Gaza's health ministry reported last week that at least 549 Palestinians had been killed, and 4,066 injured, while seeking aid since the introduction of a controversial US-backed distribution system on May 27. Gazans are now forced to travel through militarised areas in southern Gaza to pick up bags of food, frequently resulting in the Israeli military firing on civilian aid seekers.
Behind the statistics are grieving families. One Gazan, whose little brother was killed as he sought aid west of Gaza City, told FRANCE 24 that he got a call from Al Shifa hospital on Tuesday June 17. His brother was dumped there, wrapped in a bag.
“He was killed by an Israeli sniper, shot while crowds rushed towards aid trucks,” he said, “I touched his body and found the sniper's bullet had entered through his left shoulder and exited through his heart.”
“We couldn’t bury him that night because of the war,” he added. “He spent his last night at home – dead.”
“He wasn’t just my little brother. He was the joy in our home – the soul of the family. Everywhere he went, laughter followed. He was generous, loved by all, kind hearted. But now... He’s no longer here,” he wrote.
“He was killed while searching for a piece of bread, while the world remains silent – watching, or justifying the killing.”
Beginning in March, Israel blocked deliveries of food and other crucial supplies into Gaza for more than two months. It began allowing supplies to trickle in at the end of May through sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and secured by armed US contractors, with Israeli troops on the perimeter.
The UN has boycotted the GHF, refusing to work with the group over concerns it violates humanitarian principles and was designed to help Israeli military objectives in the enclave. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Friday told the press that, “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarised zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people.”
'Blood for food'
A UN source in Gaza who requested anonymity explained that the new system forces civilians to approach evacuated areas, putting their lives at risk.
“Because there is not enough aid, people go in the thousands into the areas under evacuation, and this is where the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) kills them for not coming one by one,” the source said. “It’s blood for food.”
A report by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in early June cited several eyewitness accounts of civilians encountering fire from tanks, drones and helicopters as they sought food at GHF distribution sites.
Both the GHF and the Israeli army have rejected such accounts.
A GHF spokesperson told FRANCE 24 that, “There has not been a single fatality at or near any of GHF [sic] distribution sites. Period.”
“Hamas doesn’t want us here because they want to control the aid,” the spokesperson added.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas of looting aid, without providing evidence. It sees the GHF as crucial to undermining what remains of Hamas's control over Gaza.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in a recent interview with Fox News: “We have a plan, that we devised with the help of American firms, to separate the giving of the humanitarian aid to the population from Hamas control.”
Who is behind the GHF network?
After the tumultuous resignation of its original executive director, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is now led by former USAID official John Acree and former Trump adviser Johnnie Moore, an evangelical preacher and public relations professional with close ties to both the US president and Israel's Netanyahu.
During Trump's first term in office, Moore was part of an evangelical Christian drive to convince the president to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and move the US embassy there. He recently wrote in a post on X, “There’s nothing more Christian than feeding people in need.”
Read moreAs the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation names a new chief, suspicions swirl over its funding
GHF’s private security partner, Safe Reach Solutions (SRS), is run by Philip Francis Reilly, a former head of the CIA’s covert action – “special activities” – unit with experience of training insurgencies such as Nicaragua’s right-wing Contras militias.
Safe Reach first began operating in late January, leading a vehicle inspection checkpoint effort along the Netzarim Corridor splitting northern and southern Gaza with another private security contractor, UG Solutions.
Both companies have been urgently recruiting former intelligence officers and special forces veterans to run their Gaza operations.
'Unconventional warfare'
Safe Reach job postings have requested expertise with processing CCTV and aerial surveillance footage. A contractor with UG Solutions further recently told The Associated Press that American analysts and Israeli soldiers sit next to each other in a control room, analysing the results of facial recognition software running on top of real-time footage of distribution sites.
Safe Reach told the AP that it has never used biometrics; an anonymous employee from the security contractor told the Israeli news outlet Shomrim in late May that the firm’s surveillance is focused on preventing groups such as Hamas from bringing weapons near aid distribution sites.
A job posting from UG Solutions sought former members of US Army Special Forces and Delta Force who were “skilled in unconventional warfare tactics” and could deploy to an undisclosed overseas location within two weeks of May 20. The posting also enquired about proficiency with “Belt-Fed Machine Guns”.
Footage provided to The AP by their UG Solutions contractor source was geolocated to GHF distribution sites and, according to forensic audio experts, machine guns were being fired within 50 to 60 metres of the camera microphone. The most recent LinkedIn comment attributed to Joseph A. L’Etoile – a former chief operating officer of Orbis and self-identified contractor with Safe Reach – also stated that, “Nothing beats a belt fed MG [machine gun] for engaging moving targets.”
