USAID official resigns after trying to speak out about dying Palestinian mothers and children
Washington DC - Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has become the latest federal official to resign over the Biden administration's ongoing support for Israel's assault on Gaza.
Smith told The Guardian he was given the choice between resigning and getting fired after he developed a presentation for a May 23 internal conference on Palestinian maternal and child mortality.
The presentation was canceled by USAID leadership last week. Two days later, Smith said he was notified his contract would be canceled early due to "personality differences."
Smith had worked at USAID for four years as a senior adviser on gender, maternal health, child health, and nutrition before stepping down on Monday.
"I cannot do my job in an environment in which specific people cannot be acknowledged as fully human, or where gender and human rights principles apply to some, but not to others, depending on their race," he wrote in a letter to agency chief Samantha Power, the author of Pulitzer Prize-winning A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.
USAID accused of hypocrisy
Though President Joe Biden has denied the charge, the International Court of Justice has ruled Israel's actions in Gaza to be a plausible case of genocide and has ordered an immediate halt to military operations in Rafah.
Israel has killed over 36,000 Palestinians in Gaza, mostly women and children, since October, while the US government continues to send billions of dollars' worth of weapons to the Israeli military.
"USAID has always prided itself on our programs supporting democracy, human rights, and rule of law," Smith wrote in his resignation letter. "In Ukraine, we call for legal redress when people are victimized, and name perpetrators of violence … We boldly state 'Slava Ukraini' in peppy promotional videos."
"When it comes to the Palestinians, however, we avoid saying anything about their right to statehood, the abuses they’re currently suffering, or which powers have been violating their basic rights to freedom, self-determination, livelihoods, and clean water."
Resignations and protests rock US government agencies
Smith's announcement followed the resignation earlier this week of Stacy Gilbert, a senior official in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, over accusations the Biden administration has lied about Israel obstructing access to humanitarian aid in Gaza.
Gilbert's decision was the latest in a string of resignations and protest actions from federal employees and military members in recent months.
Josh Paul, a top official at the State Department, resigned in October over continued US arms transfers to Israel. He has since backed a federal lawsuit accusing Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin of complicity in genocide.
Former State Department officer Annelle Sheline and Arabic-language spokesperson Hala Rharrit left their posts over the US' role in Gaza's destruction, as did former Education Department official Tariq Habash, who is Palestinian American.
Active Air Force member Aaron Bushnell has been hailed as a hero after set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington in what he called "an extreme act of protest." He died as a result.
Army Major Harrison Mann, who is Jewish, stepped down from his post at the Defense Intelligence Agency earlier this month in response to the US government's "nearly unqualified support" for Israel.
Days later, Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Interior Department, became the first Jewish-American Biden appointee to resign over the Gaza assault.
"This was an incredibly difficult decision, but one that was necessary – and one that felt even more urgent, as the president of the United States has persistently corrupted the idea of Jewish safety, weaponizing my community as a shield to dodge accountability for his role in this atrocity," Call wrote in an op-ed for the Guardian this week.
Cover photo: IMAGO / imagebroker