[News] Trump’s “aid” boss oversees lethal food distribution in Gaza

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/trumps-aid-boss-oversees-lethal-food-distribution-gaza>
Trump’s “aid” boss oversees lethal food distribution in Gaza

Michael F. Brown <https://electronicintifada.net/people/michael-f-brown> Rights
and Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 14 June 2025
------------------------------
[image: A Palestinian child rests in a hospital bed with tubes connected to
his abdomen and nose]

A Palestinian child rests in the Nasser Medical Complex after being shot in
the abdomen by Israeli occupation forces while seeking food at a Gaza
Humanitarian Foundation “death trap.”
SIPA/Newscom

>From 1-3 June, the Israeli military fired
<https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/04/middleeast/israel-military-gaza-aid-shooting-intl-invs>
on Palestinians in Gaza desperately trying to access food irresponsibly
supplied by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. In recent days, these areas
have been described <https://x.com/SanaSaeed/status/1932548653454962974> as
being a “food death trap.”

The Foundation, headed by a pro-Trump religious and political operative,
works in close association with the very military carrying out the genocide
and starvation policies in Gaza. Approximately 250 Palestinians
<https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1933238283841990847> have been killed
<https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1932533953874821567> in less than three
weeks – “shot or shelled by Israeli troops” – while attempting to secure
GHF food.

Nevertheless, GHF’s new leader, Rev. Johnnie Moore, formerly
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/world/middleeast/israel-johnnie-moore-gaza-humanitarian-foundation.html>
of the evangelical Liberty University of Jerry Falwell, Sr.
<https://www.liberty.edu/champion/2022/02/28/in-pursuit-of-peace-dr-falwell-sr-prayed-for-and-befriended-israel/>
and Jerry Falwell, Jr., declared in the headline of his Fox News op-ed
<https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/theres-way-aid-gaza-i-know-my-foundation-helped-deliver-7-million-meals-without-incident>
on 4 June that his organization had carried out its aid mission “without
incident.” Moore proudly circulated
<https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1930330190846276056> the op-ed via his X
account.

This is shameless propaganda removed from the facts as later conveyed by CNN
<https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/04/middleeast/israel-military-gaza-aid-shooting-intl-invs>
about Palestinian deaths near GHF sites. His foundation is complicit in a
vile and deadly *Hunger Games* type of distribution of food aid.

US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, a friend
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-03/ty-article/.premium/evangelical-leader-close-to-trump-netanyahu-named-new-director-of-gaza-aid-fund/00000197-36b9-dd58-add7-37fb0d5f0000>
of Moore’s, sided with GHF in denying the organization’s culpability and
accused
<https://il.usembassy.gov/statement-on-media-misinformation-on-gaza/> *The
New York Times*, CNN and Associated Press of false reporting about the
incident.

“Reckless and irresponsible reporting by major US news outlets,” he
asserted, is “contributing to the anti-Semitic climate that has resulted in
the murder of two young people at an Israeli Embassy event in Washington
last month and the attempted murder and terror attack on a group of
pro-Israel demonstrators in Colorado on Sunday.” With evidence mounting of
GHF complicity in Palestinian deaths, Huckabee has not walked back his
comments.

Notably, Huckabee had a friendly meeting
<https://x.com/itamarbengvir/status/1933144448172442072> with fascist
Israeli ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir on Thursday just
hours before Israel’s strikes on Iran.

Huckabee tweeted: “Glad to greet Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.” He claimed they had been
“ridiculously sanctioned by five nations” – referring to the action
<https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xgk1ek19lo> recently taken by Britain,
Australia, Norway, Canada and New Zealand – and termed it “outrageous
hypocrisy” despite the settler violence they are promoting in the West Bank
and the ethnic cleansing they seek in Gaza.

Moore’s dismissal of the Palestinian deaths is unsurprising as he has long
been engaged in propaganda intended to ensure the most violent response
possible against Hamas and consequently Palestinians in Gaza. Francesca
Albanese, special rapporteur
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine/francesca-albanese>
on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied
since 1967 and a guest Thursday on The Electronic Intifada livestream, has
referred <https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1933165476441358660> to GHF as
a “criminal enterprise.”

