Dear President Biden, we need a ceasefire now.

Dear President Biden,

We write to you as the current staff of your re-election campaign. As we work to mobilize voters to cast their ballots for you in 2024, we must take a moment to acknowledge our tremendous grief, and the grief shared by countless other Americans, toward the violence occurring in Gaza.

We joined this campaign because the values that you — and we — share are ones worth fighting for. Justice, empathy, and our belief in the dignity of human life is the backbone of not only the Democratic Party, but of the country. However, your administration’s response to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing in Gaza has been fundamentally antithetical to those values — and we believe it could cost you the 2024 election. Therefore, we join your 2020 campaign alumni in imploring you to:

1. Publicly call for — and use financial and diplomatic leverage to bring about — an immediate, permanent ceasefire;
2. Advocate for de-escalation in the region, including demanding that Hamas release all hostages and that Israel release the over 2,000 Palestinians in administrative detention being held without charge;
3. End unconditional military aid to Israel;
4. Investigate whether Israel’s actions in Gaza violate the Leahy Law, prohibiting U.S. military aid from funding foreign military units implicated in the commission of gross violations of human rights;
5. Take concrete steps to end the conditions of apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing that are the root causes of this conflict.

Like so many others, we continue to be devastated by Hamas’s attack against Israeli civilians on October 7th — it was a vile assault, one that touched the consciousness of the country. The subsequent killing of 20,000 Palestinian civilians, however, has struck the same societal nerve. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past by allowing the actions of Hamas to justify such further violence against civilians.

Israel’s attacks in Gaza have had one of the highest civilian death tolls of any conflict in decades. Children have been caught in the center of it, many of them killed by bombs made in St. Charles, MO. In the past 88 days, over 1% of the population of Gaza — including countless women, children, and premature babies — have been killed, while almost 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced from their homes. There is no safe place for innocent civilians to go, no shelter, and no humanitarian assistance. What we are witnessing in Gaza, as highlighted by countless experts from around the world, is a genocide.

You have said numerous times that silence in the face of human rights violations is complicity. We agree, which is why we are speaking out now. Every minute that passes without a ceasefire is another life that is lost — a life that could have been saved with political action from you. As your staff, we believe it is both a moral and electoral imperative for you to publicly call for a cessation of violence.

The majority of Democrats support an end to Israel’s military campaign. Americans, especially young Americans, feel extraordinarily passionate about this issue. In fact, 72% of voters under 30 — a key Democratic voting bloc — disapprove of your handling of the conflict in Gaza.

Biden for President staff have seen volunteers quit in droves, and people who have voted blue for decades feel uncertain about doing so for the first time ever, because of this conflict. It is not enough to merely be the alternative to Donald Trump. The campaign has to shift the feeling in the pits of voters’ stomachs, the same feeling that weighs on us every day as we fight for your reelection. The only way to do that is to call for a ceasefire.

This Administration’s profound sense of empathy is one of the reasons we felt inspired to join your reelection campaign. Now, we have faith that you will listen to the two-thirds of the country and three-quarters of our fellow Democrats who support a ceasefire. Complicity in the death of over 20,000 Palestinians, 8,200 of whom are children, simply cannot be justified. Only with an end to violence can we achieve a real and lasting peace that upholds the right to self-determination, safety, and freedom for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Sincerely,

17 Biden for President Staffers