By Edward Wong and Matina Stevis-Gridneff

The document was signed by government employees in 12 nations and E.U. institutions. Signers say their leaders’ policies could be contributing to war crimes in Gaza.

The letter is the first instance of officials in allied nations across the Atlantic coming together to openly criticize their governments over the war. 

More than 800 officials in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union released a public letter of dissent on Friday against their governments’ support of Israel in its war in Gaza.

The letter is the first instance of officials in allied nations across the Atlantic coming together to openly criticize their governments over the war, say current and former officials who are organizing or supporting the effort.

The officials say that it is their duty as civilian servants to help improve policy and to work in their nations’ interests, and that they are speaking up because they believe their governments need to change direction on the war. The signers say they have raised concerns through internal channels but have been ignored.

“Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice and human rights globally,” the letter says, according to a copy obtained Thursday by The New York Times. It adds that “there is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to serious violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”

The Israeli military launched a bombing and ground campaign in Gaza after Hamas fighters invaded Israel on Oct. 7 and killed about 1,200 people while abducting about 240, Israeli officials said. More than 27,000 people in Gaza have been killed and nearly 2 million have been displaced since Israel’s offensive began, according to the health ministry in Gaza and United Nations officials.

The document does not include the names of signers because they fear reprisal, said one organizer, an official who has worked in the State Department for more than two decades. But about 800 current officials have given approval to the letter as it has quietly circulated among employees at the national level in multiple countries, the official said.

The effort reveals the extent to which pro-Israel policies among American, British and European leaders have stirred dissent among civilian servants, including many who carry out the foreign policies of their governments.

About 80 of the signers are from American agencies, with the biggest group being from the State Department, one organizer said. The governing authority most represented among the signers is the collective European Union institutions, followed by the Netherlands and the United States.

National-level officials from eight other member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as well as Sweden and Switzerland, have approved the letter, said another person familiar with the letter. Most of those supporters work in the foreign ministries of those nations.

“The political decision-making of Western governments and institutions” over the war “has created unprecedented tensions with the expertise and duty that apolitical civilian servants bring to bear,” said Josh Paul, who worked in the State Department bureau that oversees arms transfers but who resigned in October over the Biden administration's support of Israel's military campaign. Mr. Paul said he knew the organizers of the letter.