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), a Quaker lobbying
group, has warned
<https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2025-06/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-ghf-and-weaponization-aid>
that GHF “militarizes aid.” An FCNL document by Hassan El-Tayyab, the
group’s legislative director for Middle East policy, notes: “GHF is run by
armed contractors. This violates the humanitarian principles of neutrality,
independence and impartiality. Even GHF’s own executive director, Jake
Wood, resigned in protest on May 25, saying that it could not work in a way
that adhered to ‘humanitarian principles.’”

Nevertheless, the US State Department may provide
<https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/us-mulls-giving-millions-controversial-gaza-aid-foundation-sources-say-2025-06-06/>
GHF with $500 million through USAID, an agency the Trump administration
decimated and folded into the State Department.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has notified
<https://ccrjustice.org/home/press-center/press-releases/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-potentially-liable-aiding-israel-s-war>
GHF of “its potential legal liability for complicity in Israel’s war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Palestinians. Unlike
the United Nations-run system that it was designed to replace in Gaza, GHF
coordinates its operations closely with the Israeli government.”
Moore’s propaganda

On 7 October 2023, the day of the Hamas-led attack against Israel that
resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians and soldiers,
Moore tweeted <https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1710771193861595564> that
“Hamas is ISIS.” Yet less than two years later, far right Israeli
politician Avigdor Lieberman has accused
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-06-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/whats-wrong-how-israel-trained-and-armed-an-isis-linked-gazan-crime-militia/00000197-5aa3-deed-a9bf-5fef7d990000>
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of arming ISIS in Gaza – and he wasn’t
referring to Hamas being ISIS, but to groups opposed to Hamas.

Moore, soon to be a 2025-26 Agora fellow
<https://snfagora.jhu.edu/about-snf-agora/mission-and-impact/> at Johns
Hopkins University, claims
<https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1931771874028962070> that GHF is “learning
more every day,” but at what cost? His organization is replacing groups
that better know how to do this work and Palestinians are being killed as a
result.

He goes so far as to accuse
<https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1928453152069636504> the United Nations of
joining “a terrorist-led BOYCOTT of an initiative of the UNITED STATES to
give away food to Gazans in a way which doesn’t allow the aid to be
controlled, stolen, sold and used to prolong the war. The UN should be
cooperating with America.” He simply disregards that the US initiative has
resulted in scores of dead Palestinians.

Lieberman also contends
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-05-29/ty-article/.premium/over-140-million-a-month-the-secret-source-funding-gaza-humanitarian-aid/00000197-171f-de0d-a7f7-b77f347c0000>
the initiative is being funded by Mossad, apartheid Israel’s spy and
international assassination organization.

According to Lieberman, “The money for the humanitarian aid is coming from
the Mossad and the defense ministry – hundreds of millions of dollars at
the expense of Israeli citizens.”

Moore, well aware of his more capable UN rival, has repeatedly threatened
funding cuts, “historically tough” as he puts it, against the UN if it
doesn’t cooperate with US complicity in the Gaza genocide. In his view, the
previous system was “profanely corrupt” and, putting his public relations
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/world/middleeast/israel-johnnie-moore-gaza-humanitarian-foundation.html>
background to use, has asserted: “Surely, these old US and EU-funded
humanitarian organizations won’t let people starve in exchange for being
‘right’ when they know what they have done hasn’t worked and has, in fact,
made a terrible war worse?”
In February, Moore praised
<https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1886973391627776342> President Donald Trump
for his call to ethnically cleanse Gaza, colonize it and move large numbers
of Palestinians to tracts of land in Jordan and Egypt.

A man with such profoundly anti-Palestinian views should be nowhere near
this job.

