Trump administration announces $30 million in funding for Gaza aid group called a “death trap” by U.N.

The U.S. State Department announced Thursday that the Trump administration had approved $30 million in funding for the controversial, opaquely run private food distribution organization known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been criticized by a United Nations agency as “a death trap” for hungry Palestinians in the war-torn enclave. It is the first U.S. government funding for the GHF confirmed by the Trump administration.

Since it began operating in May, the GHF says it has distributed more than 46 million meals to Gazans, but its record has been marred by almost daily reports of civilians being killed trying to access its four “distribution hubs.” 

The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health said that as of Wednesday, 549 people had been killed near GHF hubs trying to access aid, and more than 4,066 others wounded. The United Nations has reported a lower death toll, saying that 410 people have been killed near the aid hubs.

The GHF dismisses the Ministry of Health’s figures as disinformation, and it says daily that nobody has been killed inside any of its hubs, while acknowledging incidents of violence outside the sites and referring to Israel’s military for further information.

“We call on other countries to also support the GHF,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said during a media briefing on Thursday, adding that the U.S. support, “is simply the latest iteration of President Trump’s and Secretary Rubio’s pursuit of peace in the region.”

Pigott said he couldn’t say whether the U.S. funds had already been handed over to the GHF.

Asked about the pattern of near-daily reports of fatal shootings by Israeli forces around GHF distribution hubs, which the Israeli military says it is investigating, Pigott referred the reporter to the IDF to comment on its investigations, and added: “Many of these reports are based on Hamas propaganda.”

Given his emphasis on the Trump administration’s priority being the provision of more aid in Gaza, Pigott was asked repeatedly whether the U.S. would push Israel to allow other, well established humanitarian organizations to operate more freely inside the strip. He responded to that question multiple times by repeating his call for other countries to support the GHF.

After being pushed by multiple reporters on the accusations that the GHF hubs are “traps” for Israeli forces to fire on civilians, Pigott said it was “important to realize that Hamas bears sole responsibility for this conflict.”

Other humanitarian organizations, including U.N. agencies, have refused to work with the GHF, saying it operates in a way that dehumanizes Palestinians by forcing them to venture long distances for food, and citing repeated instances of violence around its distribution sites.

“Now is the time for unity and collaboration,” the GHF said Friday. “We look forward to other aid and humanitarian organizations joining us so we can feed even more Gazans, together.”

CBS News has requested in-person, on-camera interviews with GHF representatives repeatedly since the organization’s creation was announced. GHF has yet to grant an interview.

Criticism of GFH mounts, as it’s labelled “a death trap” and a “U.S. proxy”

The head of the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, called the operation “a death trap” in a scathing statement earlier this week.

There were new reports Friday of Palestinians being fired on near a GHF hub in southern Gaza, near the city of Rafah. An amateur video shared online by local Palestinian news organizations — which CBS News was not immediately able to independently verify — showed people laying on the ground for cover as bullets can be heard whizzing past. The video was shared with the caption: “We are besieged by hunger from behind and death from ahead.”

The international charity Doctors Without Borders added its voice on Friday to the list of non-governmental organizations decrying the GHF, calling the group a “Israeli-U.S. proxy” and a “slaughter masquerading as humanitarian aid.”

“The four distribution sites, all located in areas under the full control of Israeli forces after people had been forcibly displaced from there, are the size of football fields surrounded by watch points, mounds of earth and barbed wire. The fenced entrance gives only one access point in or out,” MSF emergency coordinator in Gaza, Aitor Zabalgogeazkoa, said in the statement. “If people arrive early and approach the checkpoints, they get shot. If they arrive on time, but there is an overflow and they jump over the mounds and the wires, they get shot. If they arrive late, they shouldn’t be there because it is an ‘evacuated zone’, they get shot.”

“It’s unfortunate that MSF has joined the misinformation smear campaign by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry,” a GHF spokesperson told CBS News on Friday. “Many of these alleged incidents were falsely linked to GHF sites when in fact they occurred near other humanitarian convoys or distribution locations.”

The spokesperson did not reply to a CBS News’ question about whether the GHF was created or operates in direct conjunction with the U.S. or Israeli governments.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz added further weight to the accusations about violence around GHF hubs in an article published Friday, saying it had been told by some anonymous IDF personnel of a deliberate policy to shoot at crowds near GHF distribution sites. One soldier was quoted as saying he had been deployed near a GHF hub, and he described the situation as “a killing field.”

“Where I was stationed, between one and five people were killed every day,” the soldier told Haaretz, which has long been critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. “They’re treated like a hostile force — no crowd-control measures, no tear gas — just live fire with everything imaginable: heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars. Then, once the center opens, the shooting stops, and they know they can approach. Our form of communication is gunfire.”

“We strongly reject the accusation raised in the article,” the IDF told CBS News in a statement on Friday. “The IDF did not instruct the forces to deliberately shoot at civilians, including those approaching the distribution centers. To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians.”

The military said it was “operating to allow and facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid by the American ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ (GHF), and to secure the routes leading to the distribution centers, in order to allow the aid to reach the civilians rather than Hamas.”

The IDF added that its forces were “conducting systematic learning processes aimed at improving the operational response in the area (around GHF hubs) and minimizing, as much as possible, potential friction between the civilian population and IDF forces. As part of this effort, IDF forces have recently taken steps to reorganize the area, including the installation of new fencing, signage, the opening of additional routes, and more.”

It said recent reports of civilians being harmed approaching GHF hubs were “being examined by the relevant IDF authorities” and that “any allegation of a deviation from the law or IDF directives will be thoroughly examined, and further action will be taken as necessary.”

