WASHINGTON — Around 75 Capitol Hill staffers, federal workers and activists gathered in a bar last week in the hopes that actions — even symbolic ones — might speak louder than words. Or, perhaps more accurately, silence.
Congressional Staff for a Ceasefire Now, an underground group of Hill aides advocating for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas, organized a fundraiser to support aid agencies operating in Gaza.
But raising a few thousand dollars wasn’t the real reason why they filled the back room of the Busboys and Poets in Mount Vernon Triangle. The staffers came as a rebuke to their bosses, who they cast as accepting an ongoing genocide by failing to speak out in opposition.
“We have an obligation to stand up and to label ourselves [as congressional staff] and be honest,” said one of the organizers, an aide to a House Democrat, who spoke anonymously out of fear of retaliation. “We will not be complicit in this, and we are determined to make whatever difference we can. And if that means putting our jobs on the line to do so, so be it.”
The fundraiser drew a standing-room-only crowd and follows a vigil the group held on the House steps in November. Using GoFundMe to collect donations, the aides raised $8,060 as of Tuesday morning, which they will send to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, or UNRWA, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Allegations have dogged UNRWA that some employees may have helped Hamas with its surprise attack on Oct. 7 that lit this conflagration, which left roughly 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 240 kidnapped. At least 29,000 Palestinians have been killed as Israel continues its assault on Gaza, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Those claims led many Republicans to call on the U.S. to cut off funds to the relief agency and to launch investigations into its operations, and the Biden administration…
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