In 2020, Maryam Hassanein cast her vote for Joe Biden in the first presidential election she was old enough to vote in, believing he represented “hope” and an opportunity for “justice for Muslim Americans and for marginalized communities as a whole.” On Tuesday, Hassanein became the latest member of the Biden administration to publicly resign over the president’s policies on the Gaza war — and the youngest known to resign to date, at age 24.
“I learned that even though the agency I work for doesn’t produce foreign policy, serving in the administration in any capacity essentially makes you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians,” Hassanein told HuffPost of her resignation from the Interior Department, which has not previously been made public. She was serving as a special assistant to the assistant secretary for land and minerals management.
She described her resignation as a way to “use the privilege” to make a statement against Biden’s support for Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has killed nearly 38,000 people, displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s residents and plunged the region into a humanitarian crisis.
Hassanein is one of 11 people who have resigned from government positions because they felt Biden’s approach made it impossible for them to continue serving under him. A lot of of whom worked in national security roles, including former State Department veteran Josh Paul, who was the first to resign during a development phase of HuffPost reported. Frustration with the moral and strategic toll According to sources, Biden has strong support for the Israeli offensive among government officials. Some say the support is as strong as the outrage among US officials over the decision to invade Iraq in 2003. Government officials have organized several protests and signed internal and public statements of protest.
Hassanein was one of hundreds of political appointed in the board, which is a big emphasis about diversity in its ranks. A Muslim-American, she is the third high-profile appointee to resign over Gaza after Lily Greenberg Calla Jewish-American appointee, formerly also with the Department of the Interior, and Tariq Habasha Palestinian American who worked at the Ministry of Education.
“Marginalized communities in our country have long been denied the justice they deserve. joined the Biden-Harris administration with the belief that my voice and diverse perspective would lend a hand in pursuing that justice,” Hassanein argued in a statement about her resignation. “Their policy choices and the dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims have made it clear to me that I have no place in this government.”
Spokespeople for the White House and the Interior Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Speaking to HuffPost, Hassanein described how he had become increasingly disillusioned with Biden as he maintained his policy of near-total support for Israel’s retaliatory war following the Oct. 7 attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
During the last election, she worked to drum up support for the then-Democratic presidential nominee among her family, “not someone who votes in every election,” and her friends in Arizona — a state that was key to Biden’s presidential victory.
“I was very, very passionate,” Hassanein said, referring to the experience of living under the openly anti-Muslim presidency of Donald Trump.
She worked for Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) on Capitol Hill when the war began. As conditions in Gaza deteriorated, she believed the administration would “jump into action” and end the conflict. She joined Biden’s staff in January.
Yet she found “a huge culture of silence” among most of her colleagues and appointments at the Home Office about the war, with the feeling that they were all implicated. She felt a “disconnect” between their work and the evidence of destruction in Gaza that she regularly saw.
“Our very presence here, especially as Biden and Harris’ appointees, makes us complicit, because we allow business as usual to continue while this genocide is anything but normal,” Hassanein said in her statement.
In the spring, she became involved in the student movement against the war, particularly the encampment at George Washington University in downtown Washington. Because she was not much older than the students, Hassanein said she believed she could “understand them better.” She found motivation in seeing them take risks with their safety and their education amid a national backlash against the protests that in some cases led to violent arrests of students and hazards to deny them future employment.
“I saw these students, who have worked so hard for what they have had so far, willing to sacrifice their academic and personal careers for the sake of Palestinian liberation. And so here I am, inspired by the students to also sacrifice what I have worked towards,” Hassanein said in her statement.
Hassanein also described her Muslim identity as significant in her decision. She placed the US role in Gaza in the context of a problematic broader US approach to the Muslim majority world and the human rights of groups within it, particularly Palestinians.
“Instead of using American influence to stop the killing, President Biden has continued to fund this violence, while hate crimes against Palestinian Americans are fueled by repeating racist clichés and “Outright lies,” Hassanein wrote, referring to the many alleged hate crimes since October 7. “Anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiments are embedded in our foreign policy and are inextricably linked to the grotesque disregard for Palestinian lives.”
Some prominent Arab and Muslim-American activists in the Democratic Party have led an “uncommitted” movement to deny Biden the community’s support unless he changes course on Gaza. Hassanein said she is still “struggling” with whether Biden can win her support, and argued that “doubling down” on support for Israel “won’t help” Muslim voters.
Despite all the factors that Hassanein’s identity played into her decision, she hopes her move will resonate more with her former colleagues who are struggling with what she calls a “moral dilemma.”
“I really hope that this isn’t taken as, ‘Oh, this person and their background — clearly this person leaving has nothing to do with me.’ I think it has everything to do with everybody,” she told HuffPost. “I really hope that even if the issue doesn’t hit close to home, [colleagues]“ They understand and recognize that they have a role to play, and also a responsibility to speak out against brutal violence.”