Moore accused
<https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/06/12/gaza-humanitarian-foundation-continues-work-follow-deadly-hamas-attack/>
Hamas of killing eight of GHF’s Palestinian workers earlier this week,
though *The Washington Post* noted
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/06/11/gaza-ghf-hamas-attack-killed/>
that GHF “did not offer evidence.”

The GHF leader asserted <https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1933013797830304172>
on X, “There is good and evil in this world. What we are doing is good and
what Hamas did to these Gazans is absolute evil.”

He did not use similar language to classify the killing of some 250
Palestinians <https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1933238283841990847> by the
Israeli military while seeking GHF aid or for the abuse reportedly
<https://zeteo.com/p/exclusive-american-security-contractor> meted out by
GHF mercenaries.

Moore also sought to escalate this into a religious war when he added
<https://x.com/JohnnieM/status/1933013797830304172>: “While GHF is not a
religious organization, I am a religious Christian and I especially draw on
my faith in moments like these.”

He cited the word of Apostle Paul “to the Christians being brutally
tortured by the Roman Empire two thousand years ago: ‘Soon the God of peace
will crush Satan underneath our feet.’ Romans 16:20.”

This claim is made as he abets a genocide in Gaza and transforms food aid
into a deadly dash exposed to Israeli gunfire. Chef José Andrés, whose own
employees have been killed
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/how-world-central-kitchen-serves-israels-genocidal-agenda>
in Gaza by the Israeli military, is correct that humanitarian workers should
not be targeted <https://x.com/chefjoseandres/status/1933232458419339566>.

Yet it is also the case that humanitarian workers should not collaborate
with an organization working in conjunction with an occupying army that is
shooting at food-seeking survivors of war crimes and genocide. This is
unprecedented territory in Gaza, all intended to exclude the United Nations
and the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) and to deny access to
established effective aid organizations. More broadly, the effort seeks to
foreclose on the rights of Palestinian refugees whose ancestral lands are
just a few miles away across the Gaza boundary.
War at home?

In a case <https://zeteo.com/p/the-imperial-boomerang-lands-in-los> of
“imperial boomerang,” Trump, not content with terrorizing Palestinians with
words and bombs and now failing
<https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/lcl/date/2025-06-12/segment/01> to
prevent Israel from attacking Iran, is flexing authoritarian policies
against Americans and undocumented migrants. He is threatening protesters
in the so-called majority-minority city of Los Angeles, California – part
of a dissident region of the country – with the US military
<https://x.com/USNorthernCmd/status/1932221570258194752>. Mexican
territory, including California, was purchased
<https://web.archive.org/web/20070503064503/http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/gadsden/9331>
by the US for a scant $15 million via coercive pressure at the end of the
Mexican-American war in 1848.

Ironically, deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/email-2007-ties-trump-adviser-stephen-miller-neo-nazi-richard-spencer>,
who does not recognize Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, has
said
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/11/us/la-protests-mexican-flags-republican-reaction.html>
that “Los Angeles is occupied territory,” disparaging foreign flags meant
to show pride in heritage. Trump stated
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/10/trump-administration-los-angeles-national-guard>
on Truth Social: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded
and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist
mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our
deportation operations – But these lawless riots only strengthen our
resolve.”

He is courting
<https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5344361-hagel-concerns-national-guard-deployment/>
another Kent State massacre where National Guard troops killed four student
protesters and observers in 1970.
Trump has planned a highly unusual military parade
<https://www.axios.com/local/washington-dc/2025/06/10/counterprotests-june-14-military-parade>
for Saturday in Washington, DC. In a tirade Tuesday against free speech and
peaceable assembly, he declared, “If there’s any protester wants to come
out, they will be met with very big force.”

The president added, “For those people that want to protest, they will be
met with very big force. And I haven’t even heard about a protest.”

He also incited
<https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fort-bragg-military-republican-civil-war-rcna212215>
young soldiers against his political enemies during a speech Tuesday at
Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Trump’s possible use of US Marines against American protesters should show
the world that this president is a menace not just to people around the
world, and particularly to Palestinians whose genocide he is abetting like
his predecessor, but at home as well.
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