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More than 800 officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union released a public letter of dissent<\/a> on Friday against their governments\u2019 support of Israel in its war in Gaza<\/a>.<\/p>\n The letter is the first instance of officials in allied nations across the Atlantic coming together to openly criticize their governments over the war, say current and former officials who are organizing or supporting the effort.<\/p>\n The officials say that it is their duty as civil servants to help improve policy and to work in their nations\u2019 interests, and that they are speaking up because they believe their governments need to change direction on the war. The signers say they have raised concerns through internal channels but have been ignored.<\/p>\n \u201cOur governments\u2019 current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally,\u201d the letter says, according to a copy obtained Thursday by The New York Times. It adds that \u201cthere is a plausible risk that our governments\u2019 policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Israeli military launched a bombing and ground campaign in Gaza after Hamas fighters invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and killed about 1,200 people while abducting about 240, Israeli officials said. More than 27,000 people in Gaza have been killed and nearly 2 million have been displaced since Israel\u2019s offensive began, according to the health ministry in Gaza and United Nations officials.<\/p>\n The document does not include the names of signers because they fear reprisal, said one organizer, an official who has worked in the State Department for more than two decades. But about 800 current officials have given approval to the letter as it has quietly circulated among employees at the national level in multiple countries, the official said.<\/p>\n The effort reveals the extent to which pro-Israel policies among American, British and European leaders have stirred dissent among civil servants, including many who carry out the foreign policies of their governments.<\/p>\n About 80 of the signers are from American agencies, with the biggest group being from the State Department, one organizer said. The governing authority most represented among the signers is the collective European Union institutions, followed by the Netherlands and the United States.<\/p>\n National-level officials from eight other member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, have approved the letter, said another person familiar with the letter. Most of those supporters work in the foreign ministries of those nations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe political decision-making of Western governments and institutions\u201d over the war \u201chas created unprecedented tensions with the expertise and duty that apolitical civil servants bring to bear,\u201d said Josh Paul, who worked in the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers but who resigned in October over the Biden administration\u2019s support of Israel\u2019s military campaign. Mr. Paul said he knew the organizers of the letter.<\/p>\n \u201cOne-sided support for Israel\u2019s atrocities in Gaza, and a blindness to Palestinian humanity, is both a moral failure and, for the harm it does to Western interests around the globe, a policy failure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Robert Ford, a former U.S. ambassador to Algeria and Syria who resigned in 2014 over the Obama administration\u2019s Syria policy, said he had never seen a cross-border dissent letter like this new one in three decades of working at the State Department.<\/p>\n He added that some diplomats had learned a lesson from the run-up to the Iraq War begun by President George W. Bush: that keeping quiet about objections to misguided policies or not going public with them when the stakes are high could contribute to a disastrous outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen war is looming that is very problematic on many levels, I can see why people are speaking out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n U.S. officials released a few similar letters and dissenting messages last fall. In November, more than 500 employees of about 40 U.S. government agencies sent a letter to President Biden<\/a> criticizing his policies on the war. In that letter, the officials also did not reveal their names.<\/p>\n