The inmates are running the asylum at the State Department, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is apparently trying to pat them all on the back instead of telling them to suck it up.

Apparently, the State Department is staffed with a lot of people who either love them some Hamas action, or they are anti-Semites who hate Israel. Six of one, half dozen of the other at this point. These State Department officials are, according to reports, using the “dissent cable” process to express their unhappiness with the Biden administration’s lip service (if not actual aid yet) supporting Israel after the Hamas invasion and massacre of October 7th. Huffington Post first reported the “mutiny” within the State Department on October 19th, which is well before the ground invasion phase of the war began.

Officials told HuffPost that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his most senior advisers are overlooking widespread internal frustration. Some department staff said they feel as if Blinken and his team are uninterested in their own experts’ advice as they focus on supporting Israel’s expanding operation in Gaza, where the Palestinian militant group Hamas is based.

“There’s basically a mutiny brewing within State at all levels,” one State Department official said.

Two officials told HuffPost that diplomats are preparing what’s called a “dissent cable,” a document criticizing American policy that goes to the agency’s leaders through a protected internal channel.

Such cables are seen within the State Department as consequential statements of serious disagreement at key historical moments. The dissent channel was established amid deep internal conflict during the Vietnam War, and diplomats have since then used it to warn that the U.S. is making dangerous and self-defeating choices abroad.

This “dissent cable” report happened after the resignation of Josh Paul, who left the State Department over his belief that the Biden administration was just “blindly” supporting Israel.

“This Administration’s response – and much of Congress’ as well – is an impulsive reaction built on confirmation bias, political convenience, intellectual bankruptcy, and bureaucratic inertia,” Paul adds. “That is to say, it is immensely disappointing, and entirely unsurprising. Decades of the same approach have shown that security for peace leads to neither security, nor to peace. The fact is, blind support for one side is destructive in the long term to the interests of the people on both sides.”

Paul said that he cannot work to support a set of policy decisions that include sending over arms, which he believes to be “shortsighted, destructive, unjust, and contradictory to the very values that we publicly espouse.”

Paul then gave an “exclusive” interview to the HuffPo (surprise!), where he bemoaned the fact that he couldn’t “shift anything.” It seems the HuffPo is getting a whole lot of tasty tidbits sent their way, including a new report that says that Blinken held a meeting with some of these loudly whining State Department people.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has met with a group of State Department officials who are involved in formal dissents over President Joe Biden’s approach to the Israel-Hamas war, according to one current and one former State Department official.

The previously unreported meeting took place on Oct. 26, said the former official, who left the State Department several years ago. It came amid huge internal frustration at State over the sense that Biden has disregarded officials’ national security expertise and circumvented normal consultation processes in his focus on demonstrating support to Israel.

This week, the department launched a new series of small group sessions between leaders and rank-and-file officials, according to an internal message seen by HuffPost. The announcement described leaders sharing their views and did not specify what impact expressing different views might have, if any.

Interestingly, all these HuffPo stories involving the State Department have a single author – Akbar Shahid Ahmed, who is listed as “senior foreign affairs reporter” for the HuffPo. Guess what – you’re not going to be in the least bit surprised by his biography on the website.

Akbar Shahid Ahmed is HuffPost’s senior foreign affairs reporter, based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at akbar.ahmed@huffpost.com. A native Pakistani, Akbar has reported from across the Muslim-majority world, Europe and elsewhere. In 2023, he was chosen for the East-West Center’s Korea-United States Journalists Exchange, and in 2022, he won a Boell Transatlantic Media Fellowship to spend the fall reporting in Poland and Lithuania. In 2019, Akbar became the first-ever Pakistani journalist to secure a press credential to report from Israel-Palestine, and was selected as part of the inaugural class of LGBTI fellows at the Atlantic Council. Akbar has previously written for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Generation Progress and, in Pakistan, DAWN and Newsline magazine. He has provided expert commentary for MSNBC, Al Jazeera, BBC and other outlets and participated in panels organized by SXSW, the Truman Center for National Security, the University of Southern California, the Atlantic Council, the South Asian Journalists Association and others. Akbar is a graduate of Yale University, where he studied global affairs, served as an editor of the Yale Daily News and completed the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy. In addition to English, he speaks Urdu, Hindi and French.

So, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, whose resume looks like a laundry list of left-wing or radical news outlets, but is also “LGBTI” – so he definitely doesn’t want to live in any Muslim countries – apparently has some buddies within the State Department. Looking at the “fellows” that are currently listed on the Atlantic Council’s website, which his bio says he was once a part of, I’m seeing a whole lot of State Department officials. I’m going to hazard a guess that this Atlantic Council, a think tank which claims to be nonpartisan, but then talks about its “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the next breath, is the connection point between Ahmed and his sources within the State Department.