“Bringing in such individuals with no obvious qualifications in aid delivery, accompanied by serious personal firepower, plays directly into concerns of humanitarian aid professionals that SRS and GHF are there for military purposes, more than feeding a starving population,” James Wasserstrom, an expert on conflict and post-conflict reconstruction who worked in Afghanistan, Ukraine and Kosovo for the UN, and then the US government, told FRANCE 24.
GHF told FRANCE 24 in response that, “This so-called expert obviously knows nothing about our operations,” adding that “GHF personnel includes humanitarian experts.”
Read more‘Weaponising aid’: New plan calls for private contractors to take over from UN in Gaza
An IDF soldier providing security to the GHF distribution sites recently told Haaretz that the Israeli-armed militia of the Palestinian alleged drug trafficker Yasser Abu Shabab – a Hamas opponent with alleged ties to ISIS – has affiliates participating in an external layer of security.
A UN source inside Gaza told FRANCE 24 that both GHF and the IDF are collaborating with Abu Shabab's militia, which the source said “used to loot UN convoys” in the enclave. The militiamen, wearing “bulletproof vests and tactical helmets and holding brand new Kalashnikovs", are deployed inside the Israeli military zones that surround the GHF centers, the source explained.
GHF and Safe Reach Solutions both told FRANCE 24 that allegations of their collaboration with Abu Shabab were “false".
Netanyahu, however, has admitted that Israel is supporting anti-Hamas clans in Gaza “on the advice of security officials”, with a view to undermining the Palestinian Islamist group.
“What is bad about that?" Netanyahu said in a video posted to social media on June 5. “It is only good, it is saving lives of Israeli soldiers.”
Intelligence contractors and family wealth management
McNally Capital, the private equity firm behind the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation network, made its name advising wealthy families on how to invest their fortunes. It was founded by Ward McNally in 2008, a decade after he sold his inherited stake in the mapping and publishing company Rand McNally, a household name in the US.
Many of McNally Capital’s recent investments have been in US-based defence and aerospace contractors. This has included an investment in Safe Reach Solutions, which McNally Capital helped form through the Wyoming-based "generational wealth management" firm Two Ocean Trust, as revealed by the state’s public corporate records.
Roughly four years ago, McNally acquired the McLean-based intelligence contractor Orbis Operations, which was then chaired by former acting CIA director Michael J. Morell.
Reilly, the CEO of Safe Reach Solutions, led the creation of both GHF and SRS as an offshoot of his work with Orbis. Last year it was revealed that Orbis was using numerous controversial surveillance tools, including commercial cellphone location tracking.
An investigation from Shomrim in early May revealed that the same lawyer had registered both SRS in Wyoming and the original incarnation of GHF in Delaware in November, with the original GHF legal entity being renamed to “For Those in Need Foundation” in February and swapped out for a company newly registered under the original name.
Later the same month, The New York Times reported that the November incorporations of GHF and SRS were handled by “representatives” of Reilly, in relation to his work at Orbis. McNally Capital subsequently confirmed to Reuters that it had an “economic interest” in SRS and helped with the company’s legal formation.
McNally Capital did not respond to FRANCE 24’s request for comment.
Former ‘Blackwater’
The sole American director of Safe Reach’s Israeli branch is the financial officer Charles J. Africano.
Africano and Reilly have overlapped professionally for years, including circa 2015 at Constellis – a successor to the private military contractor Blackwater that gained notoriety for a civilian massacre in Iraq – and then at the similarly controversial private security and surveillance firm Circinus. Africano’s connections with GHF were first highlighted by Middle East Eye and independently confirmed from public records by FRANCE 24.
Africano is also a member of the private LinkedIn group of the Tampa-based special operations contractor Quiet Professionals, which was acquired last month by McNally and is led by former Delta Force sergeant major Andy Wilson.
Quiet Professionals on Friday celebrated the completion of an affiliated non-profit's mission to extract Americans from Israel.
When reached for comment regarding its relationship with Quiet Professionals, GHF responded with a refusal to discuss its financial relationships, stating, “Like most non-profits, we don't disclose our donors to protect their privacy.”
Special operations-affiliated private contractors form a tight-knit group.
Both Orbis Operations and Quiet Professionals were acquired by McNally in partnership with NIO Advisors, the Illinois-based strategic advisory firm of investor Christopher J. Oates, who was recently revealed through public records to have helped establish the Israeli branch of Safe Reach Solutions.
