While serving as a contractor and senior adviser for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Alex Smith had a broad mandate.
He was tasked with offering insight on issues concerning gender, infectious disease, nutrition, and the health of mothers and children.
And all of those issues converged in Gaza, as Israel’s siege unfolded. The siege limited access to food, water and medicine, forcing the closure of hospitals and medical units. The United Nations has also repeatedly warned that northern Gaza is at “imminent” risk of famine.
According to the nonprofit Save the Children, at least 3,100 children under age five had been killed in Gaza as of October. In a survey of children in that age group, the nonprofit found nearly 20 percent were suffering from acute malnutrition. A further 4 percent faced severe acute malnutrition.
The UN likewise found that an estimated 46,300 pregnant women in Gaza were grappling with “crisis levels” of hunger.
Smith decided to raise the alarm within his agency. He said he wrote emails to his higher-ups, including Samantha Power, the administrator of USAID — all to no avail.
The final straw, Smith said, was when senior leadership pulled his presentation on maternal and child mortality among Palestinians, despite initially agreeing to let him speak.
In the lead-up to the presentation, he said his slides were scrutinised, and he was given detailed instructions on what language to use.
He recalled being told not to refer to Arab Israeli citizens as “Palestinians”, even if they identified as such, and to avoid phrases like “at the border of Gaza”. Even a map of Gaza was deemed “unacceptable”.
“It was all very Orwellian,” Smith said, referencing the British dystopian novelist George Orwell. “It’s pretty much straight out of the pages of 1984.”
After the presentation’s cancellation, Smith said he was made to choose: either resign or face dismissal. He chose the former.
Currently, he works for a think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, collecting evidence for tribunals.
As he reflects upon his time in the Biden government, Smith notes a stark contrast between Biden’s support for war-torn Ukraine and his lack of support for Gaza, where entire neighbourhoods have been levelled.
“When we talk about Ukraine, we can condemn the bombing of hospitals. We can talk about the resilience of the people who are being attacked. We can talk about the perpetrators who are attacking them,” Smith said.
“But when it comes to Gaza, we don’t talk about those people. We don’t plan for their health systems to be rebuilt.”
When he voted in the 2024 presidential race, Smith knew he could not back Biden’s vice president, Harris, fearing a continuation of the president’s policies.
His home state of Maine employs a ranked-choice system, allowing residents to offer support to multiple candidates. Smith used his ballot to rank Harris as his last choice, behind the third-party candidates Cornel West and Jill Stein.
Smith explained he has a grim view of Biden’s legacy will be perceived in the years to come. “He will be remembered as the US president who manufactured a genocide against children in Gaza.”