefully and simply just accept whatever Israel wants them to do, even more so than the Biden administration.
But if I were to give them advice, I would tell them to really focus on having a policy on Palestine, not just viewing it through the lens of Israel and what Israel wants, but what’s good for Palestinians, what’s best for our own interests there. If we want a two-state solution, we need to create a second state. We can’t just put “Palestine” in quotes in reports and pretend like it doesn’t exist. We need to create a political and economic, social, cultural entity that is Palestine, recognize the country, stop denying its existence at the United Nations and others, and really push forward policies such as a national election and different things like that, that are important for the Palestinian people, regardless of what the impact is on Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Casey, we want to thank you for being with us. Mike resigned from the State Department in July after a 15-year career in the Foreign Service. He was deputy political counselor at the United States Office for Palestinian Affairs in Jerusalem for four years before resigning in July over U.S. policy on Gaza.
Coming up, we go to Damascus for an update from the Syrian journalist, BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab. Stay with us.
