Former US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller: "Israel committed war crimes"

After years as a prominent advocate for former US President Joe Biden's foreign policy, former State Department spokesman Matthew Miller stated in an interview published this week that "there is no doubt that Israel committed war crimes," but he denied accusations that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians.

This recognition comes as Israel's war on Gaza continues unabated in the name of defeating Hamas. At least 54,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023, and two million Palestinians are on the brink of famine, having been almost entirely displaced from their homes. The administration of current President Donald Trump has followed Biden's lead with unconditional support for the Israeli war effort, despite international condemnation and the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on charges of "crimes against humanity and war crimes."

Biden and his administration have never accused Israel of committing war crimes. The administration has been unable to secure a lasting ceasefire and has failed to deliver vital food, water, and medicine to ailing Palestinians, despite repeated public promises from the then-president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Miller himself. The internal Democratic Party debate over support for Israel hampered Biden's failed presidential campaign last year and that of Vice President Kamala Harris, and shows no signs of abating as Democrats look ahead to the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential primaries.

It is noteworthy that the Al-Quds correspondent and other journalists argued with Miller on a daily basis for more than 16 months, without success, to get him to admit that Israel is committing war crimes.

"I don't think it's genocide, but I do think... that Israel has committed war crimes," Miller told Britain's Sky News in a conversation published Monday and recorded last week. "When you're on the stage, you're not expressing your own personal opinion. You're expressing the conclusions of the United States government, and the United States government has not concluded that they committed war crimes, and they haven't concluded that yet."

Miller repeatedly rejected accusations of war crimes against Israel and defended Israel's actions during his regular briefings at the State Department following the October 7, 2023, attacks, and continued to maintain this position until his final briefing on January 15, 2025. He also sharply criticized the International Criminal Court and UN human rights officials, including leveling accusations of anti-Semitism at officials who accused Israel of war crimes and genocide from the State Department podium.

Miller avoided elaborating on his remarks, saying it was an “open question” whether Israel “has deliberately pursued a policy of committing war crimes, or is recklessly acting in a way that aids and abets war crimes.” But he said it was “almost certainly not an open question” whether members of the Israeli military had committed war crimes. “Ultimately, in almost every major conflict, including conflicts where democratic nations are prosecuted, you will see members of the military or militaries commit war crimes, and the way you judge a democratic nation is whether they hold those people accountable, and Israel hasn’t,” Miller said. “We haven’t seen them hold enough military personnel accountable yet, and I think the question is whether they will.”

Miller broadly described the internal debates surrounding the Biden administration's policy toward Israel, explaining that the administration's position was based on the principle of not cutting off US arms to Israel.

The Biden administration spent more than $17 billion (at least) on military aid to Israel during the first year of the Israeli war on Gaza, and only stopped a single bomb shipment throughout the war. Miller noted that “cutting off weapons” by any standard, coupled with domestic protests against the Biden administration over the war and international recognition of a Palestinian state, “would have led Hamas’s leadership to conclude that they didn’t need to agree to a ceasefire.” Instead, Miller explained, “everyone in the administration was united” in negotiating a permanent ceasefire proposed by Biden in May 2024, which was eventually agreed to in some form in January 2025. But that ceasefire was short-lived, and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued, with Trump’s chief envoy, Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor, having so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade Netanyahu to secure another ceasefire.

“Now, the thing I keep coming back to, and I’ll always ask myself—and I think this applies to others in the (Biden administration) administration—is: In that period between the end of May 2024 and mid-January 2025, when thousands of Palestinians were killed, innocent civilians who didn’t want this war and had nothing to do with it, was there more we could have done to pressure the Israeli government to agree to this ceasefire?” Miller said. “I think sometimes maybe.”