Aides in Congress Create Dissent Channel to Protest Support for Israel
Since Israel began its military offensive in Gaza last fall, hundreds of congressional aides have spoken out in protest of the United States’ support for the war — many of them breaking with their bosses to do so.
Acting anonymously to protect their coveted positions on Capitol Hill, they have written letters, circulated petitions, posted on social media and, in some cases, walked off the job to push for a cease-fire and an end to the shipments of U.S.-made weapons to Israel. They argue that members of Congress have refused to heed Americans’ objections — expressed through hundreds of thousands of calls, letters, emails and in-person visits to their offices — to the war and Israel’s conduct in it.
On Sunday night, a group of at least a dozen junior staff members escalated their objections by launching a website where they and their like-minded colleagues can publish anonymous memos criticizing U.S. policy on Israel and the war in Gaza — including their own bosses’ positions — without risking retaliation.
Organizers say the forum, known as the Congressional Dissent Channel, is modeled after the State Department’s dissent channel for Foreign Service officers. That channel was created during the Vietnam War — another conflict that opened bitter political divisions in the United States and galvanized a protest movement, particularly among young Americans.
But while that channel is a classified internal government system in which named authors offer dissenting views that are distributed carefully and confidentially, the new website is the opposite: a public platform where anonymous congressional aides can air their criticisms and spotlight private discord within their offices.
It is being created by the same group of staff aides that organized a pro-Palestinian staff walkout on Capitol Hill last week when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke to a joint meeting of Congress, and which planned an anonymous flower vigil outside the Capitol in November to demand a cease-fire.
In a statement of intent, the group describes itself as “congressional aides dedicated to changing the paradigm of U.S. support for the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza being carried out by the state of Israel.”
It is the latest move by congressional staff aides — whose positions typically involve being seen but not heard and hewing closely to the policies and messages of their elected bosses — to try to amplify their own voices on Capitol Hill.
Congressional staff members currently have no formal avenue to express views that differ from their bosses’, and doing so publicly is usually considered a fireable offense. While some offices openly encourage aides to offer dissenting views privately and seek policy input from a wide variety of people, a handful of top advisers generally wield most of the power in a congressional office and decide what opinions that member of Congress hears.
Michael Suchecki, a spokesman for the Congressional Progressive Staff Association, which has supported many of the pro-Palestinian protest efforts since Oct. 7, argued that aides who participate in the dissent channel are carrying out an important function of their jobs on Capitol Hill.
“While we may work for and be employed by the United States Congress, our ultimate sworn oath is to the Constitution — to the people of the United States,” he said. When staff aides see a “clear difference” between their boss’s position and the feedback they are hearing from citizens in their district, he added, they are “obliged” to say something.
Traditionally, congressional staffers have kept low profiles and avoided any break with the member they serve, but in recent years some have begun to press for better working conditions and a louder voice in general.
Representative Glenn F. Ivey, a Maryland Democrat, said Congress was known as “the last plantation” in the late 1980s and early 1990s when he worked as an aide and legal counsel. Staff members “had no rights” back then, he said, and sexual harassment and various forms of discrimination were widespread but little discussed and almost never reported.
And after Israel’s initial response to the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, a handful of progressive staff aides started a separate group to agitate for a cease-fire and an end to the shipments of U.S.-made weapons to Israel.
Junior aides have said in open letters that they bear the brunt of constituent backlash to Israel’s offensive in Gaza, responding to the tens of thousands of calls, emails, letters and visitors to their offices that they claim go mostly ignored by higher-ups.
“We are living through a fraught moment in U.S. foreign policy, one in which American-made bombs — paid for by American tax dollars — are dropped on homes, schools and hospitals,” the website’s mission statement says. “Despite the evidence before our eyes, the voices advocating in Congress for the pragmatic and moral solutions that would uphold our treaty obligations and could broker peace are repeatedly sidelined, ignored and maligned.”
Alongside a mission statement on the website is a photograph apparently taken in a hearing room on Capitol Hill showing three people, their faces blurred to obscure their identities, holding an inflatable Predator drone with a small Israeli flag on its side. “WE DISSENT!” is emblazoned across the image. Organizers said they had gained unauthorized access to the room — typically something for which the approval of a member of Congress is needed — to capture the image and call attention to how the United States is arming Israel.
As of Monday morning, the channel had published six memos from congressional aides who use generic signatures such as “a Senate committee aide to a northeastern Democrat.” Staff aides who want to submit memos are instructed to follow a provided template and email their memo to the dissent channel’s inbox. A team made up of current and former staff members will then read and judge the memo’s substance, verify the author’s identity and publish it on the site.
The site also includes anonymous videos in which faces are concealed and voices altered to disguise the identities of the submitters.
The result is a forum where staff members’ dissent from the members of Congress they work for are there for all to see. Many lawmakers have already had to contend with such fissures in their own offices.
Mr. Ivey, who has been outspoken in his support for Israel and has resisted calls for a cease-fire, said a junior aide had resigned from his team over his stance on the war.
He said staff aides should research a lawmaker’s positions and decide whether they agree before going to work for them.
“I worked for three senators and a congressman, and I never would have publicly disagreed with the positions that they took,” Mr. Ivey said. “You probably shouldn’t go to work for someone that you don’t agree with that fundamentally.”
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