In a joint statement on Friday, Netanyahu and Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz also said the “State of Israel strongly rejects the despicable blood libels published in the newspaper ‘Haaretz.’  

In response to the Haaretz article, a GHF spokesperson told CBS News on Friday that there had “been no incidents or fatalities at or in the immediate vicinity of any of our distribution sites. However, IDF is tasked with providing safe passage for aid-seekers to all humanitarian organizations operating in Gaza, including GHF. GHF is not aware of any of these incidents but these allegations are too grave to ignore and we therefore call on Israel to investigate them and transparently publish the results in a timely manner.”

GHF boss dismisses criticism as “disinformation”

GHF executive chairman Johnnie Moore, an evangelical preacher twice appointed by President Trump as a White House adviser on religious freedoms, told Britain’s Sky News on Friday that there was a “disinformation campaign” that is “meant to shut down our efforts” in the Gaza Strip.

“Hamas is intentionally harming people for the purpose of defaming what we’re doing,” he said, adding that the “U.S. endorsement of the effort is Exhibit A that it is actually working, despite the disinformation campaign that is very, very deliberate, meant to shut down our efforts.”

Moore suggested that violence could not be avoided around its hubs in Gaza, as the small, densely populated Palestinian territory remains an active warzone.

Sky cited a U.N. figure of 410 people killed near aid hubs in Gaza, slightly lower than the figure provided by the health ministry.

In a social media post after his interview with Sky, Moore said that “some associated with the UN (& others) are knowingly sharing info that cannot be independently verified, & they’re doing so solely for political purposes… while claiming impartiality. GHF is not political. It just has one mission: feed Gaza.”

“The key piece of disinformation is, every single day, some figure comes out from the Gaza Health Ministry. It’s normally shared with a network like Al-Jazeera, and it sort of like, goes around the world,” he told Sky, when asked specifically what disinformation he was referring to.

Moore drew a distinction between the GHF’s operations and those of the Israel military. 

“The difference between, you know, what happens when the IDF is involved in an incident — and we’re not denying that there have been those incidents, there have been those incidents — but we’re able to talk to the IDF, the IDF does an investigation, and the IDF is a professionalized military,” Moore said. “Hamas is intentionally harming people for the purpose of defaming what we’re doing.”

The IDF has issued repeated statements after reports of troops firing on unarmed Palestinian civilians seeking aid, saying it has launched investigations. The results of any investigations related to incidents near GHF hubs have yet to be made public by the IDF.

“They go to get food, but end up being killed.”

A number of Palestinians have told CBS News’ team in Gaza about experiences of violence near GHF distribution sites.

In early June, the family of Reem Akhras, a mother of eight, told CBS News’ team in Gaza at her funeral that she was shot on her way to retrieve an aid parcel from a GHF hub.

“You went to get us food, Mom,” Akhras’ young daughter cried, sobbing over her body. “We will never forgive them.”

“They go to get food, but end up being killed,” a man at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital — where many of the injured were taken after an incident near a GHF hub in southern Gaza this week — told CBS News. “They come with empty bags, and the American security company along with the Israeli army, they shoot these young men.”

The man said 30 people were killed on that day trying to reach the GHF hub.

“I tell everybody: Don’t go. I send a message to all those young men: Do not go. Families should not send their children. Those who go will die. It’s a trap. Stop going there. And if your son insists on going, break his legs. Do not go there.”

Another man at the hospital told CBS News that people have died “in every family. They were just going to get food. They are hungry, grieving. They’ve got nothing to eat. Nothing to drink. There’s no life. No safety. There’s none of that in Gaza.”

The man said he wished the rest of the world could understand the suffering of people in Gaza.

“Young men in their prime are dying. What brings these youngsters to go to the aid sites? It’s hunger. The fire of hunger has ravaged the people.”

GHF declines to reveal other backers

Asked why the GHF was not being more transparent about its funding, organization and management, Moore declined to give further information about those matters, instead noting the group’s daily press release to news organizations that lists the number of meals it says it has distributed and other “operations on the ground.”

The GHF has been surrounded by controversy from the moment it commenced operations in mid-May. Just days after it launched its operation in Gaza, the group’s first executive director, American Jake Wood, announced his resignation, saying it had become clear the foundation would not be allowed to operate independently. GHF then said it was winding down its operation in Switzerland after Swiss authorities said it was breaching rules for foundations registered in that country.

GHF told CBS News at the time that henceforth, its only operations would be based out of the United States.

 “We’re saying everything we can, every single day, and by the way, we promise to do more of that,” Moore said on Friday when pressed by Sky News about where the organization’s funding comes from and what other entities it works with directly. “One of the reasons we haven’t released some pieces of information is because of this amazing, amazing opposition to any effort whatsoever to do this differently.”

Moore repeated the GHF’s insistence that only its method of aid distribution in Gaza was viable, as the only other way meant that “virtually every piece of aid that comes into the Gaza Strip is immediately taken by armed gangs, by Hamas.”

Other aid agencies, and officials in the Hamas-run enclave, acknowledge that looting does happen, but they refute claims of large-scale aid theft or diversion, saying the primary challenge to distributing food in Gaza is Israeli forces not permitting those operations. 

On June 11, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee was asked by CBS News’ partner network BBC News if the State Department was funding GHF.

“It is not currently being funded largely by the U.S.,” he said at the time. “There are other countries, there are NGOs, there are humanitarian funds, and there are private individuals who have funded it, all of which have requested to remain anonymous. I think they don’t want to become the targets of the hate that has befitted those who have tried to do something positive in what is a very difficult situation.”

Haley Ott

contributed to this report.