Gaza Humanitarian Foundation won’t stop aid distribution after Hamas puts bounties on workers

Hamas has placed bounties on the heads of American and local Gaza Humanitarian Foundation workers. But the Rev. Johnnie Moore, the group’s executive chairman, says, “If all of these threats are intended to shut us down, it’s just not going to work.”

“Terrorists want to cause you to be afraid,” Moore said. “I’m a Christian. The Bible says, ‘God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of sound thinking, of clear thinking,‘” the evangelical leader said, citing the Book of 2 Timothy in the Bible.

Since its launch May 26, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has delivered over 50 million meals to the people of Gaza, continuing to work in the war-torn region even after Hamas attacked a group of Palestinian Gaza Humanitarian Foundation workers in June. Hamas has killed 12 local Gaza Humanitarian Foundation workers and tortured others, according to the humanitarian group.

Before the launch of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Hamas confiscated much of the aid that entered Gaza, Moore told The Daily Signal.

As aid trucks entered Gaza, Hamas would “at gunpoint, take over the truck … many hundreds of trucks, steal the aid entirely, then they resell it to the Gazans, aid meant to be given for free to Gazans,” Moore said. Hamas hoards the food “in warehouses for their own purposes, they use it for other nefarious purposes, and so our one goal is to get free food to Gazans,” he said.

To deliver food to the people of Gaza and prevent Hamas from disrupting the aid deliveries, Moore said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has created a system “from the bottom up” to ensure the aid is not diverted.

Both the U.S. and Israel are backing the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. At the end of June, the Trump administration approved $30 million in funding for the aid group. Moore, a longtime supporter of President Donald Trump, was co-chairman of Trump’s evangelical advisory board during the 2016 campaign.

Despite Moore’s message that the group’s only objective is to deliver aid to the citizens of Gaza, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is facing opposition from more than just Hamas.

The humanitarian group has faced repeated criticism from the United Nations. As recently as last Friday, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation “inherently unsafe,” claiming the group “is killing people.”

In June, the U.N. human rights office claimed that about “410 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military while trying to fetch from controversial new aid hubs in Gaza—a likely war crime.”

In addition to the U.N., a group of 171 charities and nongovernmental organizations, including Amnesty International and Save the Children, have called for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to be dismantled, citing concerns over civilian deaths at distribution sites.

Medical authorities in Gaza claim 500 people have been killed while trying to access aid or along aid transportation routes since the humanitarian group began its operation in the region.

Moore pushed back on the claims, saying “there have been no violent incidences at our sites or involving any of our people.”

“We contest some of these reports for a couple of reasons,” Moore said. “The first reason is … we can’t control outside the perimeter of our sites. This is a hot war, we’re not operating in a ceasefire, we are operating in the middle of a war.”

It is clear, according to Moore, that there “have been some civilian deaths, but circumstances around those deaths, the scale of those casualties, all of those details, it’s quite clear that no one knows those things.”

“But what we do know,” he continued, “is that every single day, the Hamas health ministry in Gaza releases numbers of casualties and they attribute 100% of those casualties to having happened at or near our sites, and it’s just not true. It’s a lie. It’s like part of the information warfare part of Hamas’ military operation.”

The reports of death from the Gaza Health Ministry are intended to “scare Gazans from coming to our sites or to rally international opposition to us,” Moore said.

When there have been incidents involving the Israel Defense Forces around aid distribution sites, Moore says the IDF has “been open about it” and opened investigations to determine what happened.

The IDF has acknowledged that some Palestinian civilians have been killed by its gunfire near aid distribution sites and says it is investigating each incident but says the number of deaths reported from the Gaza Health Ministry have been exaggerated.

“What we know on the Hamas side is they are absolutely intentionally murdering people and for two reasons: to lie and say that we killed those people, or the IDF killed those people, and to try to turn the world against us and to keep the Gazan people from coming to us,” Moore said.

Despite concerns over violence around aid distribution sites, Moore says, “Gazans keep showing up, and we keep showing up and we try to set the record straight for one reason: The people of Gaza deserve to eat, and they can’t rely on anybody else. They got to rely on us. And we’re 50 million meals in, and we’re just going to keep at it, despite all the lies.”

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]