I think it’s pretty obvious that there is some deep rot within the State Department, and Antony Blinken needs to start firing people immediately. This whole “dissent cable” bit is hilarious, especially because the State Department has been hiding the dissent cable from Afghanistan, only allowing members of the House Foriegn Affairs Committee to read it, and keeping it out of public view. But now the dissent cable is being used for leftist State Department officials to complain about Israel.

It seems clear that these whiners weren’t watching the footage that Secretary Blinken just testified to the Senate about seeing. The press only covered the fact that Blinken’s testimony was interrupted repeatedly by protesters.

Did anyone check to see if these were State Department employees? They didn’t bother to listen to what Blinken had to say.

.@SecBlinken on family attacked by Hamas: "The father's eye gouged out, the mother's breast cut off, the girl's foot amputated, the boy's fingers cut off before they were executed, and then their executioners sat down and had a meal. That is what this society is dealing with." pic.twitter.com/ei5TLh9xN6

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 31, 2023

One person within the State Department who doesn’t care, because she is completely pro-Hamas, is Sylvia Yacoub, who says Biden is “complicit in genocide” because he supports Israel. And she was very openly expressing herself on social media about it. At least, until the Washington Free Beacon found her Twitter/X account.

JUST IN: State Dept Employee Accuses Biden of Being Complicit in Israel's 'Genocide' — Official who works on MidEast issues decries US support for Israel, raising concerns inside Foggy Bottom https://t.co/mwvLIs0Nzy

— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) November 3, 2023

Sylvia Yacoub, a career foreign service officer who works on Middle East issues, has been outspoken on X, formerly Twitter, using the platform to bash her boss, President Joe Biden, and lash out at the administration’s support for Israel as it faces down Hamas, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of her social media activity.

Yacoub’s messages—which accuse Israel of “genocide” in the Gaza Strip, criticize U.S. military assistance to Israel, and accuse the Biden administration of fomenting Islamaphobia with its pro-Israel position—are said to be well known within the State Department and causing headaches among officials, according to two U.S. government sources who spoke to the Free Beacon.

Yacoub is one of several current Biden administration officials who have publicly griped about America’s robust support for Israel, including a Pentagon employee who has repeatedly called for an immediate Israeli ceasefire, undercutting the administration’s stated policy. U.S. officials, in private forums, have also raised concerns about what they see as the administration’s overly supportive stance towards Israel, according to one U.S. official familiar with the matter.

“A U.S. diplomat openly attacking the administration and its policy in such a manner only serves to undermine the overall mission of advancing U.S. interests,” one U.S. official familiar with Yacoub’s social media postings told the Free Beacon. “No one is forcing her to be part of an administration and a policy that she evidently loathes so much.”

In response to a tweet from Biden advocating increased U.S. military aid to Israel, Yacoub on Thursday wrote, “You are providing significantly more military assistance to the government that is indiscriminately attacking innocent Gazans….you are complicit in genocide.”

In another message that is said to be turning heads at Foggy Bottom, Yacoub accused the president of supporting “genocide” by lending support to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Hey @POTUS—so long as you keep showing absolute support for Bibi with no clear, actionable redlines or calls for ceasefire, you continue to support genocide,” she wrote. “Your rhetoric and approach from day one has resulted in the deaths of thousands. There is so much blood on your hands.”

After the Washington Free Beacon broke the story, Yacoub locked down her Twitter/X account. But they have the screenshots – which Axios, who stole the story straight off of the Free Beacon’s website hours later, does not. Axios did confirm, though, that Yacoub was gathering support and signatures for the dissent cable.

Sylvia Yacoub, a foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Middle East Affairs for more than two years, sent an email Thursday morning to gather signatures for the dissent cable.

“In light of Hamas’s heinous attack on October 7, the ensuing response by the Government of Israel, and the seemingly full endorsement by the U.S. government to the response, we have drafted a dissent cable calling for a significant change in the Administration’s short and long-term policy surround the conflict and path towards regional integration and security,” she wrote, according to a copy obtained by Axios.

“We will send the draft cable on ClassNet,” she wrote, referring to a classified system in the State Department. “We are hoping to collect signatures of those interested by COB tomorrow.”

Antony Blinken, for crying out loud – grow a spine or a set of balls, and START FIRING PEOPLE. At least fire ONE. Using a dissent cable is one thing, but a State Department employee is trashing the administration on social media, and only stopped because she was asked for comment. On the most basic level, its unprofessional. On a political level, it is undermining the administration’s stated goals. How do you keep someone like that on the payroll?

The State Department needs a housecleaning, but Blinken isn’t going to do it, and no Secretary under a Democrat administration is going to do it, either. Foggy Bottom needs to be fumigated, and we are going to need a Republican administration with a president willing to take on the Deep State to do it.

Featured image: Secretary of State Antony Blinken, official State Department photo by Ronny Przysucha, cropped, public domain