Gaza Humanitarian Foundation chairman Johnnie Moore on Monday criticized the United Nations for failing to condemn the Hamas attack last month which left 12 of his staff members dead.
“I’m surprised that something so right, something so simple as feeding people, has become so controversial,” he told the Combat Antisemitism Movement’s State Leadership Summit on Antisemitism and Support for Israel in Kansas City, Mo. “We have poked a lot of bears,” he added.
While the GHF thought it was merely “poking the bear of a designated terrorist organization that wants to steal the aid from people,” the U.S.-backed NGO quickly discovered what he described as “the underbelly of the United Nations and all of these organizations around the world.”
The GHF was “told that the United Nations sent a directive to all of their agencies telling them to not work with us, despite the fact that most of the aid coming into the Gaza Strip right now is from us,” stated Moore.
“And top it all off, Hamas itself actually attacked some of our volunteer Gazan aid workers, killed 12 of them, injured others of them, piled their bodies in front of Nasser Hospital in Gaza, refusing to allow them any medical treatment at all, and the United Nations, which receives billions of dollars from the United States government and the Europeans, didn’t even … issue a statement condemning Hamas’s murder of these local Gazan aid workers,” he continued.
The two-day CAM conference in Kansas City brought together decision-makers, faith leaders, survivors of terror attacks, and Jewish community activists in an attempt to strengthen collective state-level efforts to confront Jew-hatred and work to reinforce the U.S.-Israel alliance.
The GHF said on Monday that it had distributed 29,376 aid packages at its three sites across the Strip, bringing the total number of meals it has provided since the start of operations on May 26 to 52,937,632.
“Distributions at all sites ran smoothly, ensuring the protection of all civilians present,” the foundation emphasized in the press release.
The organization added that it was aware of “credible reports” that Hamas terrorists would seek to target its U.S. and local staff again.
“The targets of Hamas’s brutality are heroes who are simply trying to feed the people of Gaza in the middle of a war,” it said. “Our U.S. security personnel—some of America’s most elite and decorated veterans—are on the ground to protect people. And our local staff, who keep these operations running, have already paid the ultimate price: twelve murdered, others tortured, and now more threats emerging by the day.”
The group urged “international leaders and aid groups to stand with us and with the people of Gaza,” saying that Gazans “who show up to our sites every day in defiance of Hamas’s threats and brutality, deserve it.”
The GHF noted that it had identified “ongoing inaccuracies” in the international media wrongly linking its sites to violent incidents that actually occurred near U.N. convoys or other groups operating nearby.
“The U.N has confirmed this in their own reporting,” it added, blaming Al Jazeera and other outlets for relying on the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces has announced that it is conducting a process of examination and evaluation aimed at further improving its deployment near GHF distribution sites, “minimizing friction with the population and ensuring that the aid reaches its intended recipients.”
Israeli soldiers erected fencing demarcating the sites, installed signage, opened additional access routes, established barriers and checkpoints to manage civilian movement and helped change the layout of the sites to “allow external observation of the remaining aid packages at the end of each day,” the military said on Monday.
As part of the learning process, it was decided to temporarily close the aid distribution center in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan neighborhood and open a new center nearby, it said. The new site has been designed to reduce friction and maintain the safety of IDF troops operating in the area.
“These measures are intended to enable the safe and efficient passage of Gazan civilians, the orderly distribution of aid, and the continuity of the IDF’s operational activity,” the Israeli military explained in a statement.
Jerusalem has welcomed the arrival of GHF as a means of delivering aid directly to Palestinians, preventing Hamas terrorists from stealing the majority of the supplies.