The split screen of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation

It’s been one year, 10 months, and 24 days since Gaza was plunged into war, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the wider conflict that Israel has waged since. But in recent months, a different kind of battle has emerged — one fought not with weapons, but with words. On one side of the split screen, Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF, accused the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation — an organization backed by Israel and the United States — of “orchestrated killing.” It said that since GHF’s operations began, MSF alone has received 1,380 casualties, including 28 dead bodies, coming from GHF food distribution sites, a figure the organization said represents just a fraction of the injuries and deaths recorded. GHF rejected that claim, calling it “false and disgraceful.” Days later, the organization’s spokesperson, Chapin Fay, told a British television station that there had been “zero casualties at GHF distribution sites, other than two terrorist incidents.” Fay then added that 20 GHF staffers were denied treatment at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital, noting that MSF doctors were stationed there. The allegation was immediately denied by MSF. “They weren’t allowed in, and they were left to die in the courtyard,” Fay told the television station, Channel 4 News. “When you’re asking us these questions, I think you should be asking these NGOs what their agenda is.” Both GHF and MSF insist on their version of events, but their accounts are irreconcilable. And together, these claims are shaping how the world perceives what is happening in Gaza — refracting humanitarian work through the political, institutional, and rhetorical battles of the highest-profile conflict on Earth. What is GHF? GHF was established three months after Israel imposed a blockade in Gaza, one that barred aid supplies from entering the territory, and led to a 1,400% increase in food prices, according to the World Food Programme. Under heightened international pressure, Israel changed its tack — partially lifting aid restrictions, and attempting to replace 400 distribution points with a single aid agency: GHF. Created at “the behest of Israel to counter the alleged looting of aid by Hamas,” the organization set up four distribution sites, three in southern Gaza and one in the center of the territory. Meanwhile, traditional humanitarian organizations continued to be barred from the territory — and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, described the operation as part of an Israeli strategy to drive civilians “into militarized zones to collect rations.” “This initiative is not a genuine humanitarian effort,” wrote a collection of aid agencies, including Christian Aid and Action For Humanity, on May 19. “It is a smokescreen and, as UN Humanitarian Chief Tom Fletcher has said, ‘a cynical sideshow’ for a deeply flawed and dangerous attempt to rebrand the delivery of aid in Gaza while the Israeli government continues to impose a blockade, bomb civilians, and block life-saving assistance.” Jake Wood, the former U.S. marine initially slated to run GHF, resigned — stating that it was “not possible to implement” the project while “adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence.” But on May 27, the organization started its distributions, with an American security company running those operations, and the Israel Defense Forces providing “perimeter security,” according to AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel movement in America. A few days later, on June 1, the first reports of death at GHF distribution sites began to surface. CNN, the BBC, the Associated Press, and The New York Times all wrote about the massacre of dozens, with the latter outlet reporting that Israeli troops had fired “warning shots” toward “suspects,” leading to the deaths of more than 20 Palestinians. The next day, the International Committee of the Red Cross put out a statement: their Rafah field hospital had received a “mass casualty influx” of 179 cases, the largest number of people wounded in a single incident since the hospital was established one year earlier. That included women and children, ICRC said, and 21 patients that were declared dead on arrival. “The majority suffered gunshot or shrapnel wounds,” the organization wrote. “All patients said they had been trying to reach an aid distribution site.” The growing divide GHF Executive Chairman Johnnie Moore had a very different take. On June 4 — three days after the casualties were reported — Moore wrote an opinion piece for Fox News. Moore said that civilians were killed, yes. But not by GHF. “They were harmed by Hamas when they tried to break into warehouses where Hamas had been hoarding piles and piles of humanitarian aid meant for Gazans,” Moore wrote. “Yet, this behavior is excused, explained away, or flat-out ignored while organizations like the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation are attacked constantly for trying to feed Gazans with no strings attached.” It’s an allegation that has long been repeated by Israeli officials to explain reports of hunger and aid shortages in Gaza, though a U.S. government analysis in June found no evidence of systemic theft of aid by Hamas. Still, Moore’s version of events was backed by Mike Huckabee, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. He stated that the news outlets were “part of a Hamas-fed false narrative,” and demanded “an immediate retraction of the lies.” “These reports were FALSE,” Huckabee wrote. “Drone video and first-hand accounts clearly showed that there were no injuries, no fatalities, no shooting, no chaos.” GHF has consistently maintained that no deaths have occurred inside its distribution sites. Aid groups and the U.N., however, have noted that civilians often face hours-long treks through active combat zones and military checkpoints to reach those sites — a gauntlet where many of the shootings and injuries are reported to occur. By the end of June, the U.S. elevated its support for GHF, announcing a $30 million grant for the organization. Democratic lawmakers expressed “grave concerns” about the “troubled” foundation, and the rest of the aid world seemed to agree. Nearly 250 nonprofits signed a letter calling for an end to “the deadly Israeli distribution scheme” in late June. “Under the Israeli government’s new scheme, civilians who are already starved and weakened must walk for hours through dangerous terrain and active conflict zones,” the organizations wrote. “These areas have become the scene of repeated massacres, showing blatant disregard for international humanitarian law.” Still, GHF’s work continued. Every day, the organization published operational updates: by June 28, it had delivered nearly 50 million meals. By July 1, 54 million meals. By July 4, 60 million meals — and climbing. “Our success stands in stark contrast to groups that have received U.S. government funding for years — including the UN — yet failed to protect aid from diversion by Hamas and other bad actors,” Fay wrote in a press release on July 8. “It’s no surprise that some of these organizations now view GHF as a threat.” Just over a month later, MSF released a report titled “This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing.” It detailed how, over the seven weeks of the GHF’s operations, MSF’s two health care centers received 1,380 casualties, along with 174 people with gunshot wounds, including 71 children. “I see the roads get busy. I hear the hollering and heckling. I see people on carts with bags of food — then the injured begin arriving, almost at the same time,” one MSF nurse activity manager was quoted as saying in the report. “I have patients with gunshot wounds who are literally carried in on the same plastic bags they used to collect food.” Soon after that report was released, the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, concluded the situation in Gaza has escalated to a famine in Gaza for the first time. “Current efforts, including airdrops, and the non-humanitarian deliveries by GHF are wholly inadequate and will not alleviate the short-term, long-term, and intergenerational impacts of starvation on the entire population of Gaza,” the IPC’s famine review committee wrote in a recent report on the hunger crisis. GHF did not respond to a request for comment on this story in time for publication. Aid or atrocity? The GHF’s website is dotted with photos of food-laden children, their thumbs in the air as they smile toward the camera. On the websites of MSF, International Rescue Committee, and other INGOs in Gaza, the images from the territory are entirely different: illustrating rubble, chaos, desperation, and panic. In one version of events, GHF is succeeding against all odds — delivering aid to desperate Gazans without support from the humanitarian world. In the other, GHF is running an operation that pulls civilians directly into the line of fire, leading to even more deaths in a conflict that has cost more than 63,000 lives since Oct. 7, 2023, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry. Countless GHF blog posts say the same: the organization wants to work with other aid groups through partnering with the U.N., providing logistical support to convoys, and distributing existing aid. But for nearly every other humanitarian organization in Gaza, collaboration feels impossible. While GHF’s daily update posts continue — the latest stating the organization had distributed 142 million meals as of Aug. 28 — a statement from MSF and other agencies said that most major international groups have been unable to deliver “a single truck of lifesaving supplies” since March 2. For Anera, that means $7 million worth of supplies — including 744 tons of rice, enough for 6 million meals — is blocked from entering Gaza’s borders, the statement said. For CARE, that means $1.5 million of prepositioned food, medical supplies, and maternal and infant care items is idling outside the territory. And for Oxfam, that meant over $2.5 million of goods had been rejected, including hygiene items and food. “At this point, everyone knows what the correct, humane answer is, and it's not a floating pier, airdrops or the ‘GHF,’” said Sean Caroll, the head of Anera, in the statement. “The answer, to save lives, save humanity and save yourselves from complicity in engineered mass starvation, is to open all the borders, at all hours, to the thousands of trucks, millions of meals and medical supplies, ready and waiting nearby.” The divide has seeped into media coverage as well. Coverage critical of GHF can be found in most major mainstream news outlets, while news applauding the organization’s work can be seen across conservative news channels and pro-Israel social media. Much of that comes down to access: while GHF has brought select outsiders into Gaza — including Newsmax’s Brooke Goldstein, who also founded the End Jew-Hatred Movement, and authored a book on the topic — Israel largely bars international journalists from entering the territory. Because of that, most major news outlets have relied on Palestinian reporters for their coverage, five of whom were killed last week in a double Israeli strike on Nasser Hospital. Over 200 other journalists have lost their lives in Gaza since the war began, making this conflict the deadliest for journalists on record. More journalists have now died in Gaza than in the U.S. Civil War, both World Wars, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan combined, according to an analysis by Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs. “I am one of the only civilians who has been given permission to enter,” Goldstein wrote on the social media platform X following her visit. “What I saw proved that what the media is reporting about the situation is absolutely false. … Big thank you to @GHFupdates for the critical humanitarian work they are doing.”