A wave of current and former staff members, mostly of a younger generation, are agitating for a cease-fire and speaking out against their bosses’ positions.
The carnations arrived by the wheelbarrow. Blood-red, pink, orange and yellow, more than 10,000 stems were laid on the steps at the base of the Capitol against a clear blue sky.
Each was meant to represent a civilian life lost in the Israel-Hamas war one month in, encompassing Israeli and Palestinian people alike. They were brought over by more than 100 congressional staff members, all wearing masks to obscure their identities, for a walkout last week honoring the civilians killed in the conflict and calling for a cease-fire and the release of more than 200 hostages abducted by Hamas.
“We are congressional staffers on Capitol Hill, and we are no longer comfortable staying silent,” three of the aides, all of whom declined to give their names, declared, the Capitol dome towering behind them. “Our constituents are pleading for a cease-fire, and we are the staffers answering their calls. Most of our bosses on Capitol Hill are not listening to the people they represent. We demand our leaders speak up: Call for a cease-fire, a release of all hostages and an immediate de-escalation now.”
The walkout was the latest in a series of actions congressional aides have taken, almost all of them anonymously, to publicly urge members of Congress — their own bosses — to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.
As a tense political debate rages across the country and on the Senate and House floors — where elected officials have sparred over emergency aid to Israel, what if any conditions should come with it and even what language is appropriate for the debate — there is a more personal and in many ways more emotionally fraught discussion taking place inside the offices of members of Congress.
The vast majority of lawmakers in both political parties have rejected calls for a cease-fire, saying Israel has a right to go after Hamas after its brutal attack in southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage. A cessation, many of them argue, would only embolden Hamas and allow it to regroup. Israel announced last week that it would institute daily combat pauses to allow civilians to flee and aid to enter Gaza amid skyrocketing civilian casualties and a worsening humanitarian crisis.
But many Democratic congressional staff members, most of them under the age of 35, have found themselves in stark disagreement with their bosses and the Biden administration on an issue that cuts to the heart of their values, according to interviews with more than a dozen aides and strategists, most of whom spoke on the condition that their names not be used for fear of imperiling their jobs and prompting personal attacks.
