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President Joe Biden’s top State Department spokesperson has acknowledged in an interview that Israel has “without a doubt” committed war crimes in Gaza — after he spent 15 straight months defending the genocide and denying that it was in violation of international humanitarian law.
Former Biden official Matthew Miller at long last recognized what experts and pro-Palestine advocates have long said about Israel’s atrocities in a podcast interview with Sky News on Monday. But he still defended his and the administration’s adamant support of Israel’s massacres, and refused to call the assault a genocide.
“I don’t think it’s a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” he said.
The comment is arresting coming from the man who took to his podium multiple times a week to deflect questions on Israel’s massacres in Gaza — providing diplomatic cover for both Israel and the Biden administration as it aided and abetted Israel’s starvation campaign and massacres of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
As he persistently denied Israeli war crimes while on the State Department podium, Miller came to represent, for many, the face of the administration’s complicity in the genocide, along with key officials like Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden himself. These denials included numerous outright lies, blatant deflections and, frequently, repetition of Israeli propaganda.
Meanwhile, Miller often outright said that Israel is not committing war crimes or acts of genocide. He consistently defended the U.S.’s arming of Israeli troops even as the administration claimed to have disagreements with how the assault was being conducted — and as numerous experts and members of Biden’s own party said that he was breaking domestic and international law by continuing to send weapons.
In his interview this week, Miller defended his actions, saying that he was merely a spokesperson for the government and wasn’t allowed to express his personal views.
“When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded [that],” he said.
He also said that there were “times” when the U.S. could have done more to pressure Israel to commit to a ceasefire agreement — a massive understatement considering that Israeli officials have been actively sabotaging ceasefire talks since they began last year.
And even as he acknowledged Israel’s war crimes, Miller still qualified them, saying that it is an “open question” that Israel as a state has been committing war crimes — despite countless reports and even seeming outright admissions of systematic violations of international law by the Israeli military and officials.
“I think what is almost certainly not an open question is that there have been individual incidents that have been war crimes where Israeli soldiers, members of the Israeli military, have committed war crimes,” Miller said, deflecting blame onto individuals within the military even as numerous Israeli soldiers say that many of their most heinous actions came as orders from military authorities.
The statements are reflective of what advocates for Palestinian rights have long said: that one day, in the not-too-distant future, many people who previously defended the genocide will claim that they actually opposed it all along.
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