“We looked like animals waiting for the feeding lot to open in a barn devoid of morality or compassion,” he continued. “Hunger has driven us to seek food from the hands of our enemy — food wrapped in humiliation and disgrace — after once living with dignity.”
– Mahmoud Al Kafarna, 48, to +972 magazine, detailing the situation at a GHF aid site- June 15, 2025
Hours before Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) started operating on May 26, 2025, its executive director Jake Wood resigned in a statement, saying: “It is clear that it is not possible to implement this (aid) plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” He was replaced by John Acree, a former USAID official who initially served as the head of missions of GHF.
Described by the Human Rights Watch as a fatally flawed and heavily militarized relief delivery that turned into a recurring large-scale civilian massacre field, Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is serving as an additional channel for the Israeli reported war crimes and practices. On August 5, UN experts called for the immediate dismantling of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, warning: “Under any circumstances, when war crimes are overlooked in exchange for temporary relief, impunity can become normalised. Yet, in this case, we are leaving a State accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in charge of feeding the population affected by the genocide without oversight and with impunity. This overt hypocrisy is disturbing.”
The Idea behind GHF
For the past two years, many Israeli officials have accused the UN of institutional bias and the spread of “misleading information” claiming they portray Israel ‘unfairly’ and downplay threats from Hamas. Furthermore, more than 200 UN aid workers were killed in Gaza by Israeli strikes that Israeli officials regarded as an unintended consequence of warfare. Israel has also added visa constraints to UN workers which have also hindered aid entry. On March 2, 2025 Israel blocked entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza. Under international pressure to open humanitarian corridors, the GHF was conceived.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was branded as an alternative rapid-response to aid dissemination in Gaza, bypassing the UN. It is a contractor-run, heavy militarized operation distributing aid at gun point while vetting Palestinians through a biometric system that also enables the Israeli military to identify new targets. In an interview with Fox News, Netanyahu admitted that GHF is a US-backed Israeli initiative. It was heavily criticized by the international community, who commented that GHF trades neutral distributed delivery for politicized centralized control with higher civilian risk of an already worn out population.
Beginning in 2024, Israeli officials began working on the concept of GHF with Philip Rielly, a former CIA parliamentary officer who headed a five-member team to develop a relief mechanism to supplant UN practices in Gaza. The project’s messaging centered on fortifying its armed security architecture rather than the actual substance of aid delivery. Reflecting its dependence on private contractors, the founding team appointed the new company Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), run by Reilly himself, as an outsourced provider for security and logistics support for GHF hubs, according to The Washington Post.
The five-member team included Liran Tancman, an Israeli tech entrepreneur and IDF 8200 reservist; Aryeh Lightstone, the current CEO of the Abraham Accord Peace Institute, which was leading NGO meetings to sell and adjust the GHF concept; David Burke, the COO during the rollout of GHF who also resigned on May 26 with no public statement; and Michael Eisenberg, an American Israeli venture capitalist who claimed UN aid is supporting Hamas.
In the lead now as executive chairman is Johnnie Moor, an American Evangelical Christian PR executive with very clear political bias: Moor publicly backed President Donald Trump‘s proposal for the United States to take over the Palestinian enclave and oversee economic plans for post-war Gaza, specifically turning the strip into the ‘Riviera of the Middle East’.
According to The Washington Post article (unidentified) persons involved in the GHF planning have expressed the importance of developing operational models for aid delivery in Gaza supported by Israel but in later stages they developed ethical ‘reservations’. The article mentions : “In each case, these people said they felt uneasy about a militarized model that deployed private security forces and vetted aid recipients with biometric technology and possibly facial recognition. They also felt that the plan to build only four distribution sites in southern Gaza would require civilians to travel hours to reach them or even facilitate the Israeli military’s campaign to drive Gaza’s population southward — a tactic that could amount to forced displacement, a war crime.” A week after it started operating, more than 27 aid seekers died and 150 were injured on the GHF sites.
Despite those early statements of ethical concerns made sometime before May 24, 2025 and reported by the Washington Post two days prior the launching of the aid distribution initiative, no adjustments to the operational practices were made.
Humanitarian Crisis Expands with GHF “Death Traps”
In an interview for +972 Magazine, 22-year-old Mohammad Al-Basyouni lies recovering from a gunshot wound to his back. He was shot on May 25 while trying to collect food in the Al-Shakoush area of Rafah.
“We knew we could die. But what choice do we have? Hunger is a killer. We want the war and siege to end. We want this nightmare to be over. I came back wounded, and I brought nothing home. Now my sick father has lost his only provider.”
An independent monitoring body recorded fatalities caused by the use of lethal force against aid-seekers both before the launch of the GHF and in the months that followed. From the outset, GHF aid sites have been marked by the inhumane treatment of those seeking assistance.
Between May 27 and July 31, 2025, the United Nations reported that “at least 1373 starving Palestinians have been killed while attempting to obtain aid, 850+ in the vicinity of the four GHF sites and 500+ along the routes of food convoys.” Most of the killings were reportedly committed by the Israeli military.
As shown in the BBC visual, the positioning of the GHF aid hubs relative to where Gazans are situated inevitably drives this starving population southward. Those so-called humanitarian corridors add unnecessary travel distance to this suffering population. The result is predictable: those most in need –such as the elderly, children, women, and individuals with cases of severe malnutrition– might not even reach the aid. It is the survival of the fittest, if the fittest are not shot on site.
