The U.S.- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation on Tuesday offered to help secure aid convoys of other international organizations, including the United Nations, against looting by Hamas terrorists.
In a missive sent to Tom Fletcher, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, GHF chairman Johnnie Moore noted the world body has “essential aid stuck sitting in warehouses, including rice that has been sitting for more than 90 days, flour about to expire, and critical medical supplies already expired.”
The GHF “has seen the footage and heard the accounts of trucks being destroyed and food stolen,” Moore wrote. “We’ve even been asked if we can provide security for convoys of other aid organizations. The answer is yes. We stand ready and willing to provide security for U.N. aid workers and assist in delivering aid.”
“We are prepared to support the safe and accountable delivery of U.N. aid to final distribution points across Gaza,” he offered, warning that time is short as civilians cannot wait “while food sits in warehouses.”
Moore urged Fletcher to be transparent about the challenges facing aid organizations operating in the Strip, arguing that not Israeli restrictions, but rather Hamas looting and a lack of capacity on the U.N.'s part have caused an “extraordinary volume of aid” to remain in storage facilities.
“This is not an access issue. It is a capacity and operational issue, and the world deserves honesty about that distinction,” he said.
The GHF chairman accused the United Nations of orchestrating media attacks on its successful operations, instead of acknowledging what he described as “broader systemic failures affecting all aid organizations.”
“While others point fingers, we continue to deliver,” Moore wrote in his missive, inviting the United Nations and its partner organizations to “join us in adapting to the realities of this complex environment.”
“GHF has distributed more than 82 million meals across Gaza using secure, innovative delivery models,” the organization’s chair added.
In a separate statement, the GHF announced it had handed out 31,968 food boxes on Tuesday, bringing the total number of meals distributed since launching its aid operations in late May to almost 87 million.
In addition, the GHF delivered 13 truckloads of potatoes to two of its sites as part of an ongoing pilot program, the organization announced.
“With nearly 87 million meals now delivered across Gaza, we’ve built a system that works in a place where nearly everything else is broken. But no one organization can meet this moment alone,” stated John Acree, the foundation’s interim executive director. “We continue to call upon the global humanitarian community, including the United Nations, to step up and help us scale our operations to feed more people.”
Last month, Moore criticized the United Nations for failing to condemn the June 11 Hamas terror attack 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,” Moore 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.
After the June 11 killings of the aid workers, “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,” the GHF head said.
