(RNS)—Johnnie Moore, the evangelical Christian who chairs the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, defended the workings of his controversial food distribution system to a friendly audience in a July 22 Zoom call.
During the one-hour call, presented by the American Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, Moore described the foundation’s work as “unbelievably effective.”
He said the group is getting meals to about 800,000 people in Gaza, or nearly half its population, while working in an active war zone and facing an onslaught of disinformation.
“We work around the clock in order to ensure safety and effectiveness, to be as principled as we possibly can be,” he said. “We are dedicated to the humanitarian principles of humanity and of impartiality, of independence and of neutrality.”
More than 1,000 killed trying to access food
He did not mention the foundation is a private Israel-supported and U.S.-backed group, whose distribution sites are guarded by private American contractors and, on the outskirts, by Israeli soldiers who have repeatedly opened fire daily on people approaching the food aid sites.
Since the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation began operating in May, 1,054 people have been killed trying to get food—766 of them in the vicinity of GHF sites and 288 near United Nations and other humanitarian organizations’ aid convoys, a U.N. human rights office spokesman said. The recent bloodshed has led to increasing outrage across the world.
Twenty-one European countries plus Canada and Australia issued a joint statement July 21 condemning “the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food” in Gaza.
“The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity,” the statement said.
Moore, who may be best known for serving on President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisory board during the first Trump administration, said no one has been shot inside the distribution sites.
Moore attributes violence to Hamas
He acknowledged some were killed near the sites but disputed the figures, saying they were given to the media by Hamas. The numbers come from the Gaza Health Ministry.
“We do not deny that there have been civilians that have been killed trying to seek aid in the Gaza Strip while we’ve been operating,” Moore said. “By the way, the IDF doesn’t deny that they are responsible for some of that, and Hamas, by the way, does deny that they’re responsible for it.
“The fact is, Hamas has intentionally harmed Gazans in order to allege that it was the IDF or that it was GHF in order to disincentivize people from coming to our aid distribution site.”
Assaf Weiss, vice president of the American Jewish Congress, raised the question. Weiss is a former chief of staff for the speaker of the Knesset. The congress is an association of American Jews organized to defend Jewish and Israeli interests and committed to “an improved understanding of Israel,” according to its website.
Throughout the Zoom session, there were repeated calls for the return of some 50 Israeli hostages, some alive, some dead, still in Hamas captivity.
Moore was not asked about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s funding source, which remains shrouded, though in late June, the Trump administration said it would supply $30 million to GHF operations. The Israeli government has publicly denied paying for it, though it is intimately involved in the operation.
A July 21 Washington Post story identified several private U.S. donors, including the Chicago-based private equity firm McNally Capital, which specializes in acquiring aerospace, defense and technology companies.
Moore did not mention the GHF’s own American security contractors.
Foundation designed to avoid diversion of aid
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation operates four aid distribution sites, three of which are in militarized zones in the far south of Gaza and another in a militarized zone in central Gaza. Moore said he would like to expand to eight distribution sites.
Previously, the U.N. distributed aid through a coordinated delivery system with around 400 locations across Gaza, many controlled by Hamas.
Moore said the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation was founded to prevent Hamas from stealing, stockpiling and selling the aid, for which Israel blames the U.N.
“GHF was designed from the very beginning to avoid the problem of the mass diversion of aid,” he said. “Unfortunately, our challenge is compounded by the fact that the United Nations, from really the top of the organization, and other NGOs are not getting their own aid where it needs to go.”
He said he has pleaded and begged the U.N. to help it carry out its mission.
“Just earlier today, about an hour and a half ago, I wrote another letter to the head of OCHA (the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs), Tom Fletcher, who’s the head humanitarian official in the United Nations,” Moore said.
“I wrote to him again, and I expressed our alarm that there is all this U.N. aid that is sitting inside the Gaza Strip. There’s U.N. flour there that’s about to expire—the medical supplies that either have expired or are about to expire. Thousands upon thousands of pallets sitting in the Gaza Strip.”
‘Politics … prevailing over the needs of these people’
Israel has mostly blocked the work of various U.N. agencies. In January, it banned the main U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, from operating in the country, alleging some of its employees were involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel that started the war. On July 21, Israel refused to renew the visa of a senior U.N. official in the OCHA office.
Other humanitarian groups have declined to work with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, saying they have concerns about its model of aid. No faith-based humanitarian group has yet to join forces with the GHF.
“The whole international system declines to work with us because of politics,” Moore said. “Despite everything that they say about being concerned about the needs on the ground, it is politics that is prevailing over the needs of these people.”
He did not deny starvation is a fact in Gaza. The World Food Program has said the population of Gaza was at the brink of famine.
“The situation is real, and the world needs to respond to it,” he said.
“I’m a Christian, an evangelical Christian. There’s nothing more Christian than feeding people.”
We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.
Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.