Anas Baba reports:

What does it take to get food today in Gaza? It involves a perilous journey that I took myself.

I faced Israeli military fire, private U.S. contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations, and masked thieves — to get food from a group supported by the U.S. and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, or GHF.

Every day since the group began offering food on May 26, thousands of hungry Palestinians seeking food at these sites have been wounded and hundreds have been killed by Israeli military fire, according to Gaza health officials and international medical teams in Gaza. Many others have returned empty-handed after crowds grabbed all the food.

This is the story of what I witnessed from inside what GHF calls a “Secure Distribution Site.”

The United Nations calls the food program a “death trap.”

I have lost a third of my body weight after nearly 21 months of war in Gaza.

Months of an Israeli ban on food entering Gaza, and the current strict controls on food distribution, have fueled widespread hunger. Gaza health officials have reported scores of children who died of malnutrition.

People are pale and weak. They walk on the street supporting themselves by grabbing onto walls and fences, or they walk together in groups to support each other. Women and children faint in the street.

In recent months, I have eaten one small meal a day, rationing my own stock. Three weeks ago, I ran out of the basics — flour, lentils, cooking oil.

Street vendors sell items with skyrocketing prices I can no longer afford. Two pounds of potatoes cost around $100. I began buying watermelon peels and spoiled potatoes to pickle them.

 So we had only one choice: going to get food from GHF. But since day one, we have witnessed one thing that made all of us terrified: that every single day people are getting killed when they go to pick up food from GHF sites. [Continue reading…]

Jack Poulson and Jessica Le Masurier, in partnership with FRANCE 24 report:

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 Trump to recognize 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.”

GHF’s private security partner, Safe Reach Solutions, 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 agents and special forces veterans to run their Gaza operations. [Continue reading…]