A liberal activist in her mid-20s quit her job this week, a bombshell development that featured in multiple national media outlets including the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
Lily Greenberg Call, a low-level political appointee in the Biden administration who happens to be Jewish, resigned Wednesday as special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department. Journalists lauded the performative quitter as "the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of U.S. support for Israel's war" against Hamas.
In an angsty letter posted on social media, Call wrote that she could "no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amidst President Biden's disastrous, continued support" for Israel. In a bizarre interview with the Associated Press, the former staffer denounced Biden for "making Jews the face of the American war machine," whatever that means, and for (truthfully) accusing Hamas of hating Jews and wanting to kill them.
Who is Lily Greenberg Call? Born in the late 1990s, her résumé makes her sound like a satirical version of a super-striving liberal wunderkind who has since childhood dreamed of becoming a professional political activist. In 2010, when she was just 12 years old, Call founded "a leadership group for teenage girls" and published a book of poems.
Call's author bio on Amazon boasts that she has won poetry awards since the age of four. As a first grader, Call won a contest in her school district "for her poem and multi-media artwork entitled: 'If the Statue of Liberty were a Person.'" It describes the 12-year-old Call as "a philanthropist at heart" who "dedicates her spare time to world hunger, child trafficking and disappearing honeybees."
In April 2015, Call "organized a half-day conference on gender equity" in San Diego to educate teenagers about "human trafficking, pay equity and sexual assault on college campuses." A high school senior at the time, Call was profiled in the Times of Israel. "I want to go into politics," she told the paper. "I’m not exactly sure how, but something in the political arena. I’m thinking about getting a degree in humanitarian law."
Call went on to study political science and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. During that time she worked on Hillary Clinton's (second) failed presidential campaign, and spent a summer in Washington, D.C., where she served concurrent internships at Amnesty International and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
"The idea of two internships seemed a little stressful at first, but I have come to love it," Call wrote in 2018. "I saw the Barack and Michelle Obama Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery two times, because they were so majestic!" Call wrote. She fell in love with the nation's capital, a place where people "know they are making history." A city "built on networking" where "the metro is fantastic."
(Fact check: The metro is not fantastic.)