Congressional aides create website to protest U.S. support for Israel’s campaign in Gaza
Protestors demonstrate on Capitol Hill on July 24, in Washington, DC, the same day that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. Photo by Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images
By Lauren Markoe July 29, 2024
A group of Capitol Hill aides have created a public website where Congressional staffers may anonymously voice their opposition to U.S. funding of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
The “Congressional Dissent Channel,” the existence of which was first reported in the The New York Times, went live less than a week after a small group of staffers protested Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday.
“We refuse to stand by as the august halls and hearing rooms in which we perform our duties are used to approve military aid that carries out the slaughter of innocent Palestinians,” the channels’ organizers wrote in their mission statement.
Congressional staffers are expected to support the views of the representatives and senators they work for, and publicly disagreeing with a member is a fireable offense. On the website, staffers may express dissenting views in writing and in videos in which their identities are given generically — a “senior Congressional aide” for example — or by disguising their voices and faces. Several federal officials have quit over U.S. support for Israel as it retaliates against Hamas in Gaza for the militant group’s Oct. 7 attack.
As of Monday evening, the channel included “memoranda of dissent” from six different staffers — all anonymous.
The mission statement calls Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide, but also “vehemently” condemns Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, and advocates for the “safe return of all hostages taken by Hamas and political prisoners on both sides.”
The organizers of the channel, who are current and former staffers, told the Times they took inspiration from the State Department’s dissent channel for Foreign Service officers, which was created during the Vietnam War. That channel, however, is hosted by the department and classified, and those who contribute to it may not be anonymous.
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