In their report, “Gaza: Israeli Killings of Palestinians Seeking Food Are War Crimes,” released on August 1, 2025, Human Rights Watch recognize the weaponization of starvation against a crowd and the deadly means of distributing aid as war crimes, calling for the abandoning of this US-backed death trap scheme calling on Israel to end the mass starvation.
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), said: “The newly created, so-called mechanism is an abomination that humiliates and degrades desperate people. It is a death trap costing more lives than it saves.”
Biometric Intelligence at Aid Sites
Tech entrepreneur Liran Tancman, one of the five GHF’s key founders, shaped the concept of biometric vetting as early as 2015. Seemingly, in its operations, the GHF collects data from civilians by screening them at the aid sites to later identify ‘persons of interest’. Reported by Reuters on May 28, 2025, Israeli officials said one of the advantages of the new aid system is the opportunity to screen recipients to exclude anyone found to be connected to Hamas. Over a month after GHF started their ground operations on July 3, 2025, Associated Press News published a report where a GHF onsite contractor explains how Israeli military are leveraging the aid distribution system for data collection. The report further details the process, saying that American analysts work with Israeli soldiers to review footage in a control room. According to the Associated Press, a contractor said some cameras present at the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid sites were equipped with facial recognition software.
In live feeds viewed by AP, certain streams were labeled “analytics,” which the contractor said indicated facial recognition-enabled video. The same on-site contractor also claimed that the staff were instructed by Safe Reach Solutions to photograph anyone who appeared “out of place” without being given any defined criteria. He said those images were uploaded to a facial recognition database, unsure of their ultimate usage.
The AP report also states that SRS have denied gathering intelligence using biometrics.
Believers in its ‘Mission’
As the corporation keeps its books private with backers insisting on anonymity, what is known about the funding of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has been gathered from leaks, US government filings, media investigations, and few on-the-record GHF statements.
As per Times of Israel, Yair Lapid, a member of the Opposition Knesset Bloc, suggested that the government was secretly funding GHF through foreign “shell companies,” but was quickly shot down by the Prime Minister’s Office’s spokesman Omer Dostri, who said:“Israel does not fund the humanitarian assistance to the Gaza Strip.” Israel’s Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, also commented on the matter, insisting that Israel is not funding humanitarian aid in Gaza. The article continues to mention that the government approved the transfer of some 280 million dollars in May to an unclear source, identified by the government only as “the defense establishment”.
On the receiving end, according to The Washington Post, the GHF confirmed to have secured more than $100 million seed money from a government they refuse to identify.
Max Blumenthal, editor at The Grayzone, highlights the claim by an Israeli right wing opposition figure, Avigdor Lieberman, that the Mossad and Ministry of Defense are behind the millions of dollars injected into the GHF.
There still remains a lack of transparency around the funds and the breakdown of its purpose. In another statement, reported by the Jerusalem Post, Lapid further comments, saying:“If our tax money is already purchasing humanitarian aid, funding food and medicine for children in Gaza, then let’s at least gain international recognition for it. For once, let’s have global headlines highlighting something positive Israel has done in Gaza.”
While the rest remains unclaimed, USAID’s 30 million dollars to GHF has been confirmed despite violence concerns of the rising death toll as well as the inhuman handling of aid seekers at the GHF sites. On July 31, Israel openly announced that it will match the US with another 30 million dollars to the GHF.
What Anthony Aguilar Saw
To staff and secure the four aid hubs—Tel El Sultan, The “Saudi Neighborhood”, Wadi Gaza, and Khan Younis as well as the Netzarim checkpoint, the GHF has subcontracted UG Solutions under the prime contractor, SRS. UG Solutions is a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina. According to a Reuters report in early 2025, the company’s recruitment deal to Gaza offered a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires.
In an interview with France 24, US soldier Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar, a special forces veteran of the US Army’s Green Beret who worked as a security subcontractor with UG Solutions at a GHF aid site boldly stated: “I believe that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is complicit in war crimes and that they are involved in an enterprise that has failed from the beginning.”
He then continues to detail his experience at one of those sites where he describes UG Solution contractors as well as IDF firing ammo into Palestinian crowds;
“The bullets were being fired by a UG Solution contractor in the southern tower of site number 4, a fully automatic machine gun, he was spraying in bursts and the second shooter was a UG solutions contractor who was standing on a berm firing with his individual rifle on fully automatic into the crowd as well… what they characterized as warning shots, but these shots were being fired at the feet over the heads and into the crowd of the departing Palestinians.. as the UG solutions contractors were throwing warning shots and throwing stun grenades and teargas and the Israeli defences forces at the position at the intersection were firing into them… I came up on the berm and I could see Palestinians, civilians, you could see their white bags lying on the ground, items spilled.. I saw that and I felt that I don’t want to be a part of this.”
France 24 added that UG solutions denied the allegations.
In another interview with BBC international editor Jeremy Bowen, Anthony added: “My professional opinion of how the sites were established was what I would describe as amateur, inexperienced, untrained, no idea of how to conduct operations of this magnitude. That would be my most benign assessment. In my most frank assessment I would say that they’re criminal. In my entire career I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed starving population, I have never witnessed that in all of the places I have been deployed to work until I was in Gaza at the hands of the IDF and US contractors.”
The condemnations of this non-profit can’t get bolder, yet it remains active as the only Israeli-approved ground aid plan within the enclave. What was masked as a humanitarian aid distribution operation is now seen as a blueprint for the weaponization of aid. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation remains intact, armed with its heavy political covers.
Allowing GHF to operate is not only complicit to the suffering of Palestinians but is also introducing a new standard of aid being delivered at gunpoint, vetted by biometric scanning, and traded for submission.
