Sadism And Depravity in The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

"We treat these civilians in Gaza worse, with less dignity, than we treated the ISIS fighters that surrendered in Baghouz in Syria." PLUS: Free Chris Smalls

Edited by Sam Thielman

I DON'T THINK I had many illusions about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. The GHF is the weaponized "aid" operation created by the Israelis and a CIA veteran to wrest control of food distribution from the United Nations, staffed by mercenaries and backstopped by the Israel Defense Forces. In addition to the horrifying videos of starving people crammed into the four "aid" distribution points in Gaza, reports earlier this month revealed the mercenaries and soldiers firing on and throwing stun grenades into crowds of unarmed people just trying to get something to eat.

But now Anthony Aguilar, a former subcontractor and ex-Green Beret lieutenant colonel who worked at all four GHF sites in Gaza, has given a series of interviews attesting to "the indiscriminate use of force, lethal and nonlethal, against unarmed civilians." However horrific I thought the GHF was, it's worse.

Here is Aguilar's interview from Tuesday with Amy Goodman for Democracy Now. I strongly advise reading the entire transcript. It's hard to select just a few samples of what Aguilar discussed. Among them: Aguilar describes GHF routinely fencing off lanes, for the crush of desperate people, with razor wire—"not barbed wire… Razor wire is designed to maim and kill, and we’re using that to channelize and herd, if you will, thousands of unarmed, starving civilians. That’s a war crime."

Aguilar also describes the operators of GHF being equipped with green-tipped M855 armor-piercing rounds. Certain gun enthusiasts object to describing M855 ammunition as truly armor piercing, for what it's worth, but the semantics shouldn't distract from the broader picture: GHF is firing these powerful bullets at unarmed, unarmored civilians weak from hunger and desperate to feed themselves and their loved ones. "That, in and of itself, that action there, is a war crime," Aguilar told Goodman.

On a podcast that I haven't listened to but Middle East Eye summarized, Aguilar said GHF is treating Palestinians in Gaza "worse, with less dignity, than we treated the ISIS fighters that surrendered in Baghouz in Syria." Before you click that link, be warned that Aguilar tells a story about the IDF shooting dead a little boy who kissed his hand after Aguilar gave him food.

Aguilar told Goodman that the GHF component UG Solutions contacted him in May seeking ex-operators for a mission he says he thought would genuinely involve feeding people. Instead, during his brief time in Gaza, Aguilar found a brutal organization "lying, covering the truth, under the auspice of feeding people for profit. Remember, these are private organizations. The person in charge of Safe Reach Solutions is a former CIA officer and part of a private equity firm." That would be War on Terror veteran Phillip Reilly.

"The sites were designed to lure, bait, aid and kill," Aguilar said:

The food that we distribute, nowhere near enough. To Mr. Johnnie Moore, shame on you for celebrating 92 million meals delivered into Gaza. Shame on you. It’s a very simple equation: 92 divided by 2.2 million people, divided by… three meals a day. That’s what GHF proclaims. We’ve been distributing aid since the 26th of May, 26th May to now the 29th of June [sic—I think he meant July—Spencer], 64 days of continuous distribution, and we’ve only managed to distribute 92 million meals. When you break that down, again, it’s a simple equation. That’s 14 days of meals. So, out of 64 days, we’ve provided 14 days of meals to the entire population in the enclave of Gaza. That’s inhumane. That would be like saying that you only eat every fourth day—you only eat on Thursday, and you only eat on Monday. And to say that that’s humanitarian? So, to anyone that says that that’s enough or—not even close to enough. The narrative of GHF needs help to do the rest, you don’t need help, because you’re not even anywhere close to where we need to be.

Before coming to lead the GHF, Johnnie Moore was a political liaison of Donald Trump's to evangelical communities. According to the New York Times, Moore describes himself as "a bridge builder and peacemaker especially known for consequential work at the intersection of faith and foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.”

GHF and UG Solutions are attempting to discredit Aguilar. You can read their lengthy statements at the bottom of this Haaretz piece and judge for yourself if he's peddling a fantastical story.

The Haaretz article also makes two points that struck me as crucial. The food boxes made available at the four GHF sites contain perishable food and oil that most Gazans, 90 percent of whom are "displaced without electricity or cooking gas, and with a severe shortage of potable water," will not be able to cook or store. Even for the minority who might be able to cook or store the food the boxes contain, the unruly distribution ensures that it's usually young men who grab it. "Those who need food the most – young children, nursing mothers, the sick and the elderly – barely manage to obtain it," the Haaretz reporters observe from video footage Aguilar provided.

After 20 people were trampled to death at a GHF site in Khan Younis earlier this month—and reading that over, I think of the razor wire at the sites that Aguilar talked about—GHF claimed Hamas incited the chaos. But Aguilar says Hamas is a nonentity at the checkpoints. "We aren’t there on the distribution sites defending ourselves against Hamas," he told Goodman. "We are using indiscriminate force, targeting civilians, escalation of force that goes far beyond the measures of [what's] appropriate, against an unarmed, starving population." And he says he stands with Israel against Hamas.

It's worth noting that the rationale Israel has cited for needing the GHF is the story, never one credited by the U.N. or relief groups on the ground in Gaza, that Hamas was stealing humanitarian aid from the trucks entering from Egypt. That story has fallen apart. There are Palestinians who loot aid: the gang belonging to Yasser Abu Shabab – which enjoys some measure of sponsorship from Israel. According to Maariv, Israel helped Abu Shabab break out of a Hamas prison, apparently to promote him as an alternative to Hamas, even while the Israeli far-right politician Avigdor Lieberman says his gang includes ISIS members. Abu Shabab is reportedly illiterate yet recently published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, about which Drop Site has more. To recap: Israel either tolerates or outright sponsors criminals who have stolen food from starving people, then blames the theft on Hamas and uses it to undermine UNRWA and slaughter those starving people.

According to the U.N., the death toll at and around GHF sites is in the high hundreds of people, in less than three months of operation. 

I don't know what else to say at this point. The GHF isn't an aid entity. This isn't an unprepared organization shouldering a difficult task and seeking to correct its horrific mistakes. This is an organ of genocide. And Gaza will not be the last place an entity like it operates.

TELL YOUR SENATORS to vote for Bernie Sanders' resolution to block another tranche of U.S. weapons to Israel. A vote is expected tonight.

FREE CHRIS SMALLS. The Amazon labor organizer was taken by the Israelis from the aid vessel Handala. While others who sailed on the ship have been released, officers with Israel's special police unit reportedly beat, choked and kicked Smalls, who was the only black person on the ship. He remains in custody as of this writing. You can call the State Department at 202-647-1512 or post at register.state.gov to demand Secretary Marco Rubio and Ambassador Mike Huckabee secure the freedom of Smalls, something they could accomplish with a single phone call.