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A former State Department spokesman under the Biden administration has come out saying he believes that Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza.
Getting into it: While speaking to Sky News, former US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said, “It is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes” in Gaza. Miller, who spent much of his tenure publicly defending Israeli actions, clarified that while he does not believe Israel is committing genocide, he now believes war crimes have clearly occurred. He said, “There are two ways to think about the commission of war crimes. One is if the state has pursued a policy of deliberately committing war crimes or is acting recklessly in a way that aids and abets war crimes. Is the state committing war crimes? That, I think, is an open question [in regard to Gaza]. 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 was candid about internal disagreements within the Biden administration during the his time at the State Department. He acknowledged disputes over whether to withhold arms and how aggressively to pressure Israel to accept a ceasefire. “There were disagreements all along the way about how to handle policy. Some of those were big disagreements, some of those were little disagreements,” he said. Specifically, he noted that Biden administration discussions about pausing weapons deliveries — along with anti-war protests and foreign diplomatic developments — may have inadvertently convinced Hamas that a ceasefire was unnecessary.
Miller expressed regret over whether more could have been done to save civilian lives. “The thing that I look back on… is in that intervening period between the end of May [2024] and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians, innocent civilians, were killed… was there more that we could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was,” he said. He added that both Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had shifted ceasefire terms over time, further complicating negotiations. “You saw Hamas repeatedly move the goalposts, but you saw [Netanyahu] move the goalposts as well, and I do think there are times when we should’ve been tougher on them.”
In response, Hamas welcomed Miller’s comments as a significant admission of Israeli wrongdoing and a reflection of US complicity. In a statement issued after the interview, Hamas said, “Miller clearly revealed that he was not allowed to speak the truth while in office and was forced to adhere to the US government’s official narrative regarding the occupation’s practices. This exposes the deep political complicity of US administrations with the occupation and their criminal cover-up of its brutal violations. We call on the international community and international judicial institutions to turn these dangerous confessions into investigations and immediate legal action.”
This all comes as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is publicly condemning the actions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, accusing it of committing war crimes in Gaza and waging a war that lacks both moral and strategic justification. In an opinion piece for Haaretz, Olmert wrote, “The government of Israel is currently waging a war without purpose, without goals or clear planning and with no chances of success.” He added, “Yes, Israel is committing war crimes,” and that the current military campaign has become “a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians.”
