News - World: A senior official in former US president Joe Biden's administration has admitted that the Israeli regime "without a doubt" committed war crimes against Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip but said he had to defend the illegal entity on behalf of the American government.

Matthew Miller, who was the US State Department's top spokesperson from 2023 until the end of Biden’s presidential term, made the revelation in an interview with Sky News UK podcast as he pointed to disagreements, tensions and challenges within the former administration.

Asked about the Israeli war on Gaza, Miller said there were "small and big" disagreements within the White House over how to handle the US-Israeli relationship at the time but he believed Israel was responsible for war crimes in the besieged Palestinian territory while he was working in the administration.

When asked about his view regrading Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the former spokesman said, "I don't think it's genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes."

Challenged on why he had not made such points while working in the administration, he said, “When you're at the [State Department press briefing] podium, you're not expressing your personal opinion. You're expressing the conclusions of the United States government.”

Miller went on to say, "Look, one of the things about being a spokesperson is you're not a spokesperson for yourself. You are a spokesperson for the president, the administration, and you espouse the positions of the administration. And when you're not in the administration, you can just give your own opinions."

The former State Department spokesperson also said the Biden administration "should have been tougher" on Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and put him under more pressure to accept a ceasefire proposal sooner.

"Now, the thing that I look back on, that I will always ask questions of myself about, and I think this is true for others in government, is in that intervening period between the end of May and the middle of January [2025], when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn't want this war, had nothing to do with it, was there more that we could, could have done to pressure Israel to agree to that ceasefire? I think at times there probably was," Miller said.

As the public face of the US State Department during the last two years of Biden's presidency, Miller held regular press conferences in Washington, with pro-Palestinian protesters gathering at times outside his home.

While he was part of the Biden administration, the former spokesman publicly censured moves to hold Israel accountable for war crimes in Gaza, such as an International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli leaders last November.

The Israeli regime launched its US-backed Gaza genocide on October 7, 2023, after the Hamas resistance movement carried out a military operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.

So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured more than 124,00 others, in the besieged territory. 

Source: Press TV