Former Biden administration State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, after years of being among the more visible defenders of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, said in an interview published this week that “it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” but denied accusations Israel is committing a genocide of Palestinians.

What You Need To Know

  • Former Biden administration State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, after years of being among the more visible defenders of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy, said this week that “it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” but denied accusations Israel is committing a genocide of Palestinians
  • Biden and his administration never accused Israel of war crimes. The administration was unable to secure lasting ceasefires and failed at delivering vital food, water and medicine to the ailing Palestinians despite frequent public promises from the then-president, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Miller himself
  • The admission comes as Israel’s war on Gaza in the name of defeating Hamas continues unabated, at least 54,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023, and the living two million are on the brink of famine and almost entirely displaced from their homes
  • Miller frequently dismissed allegations of war crimes and defended Israel’s actions during his regular State Department briefings in the aftermath of the October 2023 attacks on Israel that ignited the broader conflict through his final briefing on Jan. 15 of this year
  • During his State Department tenure, Miller issued strong criticisms of the International Criminal Court and United Nations human rights officials, including lobbing accusations of antisemitism at officials who accused Israel of war crimes and genocide

The admission comes as Israel’s war on Gaza in the name of defeating Hamas continues unabated, at least 54,000 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7, 2023, and the living two million are on the brink of famine and almost entirely displaced from their homes. The Trump administration has followed Biden with near-unconditional support for Israel’s war effort despite international outcry and International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant for “crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

Biden and his administration never accused Israel of war crimes. The administration was unable to secure lasting ceasefires and failed at delivering vital food, water and medicine to the ailing Palestinians despite frequent 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 little sign of fading as Democrats look ahead to the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential primary.

“I don't think it's a genocide, but I think… it is, without a doubt, true that Israel has committed war crimes,” Miller told British outlet Sky News in a conversation published Monday and recorded last week. “When you're at the podium, you're not expressing your personal opinion. You're expressing the conclusions of the United States government and the United States government had not concluded they've committed war crimes, still has not concluded that.”

Miller frequently dismissed allegations of war crimes and defended Israel’s actions during his regular State Department briefings in the aftermath of the October 2023 attacks on Israel that ignited the broader conflict through his final briefing on Jan. 15 of this year. He issued strong criticisms of the ICC and United Nations human rights officials, including lobbing accusations of antisemitism at officials who accused Israel of war crimes and genocide, from the State Department podium. 

In the Sky News interview, Miller now says he believes Israel has committed war crimes during the course of the fighting, including during his tenure at the State Department.

Miller hedged his statement, saying it was an “open question” whether Israel “has pursued a policy to deliberately committing war crimes, or is acting reckless in a way that aids and abets war crimes.” But, he said it “is almost certainly not an open question” that individual Israeli military members committed war crimes. 

“Ultimately, in almost every major conflict, including conflicts prosecuted by democracies, you will see individual members of the military, of militaries, commit war crimes, and the way you judge a democracy is whether they hold those people accountable, but Israel hasn’t,” Miller said. “We have not yet seen them hold sufficient numbers of the military accountable, and I think it's an open question whether they're going to.”

He described in broad terms internal debates over the government’s Israel policy, explaining there was a concern that cutting Israel off from U.S. weapons — Biden’s administration spent more than $17 billion on military aid for Israel during the first year of fighting and paused only one shipment of bombs during the entire war — combined with domestic protests against the Biden administration over the war and international recognition of the state of Palestine “were leading the leadership of Hamas to conclude that they didn't need to agree to a ceasefire.”

Instead, Miller explained, “everyone in the administration was united” in negotiating a lasting ceasefire that Biden proposed in May 2024 and that was ultimately agreed to in some form in January 2025. That ceasefire did not last and Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has continued as Trump’s chief envoy Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate investor, has so far been unsuccessful in his attempts to secure another. 

“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, 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 the Israeli government to agree to that ceasefire?” Miller said. “I think at times there probably, there probably was.”