In an podcast interview with Sky News Correspondent Mark Stone on Monday, former US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said that Israel has committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. 

“I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes,” he said while answering a question on the plausability of genocide in Gaza, adding that it is his personal opinion and it not the “conclusion of the United States government.”

While he does not think that Israel is committing genocide in the Palestinian enclave, Miller explained he believes that there were “isolated incidents” in which Israeli soldiers committed acts deemed as war crimes, and that the debate on whether the Israeli government itself is committing genocide as “an open question.”

Miller, who served as spokesperson during the Biden administration’s final two years in office, was heavily criticized for his ‘smirking’ during his press conferences in the White House, many of which were full of heated confrontations with journalists who grilled him on the apocalyptic scenes emerging from Gaza since October 2023.

While these instances were on video and many went viral, one showed he was accused by Palestinian journalist Sam Husseini of “smirking” when asked by another journalist about the increasing civilian death toll in Israel’s war on the Palestinian enclave.

Another video showed Miller laughing while a journalist pressed him on US foreign policy “bullsh*tting.”

Despite his remarks on Monday, Miller has been condemned on social media for what many people see as his role in the increasingly deplorable situation.

“We will also never forgive and forget you, and you will always be remembered as the smirker of the Gaza Genocide,” wrote Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed on X.

Another journalist, Rana Ayoub, wrote that he has “zero respect for Matthew Miller. Day after day, he defended war crimes, gaslit the suffering of Gazans, and helped shape public opinion to justify atrocities — including the killing of journalists.”