The “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” Exposed

PALESTINE ISRAEL GAZA GENOCIDE, 29 Sep 2025

The Wire | Jewish Voice for Peace – TRANSCEND Media Service

Gaza Sep 2025: a girl walks to try and pick up food.  Jewish Voice for Peace

25 Sep 2025 – Famine was officially declared in Gaza in August. But widespread starvation, engineered by the Israeli government for the last two years, has been rapidly accelerating since the Israeli government cut off all food from entering Gaza in March.

The concept of Israel or the U.S. delivering aid to the same people they are committing a genocide against is such a grim contradiction as to be impossible to believe — particularly in light of the Israeli government, backed by the Biden administration, systematically destroying the previously existing international aid system in Gaza.

International agencies, outside the control of Israel or the United States, are unacceptable to the Israeli government. So the Israeli government’s new so-called aid system has put the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) at its center.

Deadly “humanitarian aid,” engineered for mass starvation

GHF operations have not only completely failed to stave off famine in Gaza — their aid distribution sites quickly turned into death traps. More than 859 Palestinians seeking food have been killed at or near GHF sites since the agency began operating, with the bloodshed beginning only a day after the sites opened in May of this year. The agency’s head resigned in protest only weeks later.

GHF aid distribution sites were purposefully placed inside militarized zones in the south of Gaza, in order to both displace and force Palestinians into danger while trying to access food aid. The sites are run by U.S. private military contractors and overseen by the Israeli military, the latter of which “routinely opens fire” on aid seekers, shooting into masses of people at and near GHF sites as a “crowd control” tactic. This also creates lethal stampedes, as panicked people, often trapped and fenced into the sites, try to escape Israeli forces’ gunfire.

One former GHF contractor who came forward in July described the GHF operations he witnessed as “barbaric,” sharing that he was told directly by Israeli troops that they “‘shoot at the crowds to communicate with them.’” That same month, at least 21 people were killed in a single incident at a GHF site after Israeli forces sprayed pepper gas at fenced-in aid seekers.

The amount of food aid provided by the GHF is also widely recognized as deeply inadequate to meet the needs of the population. GHF operates at only 4 distribution points in the south of Gaza, down from the more than 400 aid distribution points that existed under the previous United Nations-run aid distribution scheme. Experts from the independent Famine Review Committee stated that even without the “appalling levels of violence” taking place at GHF sites, the agency’s plan for food packages and distribution would still have led to mass starvation in Gaza.

UN experts last month called for the immediate dismantling of the GHF, describing it as an “utterly disturbing example of how humanitarian relief can be exploited for covert military and geopolitical agendas in serious breach of international law.” This followed more than 200 humanitarian organizations calling in a July open letter for an immediate end to GHF operations, a return to the UN-run aid distribution scheme, and an end to Israel’s blockade. The letter described Palestinians in Gaza as facing “an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families.”

Headquartered in Delaware and created through partnerships between the Israeli military and U.S. security contractors, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is yet another instance of the deep ties between the U.S. and Israel in carrying out this genocide. But despite the horrific reports piling up of war crimes taking place at GHF-run sites in Gaza, the Delaware Attorney General’s office has so far failed to even open an investigation into the GHF.

How to manufacture a famine

It’s no coincidence that the work of the Israeli and U.S.-backed GHF has been disastrous — the agency was never meant to be anything other than window dressing for genocide. The Israeli government has done everything in its power to stop aid distribution in Gaza in order to create conditions of starvation, systematically destroying the previously existing and far larger UN-administered aid system in Gaza over the course of the genocide and replacing it with the lethal and sparse GHF scheme.

Since 2007, the international aid delivery system in Gaza has been operating in the context of the Israeli government’s draconian blockade of the region, which restricts food, clean water, medical supplies, fuel, and electricity from entering, and largely blocks Palestinians in Gaza from leaving. Israeli officials called their restrictions on food supplies “putting Gaza on a diet,” limiting even the amount of calories allowed into the territory.

When the genocide began, the Israeli government expanded its war on the UN-run aid system drastically. Children and pregnant mothers began starving within weeks. In October 2024, one year into the genocide, the UN found that the Israeli government had blocked 83% of aid from entering Gaza in the past year. The Israeli military also deliberately and relentlessly targeted Palestinian and international aid workers, a war crime, including bombing clearly marked humanitarian convoys, like that of Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen. The UN reported that at least 333 aid workers have been killed during the genocide, the largest number on record in any single crisis.

This war on humanitarian aid culminated in the banning and shutdown of UNRWA, by far the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza. First defunded by the Biden administration and other Western countries following unsubstantiated allegations made by the Israeli military against a miniscule portion of its staff, UNRWA has been fully blocked by the Israeli government from operating in Gaza since March.

At every stage of the Israeli government’s dismantling of humanitarian aid in Gaza, the international community warned that these policies would lead directly to a manufactured famine. But the Israeli government, intending to use starvation as yet another tool of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, only intensified its war on international aid infrastructure.

A policy of total genocide

The Israeli government’s policy is one of total genocide, aimed at destroying every stage of life for Palestinians in Gaza. Relentless bombings kill entire families in one instant, and then trap survivors under the rubble. The destruction of hospitals by Israeli bombardment means that the injured cannot be treated adequately, nor does the Israeli government allow anywhere near a sufficient amount of medical supplies to enter Gaza. Forced starvation then weakens and kills anyone who has managed to survive until this point.

Shutting down the deadly Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and fully restoring the international aid delivery system to Gaza immediately is critical. But any and all humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza remains deeply inadequate while the bombs are still dropping and the rest of Israel’s genocidal policies remain in place. Calls to restore the international aid delivery system in Gaza must also include the demand to end the genocide and the system of Israeli oppression intended to control, starve, and kill Palestinians.

Act now: Tell Delaware to investigate GHF!

Since its inception, Palestinians and major humanitarian organizations have been calling for an end to GHF’s deadly aid distribution scheme.

GHF is registered in Delaware, but the Delaware Attorney General has so far failed to take action to investigate its abuses. Write to the Delaware AG now to demand she investigate and act to dissolve GHF’s corporate charter.

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Jewish Voice for Peace, with roughly 750,000 members, supporters, and participants, is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world; a national, grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews working towards Palestinian freedom and Judaism beyond Zionism. We envision a world where all people live in freedom, justice, equality, and dignity and believe that through organizing, we can and will dismantle the institutions and structures that sustain injustice.

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