Lily Greenberg Call writes:

Until last week, President Biden was my boss.

Last week, I resigned from my post at the United States Department of the Interior, becoming the first Jewish politically appointed administration official to publicly resign in protest – and in mourning – of President Biden’s endorsement of genocide in Gaza, where more than 35,000 Palestinians have been murdered. This was an incredibly difficult decision, but one that was necessary – and one that felt even more urgent, as the president of the United States has persistently corrupted the idea of Jewish safety, weaponizing my community as a shield to dodge accountability for his role in this atrocity.

I worked hard to elect this administration, first as an organizer for Vice-President Kamala Harris during the 2019 Democratic primary, then for the Biden-Harris ticket in the general election in the swing state of Arizona. I once saw the Biden-Harris administration as a beacon, blinking brilliantly as a hopeful symbol of democracy in the encroaching dark. But now, watching the United States’s complicity in the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, I am only reminded that in times of great horror, many with great power choose to do nothing.

Like many Jewish Americans, I am descended from those who fled Europe and survived violent persecution. My pregnant great-grandmother escaped pogroms by hiding in the belly of a horse-drawn carriage, then crossing an ocean alone, looking for safety in a new land. My inheritance is the weighted absence of those who should be here today: entire lineages of family, who could not escape the coming Shoah, snuffed out and disappeared into memory. I feel the weight of this history every day. [Continue reading…]