Food aid or firing squads: How the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation became Gaza Assassination Trap

In Gaza today, hunger has a price—and for far too many civilians, that price has been death. The Israeli Newspaper, Haaretz described the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)  distribution centers as “Killing Field” where Israeli soldiers ordered to shoot at civilians queuing for the meager aid. Mothers, fathers, children, and elders—unarmed civilians killed while trying to secure essential food rations. They arrive seeking flour or a bag of food, but leave in body bags.

Launched with propaganda flair, the Israeli designed and US-funded GHF was billed as an “alternative” to UN aid organizations. It promised food, and relief to the besieged stip. What it has delivered instead is organized cruelty: starvation management at gunpoint.

Unlike long-established agencies such as UNRWA or the World Food Programme, (WFP), this foundation has no meaningful aid infrastructure, no distribution network, and no impartial oversight. Following three months of total food blockade, GHF was created not to alleviate suffering, but as part of an apparatus—designed to mask weaponized starvation behind the façade of humanitarian relief.

For over a year and a half, UN bodies like UNRWA successfully delivered food across Gaza, often under Israeli bombardment. Even then, Israeli soldiers either opened fire on civilians waiting for aid convoys or stood by as Israeli-armed, ISIS-affiliated looters hijacked food trucks. Now, the death toll at the GHF “killing field” is rising alarmingly: as of 25 June,  549 have been killed and more than 4,000 have been injured.

READ: UNRWA chief says new Gaza aid system ‘has become a killing field’

The Israeli military’s responses for these incidents are as predictable as they are cynical: “We fired warning shots.” “They approached in a threatening manner.” “We are unaware of any shooting.” “We will investigate.” Each excuse is part of a well-rehearsed script to deflect accountability.

Western governments and media accept these non-answers as fact, reinforcing Israel’s impunity and whitewashing war crimes with bureaucratic platitudes.

Such attacks extend far beyond physical harm—they are designed to inflict profound psychological wounds, humiliation, fear and despair. When the simple act of seeking basic sustenance becomes life-threatening, it shatters the human psyche and erodes hope. Targeting the hungry is not just torture; it is an attempt to break the human spirit, deny them of their dignity, making survival itself a relentless, terrifying struggle. Places meant to offer relief and compassion are being transformed by Israel into zones of terror and trauma.

Combine the starvation campaign with the deliberate destruction of homes, shelters, educational system, healthcare facilities, and water and power infrastructure—acts intended to compound the psychological trauma and societal collapse. These tactics pave the way for the ethnic cleansing of civilians to build more Jewish-only colonies, euphemistically dubbed “emigration” or “Trump’s vision.” 

For instance, the European Union—and despite its own findings  that Israel is violating human rights under the terms of their trade agreement—has taken no meaningful action. Instead of suspending the partnership until those violations are addressed, the EU has treated Israel as an exception, and opted for business as usual. Even when it condemns attacks by illegal Jewish colonists on Palestinian villages in the West Bank, it absurdly calls on Israel—the very state that armed, funded, and implanted those colonists—to stop these crimes. The height of EU hypocrisy when it purportedly opposed Israel’s move to legalize 22 new Jewish-only colonies—calling them a “breach of international humanitarian law”—while continuing to maintain trade relations with those very same illegal colonies.

This is how systems of accountability collapse: when there is no consequence to breaching “international law.”

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not the result of a failed aid distribution mechanism, but a measured effort to dismantle a proven system. It is a US-Israeli instrument designed to normalize starvation by controlling—and severely restricting—the delivery of humanitarian aid. It exists only because Israel blocks UNRWA and the World Food Programme (WFP) from delivering the thousands of aid trucks stranded outside the Gaza borders. Both UNRWA and WFP have been undermined by politically motivated defunding campaigns, led primarily by Washington and Tel Aviv. Unproven allegations of bias and anti-Israel sentiment have been cynically weaponized to dismantle impartial, effective aid organizations and replace them with a politicized contraption built to serve Israeli military objectives, not humanitarian needs.

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Control over resources vital for survival is part of Israel’s broader military tactics to control the narrative. By barring international journalists from Gaza and killing local reporters, the aim is to censor independent coverage and conceal war crimes. Replacing established, impartial aid organisations with a US-Israeli-aligned initiative further enables Israel to dictate the flow of aid and also the story told to the world. 

Feeding the hungry under occupation or inside a war zone is not an act of charity—it is an obligation under international law. Starving civilians is not a pawn to be traded for political concessions or to achieve a military strategy, nor should their elementary survival depend on the whims of those who occupy and besiege them. 

In response, Jake Wood, the foundation’s first executive director, resigned on 25 May , stating that he will not take part in an organisation  “…that forcibly dislocates or displaces the Palestinian population.” Despite the protest resignation, Donald Trump falsely claimed last week that “other countries are not helping out.” In truth, they are being prevented from helping. For example, Israel is blocking 3,000 thousands of aid trucks from entering Gaza, obstructing UN agencies and international donors from delivering life-saving humanitarian relief. 

The misnomer “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” has, in practice, become a death trap to lure the hungry. It has turned humanitarian aid distribution from a lifeline into a firing squad. For parents of malnourished children in Gaza, the grim choice is no longer food or famine, but death by starvation or death by bullet at the US-funded, Israeli-engineered Gaza Assassination Trap.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.