Above photo: Pro-Palestine picketers outside the home of GHF interim director, John Acree. Dismantle GHF/Telegram.
“We, the United States, are complicit,” says former GHF security contractor and former US army officer.
For days, pro-Palestine protesters in the Washington, DC metropolitan area have organized pickets and rallies to “confront” leaders of the now-infamous Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. On July 25, dozens of protesters gathered outside of the home of GHF’s Interim Executive Director John Acree, banging pots and pans, holding signs that read “our tax $$$ could fund UNRWA and end genocide but Joe + Don choose to fund genocide.” Demonstrators wrote a message in chalk on the asphalt: “WAR CRIMINAL LIVES HERE GOOGLE GHF”.
On July 31, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot claimed that the GHF has “generated a bloodbath” via its distribution of aid in Gaza. Since May 27, over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza while trying to access food. 766 of those Palestinians were killed in the vicinity of GHF sites.
This past week, a retired US army officer became a whistleblower revealing the violence inflicted against Palestinians at GHF aid sites. Anthony Aguilar was recruited as a security contractor for UG Solutions, a partner of the GHF, and told Democracy Now! that “We – we, the United States – are complicit. We are involved, hand in hand, in the atrocities and the genocide that is currently undergoing in Gaza.”
Aguilar claimed that GHF’s food distribution sites were built intentionally in the most dangerous parts of Gaza which are “direct – or, determined to be active, operational combat zones where Israeli Defense Forces are operating.”
“The sites were designed to lure, bait, aid and kill,” said Aguilar, who also told France 24’s Jessica Le Masurier that his fellow security personnel were “utilizing nonlethal munitions and lethal munitions in unauthorized ways.”
“I witnessed the IDF firing into a crowd of Palestinians,” Aguilar told the BBC. “I witnessed the IDF firing a main gun round from a Merkava tank into a crowd of people, destroying a car full of civilians that were simply driving away from the site.”
Starvation-related deaths in Gaza now stand at 154, including 89 children. According to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Alert, “the worst-case scenario of famine is playing out in the Gaza Strip. Widespread starvation, malnutrition and disease are driving a rise in hunger-related deaths.”
Pro-Palestine groups within the United States including Palestinian Youth Movement have planned more actions targeting those leading the GHF, with the next picket set for this Friday, August 1. Some actions are targeting the Boston Consulting Group, a firm which aided in establishing the GHF. In June, BCG published a response on June 7 disavowing this work, writing that “in October 2024, a BCG team from the US, led by two partners, provided pro bono support to help establish an aid organization intended to operate alongside other relief efforts to deliver humanitarian support to Gaza.” The firm claims was led by two partners who “failed to disclose the full nature of the work” and “carried out subsequent unauthorized work.”
21 Senate Democrats are demanding Trump cut funding to the GHF, which is jointly funded by the US and Israel. On July 31, Trump administration officials told Congress that the Israeli government agreed to US funding of USD 30 million to the GHF.
However, some politicians remain supportive of the project. Democratic US Representative Ritchie Torres wrote in a post, “it is a blatant lie, indeed a blood libel, to falsely accuse Israel of deliberately starving Palestinians. The US and Israel set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) for the purpose of feeding Palestinians. The GHF, however imperfectly implemented, has distributed a staggering 85 million meals – the exact opposite of ‘deliberate starvation.’”
