Alexander Smith, a contractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), resigned from his private sector position, saying he could no longer perform contract work for the Biden administration after a presentation he was preparing on Gaza’s humanitarian crisis was cancelled.
Smith claimed that USAID gave him a choice between resigning or dismissal after he attempted to give a presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, says a report published by The Guardian.
“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,” Smith wrote in his resignation letter quoted by The Guardian.
Smith’s resignation adds to a small but growing list of officials working inside or for the US government who have resigned in protest against the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
On Tuesday, Stacy Gilbert, a career official in the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM), told staff she was resigning because she felt the State Department had wrongly concluded that Israel was not preventing the entry of aid into Gaza.
Earlier this month, Lilly Greenberg Call became the first Jewish-American political official to resign. Call worked in the Department of Interior, but there have been a number of high-profile resignations from officials working on the Middle East and defence.
Major Harrison Mann tendered his resignation from the Department of Defence Intelligence Agency in May, citing Washington’s support for the war on Gaza.
