Above photo: Palestinian women come back from GHF distribution center in southern Gaza, where eyewitnesses say GHF staff pepper-sprayed the aid-seekers and beat them with batons, July 24, 2025. Abdallah Alattar/APA Images.
A U.S. security contractor who worked for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says he saw Israeli soldiers commit war crimes at aid distribution sites in Gaza.
Corroborating months-long reports by Palestinians that the aid sites are ‘death traps’.
A former contractor for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) says he saw Israeli soldiers commit war crimes at the aid distribution sites being run by the Israeli-backed American agency.
In a series of interviews, former GHF employee and Green Beret Anthony Aguilar alleged that he saw Israeli soldiers use “indiscriminate” force against civilians at various Gaza aid sites.
“My most frank assessment — I would say that they are criminal,” said Aguilar. “In my entire career, I have never witnessed the level of brutality and use of indiscriminate and unnecessary force against a civilian population, an unarmed, starving population.”
“I have never witnessed that in all the places that I have been deployed to war, until I was in Gaza — at the hands of IDF and U.S. contractors,” he continued.
In an interview Democracy Now, Aguilar said the aid sites were “designed as death traps.”
“All four distribution locations were intentionally, deliberately constructed, planned and built in the middle of an active combat zone.
“Those sites were built in the middle of those areas intentionally. It’s not by accident. That, in and of itself, to designate humanitarian distribution sites to service an unarmed, starving population, to build them deliberately in an active combat zone, is a violation of the Geneva Convention protocols,” he continued. “It’s a violation of humanitarian law. And in my opinion, it’s a violation of humanity in general.”
In a conversation with the Israeli anti-Netanyahu group UnXeptable, Aguilar told the story of a starving, barefoot boy who thanked him for food before being killed by Israeli soldiers.
“On May 28, at secure distribution site #2, this young boy, Amir, walks over to me, reaches out and kisses my hand,” explained Aguilar. “This boy is not wearing shoes. His clothes are falling off of him because he is so skinny….He doesn’t have a box, he has half a bag of rice , lentils, and he was thanking us. He walked 12 kilometers to get there … and when he got there he thanked us for the crumbs he got …he kissed me and said ‘thank you.’”
“[Amir] walked back to the group, and then he was shot at with pepper spray, and tear gas, and stunt grenades, and bullets, and he was shot at, at his feet and in the air, and he runs away…and the IDF were shooting at the crowd…Palestinians, civilians, human beings, are dropping to the ground, and Amir was one of them,” he continued. “Amir walked 12 kilometers to get food, got nothing but scraps, thanked us for it, and died.”
In response to Aguilar’s assertions, GHF released a statement insisting they have “no basis in reality.”
“It should be emphasized that Mr. Aguilar was employed as a subcontractor and was fired over a month ago for inappropriate behavior,” claims the foundation. “Following the dismissal, we received threats that unless he was reinstated, action would be taken against us, raising questions regarding the motivation behind his interviews.
“We also have evidence that he likely forged documents and presented misleading videos to promote his false narrative,” the group added. However, they did not produce any of the alleged evidence.
This week, a group of U.S. Senators led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) sent Secretary of State Marco Rubio a letter calling on the Trump administration to stop funding the GHF and resume support for the UN’s food distribution program.
“Blurring the lines between delivery of aid and security operations shatters well-established norms that have governed distribution of humanitarian aid since the ratification of the Geneva Conventions in 1949,” reads the letter.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed there is no starvation in Gaza, but President Trump acknowledged the severity of the situation in recent remarks to reporters.
“Based on television, … those children look very hungry,” said Trump. “But we’re giving a lot of money and a lot of food, and other nations are now stepping up.”
“Some of those kids are — that’s real starvation stuff,” he added.
Last week U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Friday that a thousand Palestinians have been killed trying to access food since the end of May.
“We hold video calls with our own humanitarians who are starving before our eyes,” said Guterres.”We will continue to speak out at every opportunity. But words don’t feed hungry children.”
Last week, Palestinian women in Gaza told Mondoweiss that they were lured to a GHF site with the promise of aid, only to be beaten and shot at, resulting in at least two women being killed. The testimonies of the women mirrored previous incidents in which the GHF has been accused of luring people to its distribution points, where Israeli forces then carry out what many describe as “aid massacres” under the guise of humanitarian distribution.
The number of Palestinians that Israeli forces have targeted in or near the GHF distribution centers has surpassed 1,000 killed, and over 6,011 injured since last May, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza.