The chief business officer of Quiet Professionals, Leo Kryszewski, has also publicly disclosed spending four years with the CIA’s special activities division and the US Army's Office of Military Support, a secretive intelligence unit often referred to as Task Force Orange. Africano was publicly credited with setting up the first bank account of the task force’s de facto non-profit arm.
Public US military procurement records have revealed that Quiet Professionals is providing its Cerebra Gray data analytics platform to the Army’s Fort Huachuca in Arizona to train covert operatives in evading foreign counterintelligence services, including through hiding and remotely wiping cellphone data.
Orbis and Quiet Professionals did not respond to FRANCE 24’s request for comment.
A $30 million award to GHF
Despite the UN’s serious misgivings about the high rate of civilian casualties among Gazans trying to access GHF aid hubs, the US State Department on Thursday afternoon announced its approval of a $30 million grant for the new organisation through the recently gutted USAID.
When asked during the press briefing whether the State Department opposed Israeli blockades on pre-existing aid groups, principal deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott said, “What we’re pushing for is for other countries to support the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s work.”
A US government source who requested anonymity cited a special adviser to the State Department as having “vehemently pushed for (the) State (Department) to support the GHF mechanism”. The source described the adviser as a “20-something-year-old” Trump political appointee with “very little experience of the region”.
Leaked documents obtained by FRANCE 24 from USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Affairs (BHA) include GHF’s “Technical Narrative” proposal and an automated message from BHA’s award management system, Abacus, stating that the GHF funding relates to a “high-priority” White House directive.
An employee of what remains of BHA, who requested anonymity, stated that GHF’s application for funding fell “well below our normal technical standards for funding". “Additional funds were added to the Gaza project for a [White House] high-priority directive,” they added.
Josh Paul, a former director of public affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, said the new foundation’s lack of transparency leaves it wide open to abuses.
“I cannot recall a time during my service in government in which the US contributed half a billion dollars to an entity as new, opaque and questionable as the ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation',” he said, referring to reports earlier this month that the State Department was considering a $500 million grant for GHF.
“Not only has this mechanism proven to be deeply flawed – indeed, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians through its operations – but its formation through a series of shell companies and interweaving personalities and organisations creates the significant risk of diversion of funds and corruption,” Paul said. “There is a significant likelihood that much of these funds, rather than buying food for starving people in Gaza, will be lost to waste, abuse and fraud."
The US State Department did not respond to FRANCE 24’s request for comment.
‘Aiding and abetting war crimes’
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is not the only Gaza aid group founded by former US military and intelligence officials. Fogbow, an offshoot of the New York-based business intelligence firm Veracity Worldwide, planned to deliver aid to Gaza via an ill-fated floating pier.
Read moreFogbow, a US firm with military links, eyes maritime plan for Gaza aid
Supporters of the GHF say its cooperation with the Israeli army gives it an advantage over established aid organisations, which have been at loggerheads with Israeli authorities since the start of the war.
“What GHF has been able to achieve that other organisations have not is far better deconfliction with the IDF,” Safe Reach Solutions told FRANCE 24.
“Deconfliction”, however, has come at a terrible cost for desperate Gazan civilians who risk their lives each day simply trying to access food from GHF distribution sites.
The head of the UN agency for supplying aid into Palestine, Philippe Lazzarini, has described the GHF as a “lame, medieval and lethal system that is deliberately harming people under the camouflage of ‘humanitarian aid’ with lies, deceit and cruelty".
Lazzarini said in a June 18 post on X that the deaths of civilians seeking aid was a “disgrace”, adding: “Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime.”
The World Food Programme and other UN agencies say they are much better equipped – with the “logistics capacity, expertise and operational coverage” – to distribute food aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in accordance with international humanitarian law.
The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights notified the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation in early June of its potential legal liability for complicity in war crimes. “The GHF operations run the risk of aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity and even genocide,” senior staff attorney Katherine Gallagher told FRANCE 24.
A group of 15 human rights and legal groups joined these calls with an open letter on Monday, also warning GHF that it was risking legal liability. As agencies like UNICEF, UNRWA and other NGOs are supplanted, the letter said, GHF’s aid model for Palestinians “exposes them to violence”, including requiring them to travel long distances to just a handful of distribution hubs.
The letter urges donors and private contractors to withdraw from any involvement with the GHF in favour of supporting aid models “that uphold international humanitarian law”.
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