If you’ve never heard of a guy named Josh Paul from the State Department, don’t feel too bad. I’d never heard of him until this week either. He was in charge of arranging arms transfers and other military aid to allied nations. I say that in the past tense because Mr. Paul is no longer an employee of the State Department or the federal government. He wasn’t fired, however. He quit. And the reason he gave was his moral outrage over the Biden administration sending military aid to Israel following the attack by Hamas. For some reason, inside my head, I kept hearing the old saying, ‘Don’t let the door hit ya where the Good Lord split ya.’ (Politico)

A State Department official involved with transferring arms to key American allies resigned from his post on Wednesday, saying that “shortsighted decisions” by the Biden administration contributed to his having to make an unbearable moral compromise.

“In my 11 years I have made more moral compromises than I can recall, each heavily, but each with my promise to myself in mind, and intact,” the official, Josh Paul, wrote in a post explaining his decision. “I am leaving today because I believe that in our current course with regards to the continued — indeed, expanded and expedited — provision of lethal arms to Israel — I have reached the end of that bargain.”

“I cannot work in support of a set of major policy decisions, including rushing more arms to one side of the conflict, that I believe to be shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse,” he added.

As always, I will note that Josh Paul is entitled to whatever opinion he wishes and there are sadly more than a few people around the country who agree with him. But if you’re going to lecture people about compromises to your lofty morals, it seems like you should at least be consistent. And that sort of consistency seems to be severely lacking in Paul’s explanation.

If you want to say that you’re opposed to war and don’t feel that our country should be enabling military violence in other parts of the world, that’s fine. Many serious religious scholars voice the same concerns. But if that were the case, why would you take a job and establish a career in the government with the primary purpose of exporting military aid? I would expect such a person to refuse the job when it was first offered.

So if that’s not the problem, perhaps he is specifically opposed to the United States giving weapons and ammunition to Israel as opposed to other nations. We should be first be clear that we’re not “giving” anything to Israel. They’re ordering these supplies and paying for them. But the point is, we’ve been selling military hardware to Israel for pretty much the entire time the country has existed. Josh Paul must have organized hundreds of arms shipments to the Israelis prior to this. So why is it only now that his conscience is rising up and demanding an end to the “compromise?”

There is only one obvious answer. Paul objects to the idea of Israel using weapons and ammunition from the United States against the Palestinian terrorists of Hamas. He describes this process as being “unjust and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.” Which values would those be? The right to self-defense? The right to respond to years of civilians being bombarded with rockets launched across their border? Those sound like the actual values that America has embraced for the entire history of our country.

I would argue that this example of very  “not quiet quitting” is little more than an exercise in virtue signaling from a pro-Hamas, anti-Israel leftist who somehow wound up with a job inside of our State Department. On that assumption, I suppose it’s better that he exits stage left rather than sticking around and potentially sabotaging one of our shipments to our closest ally in the Middle East. Add that to your resume and commence the job search, Mr. Paul. Be sure to let us know how it goes.