WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s pick for a top human rights position is withdrawing her nomination after opposition from a Senate Republican who questioned her support for the Zionist regime.
“At present, I don’t see a path forward for confirmation, and after 1 ½ years, it’s time to move on,” Sarah Margon said in the statement first shared with Politico. “I will continue to work on democracy and human rights, and am grateful to President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken for their confidence in me and the honor of a nomination.”
A former Capitol Hill staffer and Washington director for Human Rights Watch, Margon came under heavy criticism from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s ranking Republican, Jim Risch, over his claim that she supported the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) against the occupying regime. She was nominated for the position of assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor.
Margon denied supporting the movement but her attempts to clarify the tweets didn’t sway Risch, neither did a letter of support from a bipartisan group of foreign policy professionals, some of them prominent in the Jewish community, who dismissed the allegations against Margon.
Margon likely had the votes to advance on the committee as the Democrats are in the majority, and she had the backing of its chairman, Democrat Robert Menendez of New Jersey.
However, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has a tradition of “comity,” where the chairperson and ranking member jointly agree to set agendas on business meetings, including when to schedule votes on nominees. Menendez would not break with that tradition.
Risch also took issue with Margon’s retweet in 2020 with approval of a New York Times opinion piece titled “I no longer believe in a Jewish state.”
At a hearing in September, Risch asked Margon, “Do you still subscribe to that?” Margon responded by saying she firmly believed in the so-called two-state solution, “so that Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side,” adding, “What I was focused on was the importance of ensuring Israelis and Palestinians could have equal protection under the law, access to democratic processes, security and prosperity.”
Margon, who grew up in a Jewish family in New York, is the U.S. foreign policy director at the Open Society Foundations, the organization founded by billionaire George Soros. In the past, she served as the deputy Washington director for the NGO Human Rights Watch, a group that has clashed repeatedly with the Zionist regime.