Not long after Kurt Campbell started his new job as the No. 2 official at the State Department in February, the Asia expert and now-deputy secretary of state began a series of listening sessions with staff members at Foggy Bottom. 

The informal meetings appeared on staffers’ calendars with no additional information; they weren’t framed as being only about the war in Gaza. But these meetings, and others like them held by senior department officials with lower-level employees, have often devolved into venting sessions about U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza, three department employees told Jewish Insider. All of them requested anonymity to speak candidly about internal department matters. 

“It was overwhelmingly calls, including from people I respect, [that] we need to do more to sanction Israel, we need to do more to punish Israel, we need to be more seriously considering ways in which we can sanction them, condition aid, cut off aid, reduce weapons flows,” said one foreign service officer with two decades of Middle East experience who sat in on a recent meeting with Campbell. “There were people whose issues don’t have anything to do with the conflict … who were making the case for why we need to do more to bash Israel.” 

From universities to Fortune 500 companies to the federal government, few institutions have avoided the political fallout of the violent conflict in the Middle East that was sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel. 

The State Department — where thousands of diplomats and civil servants are tasked with implementing President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, which has maintained support for Israel in its goal of defeating Hamas — is not immune from that rancor. Dozens of department employees reportedly signed onto “dissent cables” to Secretary of State Tony Blinken in the fall, and at least two officials have resigned in protest of Biden’s support for Israel. 

What stood out to some department employees at recent listening sessions was senior leaders’ unwillingness to defend Biden’s support for Israel’s security, particularly in response to a chorus of employees seeking a harsher stance toward the Jewish state. One result of their reticence is that other lower-level employees who stand by Biden’s support for Israel also do not speak up in those meetings.

The senior foreign service officer who spoke to JI described a “failure of leadership in the U.S. Department of State right now to reinforce internally what the policy is and why the president has taken it, to put into context what Israel is dealing with, whether it’s Hamas’ tactics on the ground, or the fact that it’s actually a two-front war, with Iran lurking in the background.” 

This foreign service officer also stayed silent, and described the atmosphere in the meeting as “the prevailing vibe in the building.” (Last fall, when Israeli officials aired the footage of the Oct. 7 attack at the State Department, some employees who consider themselves pro-Israel but would have preferred not to see the gruesome video went anyway, to make sure that there were people in the audience.)

The department officials described an environment in which leaders are overly sensitive in how they respond to opponents of U.S. policy on Israel and unlikely to contradict them in these public settings.

The directive to listen to and take seriously employees’ dissatisfaction with American policy came from the top. In November, Blinken wrote to employees in response to the dissent cable some of them signed onto.

“I also know that some people in the Department may disagree with approaches we are taking or have views on what we can do better,” Blinken wrote in November, according to an email obtained by Politico. “We’ve organized forums in Washington to hear from you, and urged managers and teams to have candid discussions at posts around the world precisely so we can hear your feedback and ideas. I’ve asked our senior leadership to keep doing that. We’re listening: what you share is informing our policy and our messages.” 

A State Department spokesperson told JI on Thursday that department leadership values the opportunity to hear from employees across the political spectrum.

“One of the strengths of our government is [that] different people working within it have different political beliefs, different personal beliefs, and different beliefs about what United States policy should be,” the spokesperson said. “We encourage all individuals to make their opinions known through appropriate channels. State Department leadership has spoken to this on several occasions, and these listening sessions are just one of the opportunities available for our workforce to convey their valued opinions.”

Those meetings have continued into the spring. Since that November letter from Blinken, Biden administration officials have adopted a more critical stance toward Israel. After an Israeli airstrike killed seven humanitarian aid workers affiliated with the nonprofit World Central Kitchen earlier this month, Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call that Israel needs to do more to protect civilians and get aid to vulnerable Gazans, or the U.S. would consider changing its policy toward Israel.

Still, despite steps Biden’s administration has taken to pressure Israel on humanitarian aid and civilian casualties, a strong degree of opposition to America’s support for Israel’s defense remains. It stands out, the three department employees said, because the focus on Israel and Gaza is disproportionate compared to the attention department staff give to other global crises.

“There is certainly more focus on this conflict than other global conflicts people are always working on in the building,” said one mid-level bureaucrat.

The degree of intra-department angst over Israel is particularly notable because it stands in contrast to the mood among department employees in previous wars, even the most controversial ones.

“What’s so striking about all of this is the fact that during the two longest wars in U.S. history where Americans were fighting and dying and where we were responsible for the deaths of scores of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan civilians, there was never this kind of angst, tumult and urgency,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who worked at the State Department for more than two decades. 

The policy impact from the anti-Israel actors within the government appears to be minimal. According to a recent ProPublica article, Blinken has chosen not to act on a report from State Department officials who argued that the U.S. should disqualify several Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. military assistance over alleged human rights abuses. The Biden administration is still lobbying Congress to pass legislation with $14.1 billion in additional security assistance for Israel.

“I view it more as noise than actually influencing anything,” said the mid-level official who spoke to JI. “I’m not sure that it’s actually having an influence on policy.”

The Biden administration’s messaging on the war in Gaza has been in lockstep, at the direction of the White House, despite internal dissent. When Biden’s top national security spokesperson John Kirby said earlier this month that Israel needs to change course in Gaza or risk the U.S. changing policy, Blinken offered the same message with identical language. Miller argued that it’s Biden and his national security team at the White House, with input from Blinken, who shape Middle East policy — not the junior employees at State who are grumbling about America’s support for Israel. 

“If you ask me what kind of impact NEA [State’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau] has, NEA and the embassies abroad are where you’re going to find people who know these issues, they feel the suffering of these people — and it’s not just the Palestinians, it’s the Arab world,” said Miller. But, he added, “Do I think they’re the ones who are shaping and formulating the policy? No, they’re not.” 

One of the department officials who spoke to JI pointed out that the atmosphere at Foggy Bottom is not so different from what’s happening at workplaces around the country. State Department officials might be held to a higher standard as public servants, but they are shaped by the world around them. 

“You can’t ignore what’s going on outside of government, because this crisis is generational,” Miller noted. “Part of it is intersectionality. Part of it is what’s going on on campuses is conflated with the oppression of African Americans and Black Americans. Black Lives Matters is tied into this. The whole asymmetry of power between — I think it’s crazy, but what people will regard as a colonialist settler mentality, and an oppressed people. Add to that the Netanyahu government, the most extreme right-wing in Israel’s history, and just the destruction of Gaza and loss of life.” 

That attitude, which is now widespread among young people and on the American left, has also reached department officials. 

“We have an unprecedented crisis with our rank and file,” said the foreign service officer who worked in the Middle East. “We’re dealing with such anger and emotion about this one issue.”